August 2013 - The Giesen's "Camp" for the First Time

In August 2013, because Kira was begging us to try RVing, we rented a unit from a company we'd heard of many times. I will not mention their name here, but PM me if you want to know who NOT to rent from. I won't go into details, but suffice it to say I spent half-a-day cleaning it. OK, one detail - hair in the shower. Not ours. Yech. Anyway, we couldn't even get outta the driveway without incident because the steering wheel locked up. Spent an hour trying to move it again. When we finally got going, on the drive, things kept flying out of the cupboards, so I had to keep getting out of my seat and risking my life to put things back in place. Ever try to walk in a moving motor home? Add to that, I'm a bit of a klutz and you can imagine how crazy that was. I had to get up every 20 mins or so to close cupboards or to catch our coffee maker before it hit the filthy floor. I'd be trying to keep my balance while wrangling our heavy coffee maker back into place, when a cupboard above me would fly open and a plate would fly out. The kids were happily buckled, watching their iPads, and Dave was singing, "On the Road Again," totally oblivious to what was going on around them. I was happy to get out of that death trap when we finally got to our site. I flung open the door and nearly kissed the dirt.

Upon getting to our site. We had no clue what to do next. We had watched a video at the RV rental place and I'd read the manual on the drive, but we sat there looking at each other dumbly once we parked. Our kind neighbour, probably laughing his head off inside, came to our rescue. He showed us how to hook up the water and power, and we were good to go.

We spent as little time as possible inside the trailer as we could.

Outside, we had a great time. We made our first campfire, though it started raining five minutes later. But at least we got to do our "we made fire!" dance before it did. We hiked, we took advantage of all the fun activities that camp had to offer, and we went to the beach.

I have a great memory of the beach. It was quite a walk a way from our campsite, so we lugged our towels, toys, sunscreen, water and snacks all the way there and happily flopped on the sand to relax. After a few hours, we made our way back. We didn't have a full service site and our grey and black water tanks were close to full, so we knew we'd have to use the camp showers. We walked all the way back to the RV, got our soaps and clean towels, and walked all the way to the showers. By this time, we were dirty and exhausted. And cranky. Totally ready for a shower. Being camping newbies, we entered the shower and expected the water to flow out. It didn't. You had to pay, apparently, a whole loonie. Yaaaaaah - we didn't have any on us. I was so upset. We'd have to walk back to the RV again. Dave offered to go back alone so the kids and I sat outside and waited. And waited. And waited. Dave was taking an inordinately long time to come back. Inside my head, I came up with all kinds of things to say to him when he got back. How dare he keep us waiting when we were so tired. I was getting more and more angry by the second, when I heard a peculiar sound. The putt-putt-putt sound of a tiny engine followed by laughter. Around the corner comes Dave on Kira's tiny, purple-with-flowers scooter. It is not built for a grown man. People were pointing and having a good chuckle. Seeing Dave come around the corner, his legs sticking straight out, grinning like a fool, I couldn't help but burst into laughter myself. All the frustration melted away. Leave it to Dave. He'd taken a few wrong turns on his way back to the trailer and was dead on his feet himself. He'd decided he'd rather make a fool of himself, riding a little girls motorbike, than endure another long walk. I wish I'd had my camera.

By the end of that trip, we suffered through a broken microwave, a broken air conditioner, a busted bike rack, and three uncomfortable nights on a lumpy mattress. We returned the black water tank completely full though we were supposed to empty it. I complained so hard about the filthiness of the unit that they waived the fee for dumping the tank. They also admitted that the entire RV was in better shape than when we had picked it up because I had spent so much time cleaning it. I vowed to never again rent ANY trailer from anyone.

That's what led us to buying our own. For weeks we did research and we ended up buying an awesome travel trailer from Jeff Couch's RV, a wholesaler in Ohio. Partly because the dollar was so good, we paid what most people pay for a tent trailer, for a 34-ft unit, complete with a master bedroom, full kitchen, a slide with a couch and u-shaped dinette, and a kids bedroom with three bunks. Our first trip was with the Schober's, friends of our from the kids' school, who showed us the ropes. Dave really appreciated the lesson from Trevor on how to dump the black water. Yeah. I still don't know how to do that because I just don't wanna know. Dave says it's better for me not to ever watch. I did watch how Naomi set up her site and cooked, and I made lists of things I needed to buy. We were sorely unprepared that firs trip. But it was a great experience. We went out one more time that year before we winterized our new condo-on-wheels and put it away for six months.

We talked about our trailer all winter. We really missed it. Three out of four of us agreed (remember, Max protested this first year and half of the next) - we were hooked!

Thanks again for reading!

The crappy rental trailer. I photshopped out name of the company.
I was happy to be outside of it!

We stayed at Ol' MacDonalds, which has a lot of fun activities for kids.
 

Including a train that drove them around the campsite.

 

  

Enjoying the great outdoors.
This was right before we saw a snake and ran back, screaming.