Bonus Episode! Boondocking With Brad: Hooking Up

one that Matt definitely won't jump in a lot. I want him to when he can and when he wants to talk about it, because there's definitely a point where he's going to throw something in my face, in particular about Santa Fe. But okay, so we should actually start at the basics. What is hooking up your V? What does that mean? Um? So, that is when you are going to like a campsite and you are going to be using their electricity and their water inside of your r V. So what I'm gonna do is I'm i

tell you how to do that. I'm gonna describe it to you so that way you can learn and find the ways to research it. So if you're trying to get into this lifestyle, basically you are ahead of the game and you know what to ask next. Right, everything here is just the beginning because I don't have visuals, UM, so I want you to just listen and learn how to do this because these are things you're gonna do all the time. UM. Hooking up and d uh disconnecting

your RV happens almost daily sometimes. UM, it's definitely a weekly thing, if not a monthly thing. So when you first arrived to in r V park, you're gonna get a map of the campground when you check in, and then that r V park will most likely have a guide that will take you to your RV spot, and so you're gonna pull into your r V spot. Now sometimes they're back ins, and then there's also pulled through sites. UM. So those are the two main sites. So back in

is one that you back into. UM. And when you do that, you're gonna want to disconnect any V vehicles you have or any trailers because most of the time those are for like a smaller site, so you would park your vehicle or your trailer in front of you or on the side of the road. And so disconnecting a car or a trailer, it's about your ball hitch

and it's how your hitch set up works. UM. The nice thing about the trailer that we were pulling around with us the lat past year, it had an electrical jack, so basically you didn't have to crank it up and crank it down with a chalk block. You pushed a button, you held it down, and it like raised the trailer off of your hits for you. It was really really nice to have in those situations. But because it was a trailer, we always had to call the r V pack ahead of time to ask them about like where

do we parked this? Can we park this year? Some do allow it, some don't, Uh, can we use a parking spaces are a special storage area. There's a lot of different questions that you have to get into even before you arrive, to make sure that they can accommodate you and your setup. This was really annoying for us u UM, but luckily most places had somewhere there's only

one or two. But luckily we actually had friends nearby so we could go drop it off at their place and then we have to call them and ask them where they want it and that kind of thing. But so these are definitely technical details. Of when you're on

the road of what you have to deal with. So once you get the car or trailer disconnected, Um, you're going to back in in this situation, so you're gonna want to make sure your level when you're backing in, So you're gonna find the You're gonna do a walk around of your vehicle and of the site beforehand because sometimes they're gonna have different dips in the grounds or things like that. So you'll have your own chalk blocks.

And those chalk blocks are whether going to help you level out, so as you're backing in, your kind of putting these chalk blocks below to help level out your RV because when you have a crooked RV, it kind of feels like like you have vertigo, um, and you just get dizzy or you're like whoa, Like, are you missed step a lot? Because you're thinking you're on flat surface but you're not. So these chalk blocks come in

handy definitely. UM. And then once you're on those chalk blocks and your level, you're gonna want to put in your emergency break right UM. And that's a really quick way of putting that together. But there's this is a very important step. There's times where it's taken me five minutes because I'm on flat ground, and then there's times where it taking me half an hour to get it right, um I, and that's because I didn't have the right

chalk blox at that point in time. UM. So I had these ones that you basically there are four by four in square almost and you basically stacked them on top of each other like a pyramid. So there was

like four pig holes almost like a lego. And so I had two of those and then I put one in the center of that, so that way it created a ramp, like you put three legos together, one two and then one in the middle that connects them both right, and so that's how you start to get a level, but you have to like moving forward or backwards to ending on where you're at. But then there's some r vs that have auto levelers for you, so you literally

push that button, it levels itself and you're golden. So it all depends on your specific r V site and are set up that you that you get um and these are all great things to look for when you're buying an r V. Right, Uh, we would love that it would be a beautiful thing to have, and then you have to get different jackpads and things like that. A jack pad is the thing that goes on the ground. UM that will basically the auto level goes into and it's subway. It doesn't poke a hole through the ground,

and then it doesn't level itself. UM. So once you get your vehicle all level, and the first thing you're gonna do in most situations is plug in your electrical cords. UM. So if you have a trailer like ours where the it's permanently put in hooked up into your RV, basically you're gonna pull out this long thirty am extension cord that will go and plug into electrical outlet box UM.

And some r vs they're not like permanently attached, so basically they'll be in like one of your storage areas and then you're gonna come out and plug it into your r V and then into that. So there's us like two different types of setups there. But when you get over to that electrical outlet box, you're gonna want to make sure that the electricity breakers, the circuit breakers

are turned off. Uh. And that's just because you don't want to create a surge with into your r V, UM because your a C is still on on accident or something like that. UM, because all these things can create these surges which then can ruin your r V and then you have to go get warranty work done and you have to pay more money to do it. So it's always better to be safe than sorry, and that's why we use a surge protector as well. And so we plug in our surge vector into the thirty

amp outlet for us. We then plug the search protector into our extension cord that came out of our r V, and then we turn that circuit break on to feed power into our r V. There's a lot of electrical equipment within your r V, and protecting it is probably the most important asset UM to r V living. UM. We've had an issue with our generator breaking, but that's more for boondocking, so I'll get into generators on another episode.

But UM, you're gonna want to go back in. You're gonna check that your fridge is working because it will be auto gas and off so when you're driving, it actually works off of your stored energy. In your UM house battery, there's two batteries in an RV normally sometimes more.

But basically, to break it down simply, you have your engine battery for your chassis, for your normal vehicle, and then you have your house battery, which is in the back right, and so those two will charge off each other and connect to each other, but then there's different breakers in between them again to help with those electrical surges and such. So when you're driving down the road, um, your fridge is on gas, but it actually runs off that house battery as well. They work together to make

sure that your food stays cold while driving. Um, So when you have that on auto, you just want to make sure it's a solid green light once you plugged in that thirty MP outlet. Uh. The other thing you're gonna do is you're gonna go over to your A C or your heat panel to make sure that that's working, and then you'll turn on your lights and live life with electricity. Right, So, I bet you didn't know there's all that involved in and we're only on electricity. The

next easy part is water. Right. It's like hooking up a hose too from your car to uh a spray nozzle. Like it's just that easy, except you want to make sure you have regulators on there. There's a water pressure regulator you can get almost anywhere Walmart's, Amazon, anything, UM five to ten bucks cheap. But if you don't have one of those, some water parks water levels are so high with pressure that it could actually blow out pipes

within your RV. So you get this little five to ten dollar thing and you put that on the spicket outside. Then you plug your hose in your water hose. You don't want to use your dump pose or your your dump cleaning hose because they're gonna be two separate ones. So you have that water hose basically, and then what we do is we have a water water filteration system UM. So that way it filters the water that's going into our r V so we can drink with it, cooke

with it. Because we don't know where this water has been and how it's been used in these different local municipalities, so as you're traveling, you don't have a normal resource for water that like you know where it's from. So that's what we do to make sure that we filter that water. UM. Plug into your r V, turn on the spicket outside, and wallah, you got water inside of your RV. These are the easiest parts of hooking up. The next one is the dirty nasty dump pose my favorite.

Absolutely you are listening to park Landia from my heart radio. Hi, I'm Matt and I'm Brad. This park Landia. The next one is the dirty nasty dump pose. UM. So hooking it up is actually really easy. Um. You Basically what

you're doing is you're taking that dump pose UM. It's normally in a fifteen ft accordion UM there I would say the circumference is like three inches or four inches around, So it's a big hose because that's what's gonna take your U wast from your r V or your dirty waters from your r V into the ground from the outside.

You're gonna have a panel that flips up. UM. So basically this is where you're going to take and put um your dumpos on the RVs waste fitting UM and that basically extends it to where you can then take it to the dump station's inlet. And that inlet is going to be normally in the ground, and that's where you hook up the other side of your dump pose and make sure that it's tightly secured because you don't want any of this stuff coming out. That's for sure.

Where I made my biggest mistake in Santa Fe, New Mexico was before I put my dump pose on. I basically didn't check to see if my black tank um safety valve was closed, and so when I took off the cap to my r vs UM fitting, the waiste fitting, I took off that cap and all the black tank shot out at me everywhere. It was a disaster. It

was the nastiest thing that happened in my life. And I was screaming, and you're fighting against all this poo filled water, yes, feces filled water, and it's spraying on you and you're trying to like freak out. You're like, oh my god, what did I do? What I do? And you're trying to put the cap back on, and then you don't realize that, like, it's not the cap

you need to turn. You need to put that safety black tank safety lever back in so that way it just stops flowing for a second so you can breathe and vomit because it's so gross. It was like, it was a horrible experience. I'm still have PTSD over this, and I just remember stripping down I definitely threw up. I hope to make it that much worse. UM. And I remember going to Matt. I said, I need you to give me the shampoo, and he wasn't moving fast enough. I said, I need you to give me the shampoo.

I said, if you don't give it to me now, I'm going to freak out. And he's like, now Matt's freaking out. He's like, what happened? I said, the dump tink went all over me, and like he just got real quiet, really nice, and he just smiled as he passed that over because he's just like this is this is it? Like I can't take this, Like that's why I don't do this case. Uh So, Nile's say, we're supposed to check out at ten, and I didn't check out to eleven because I was in that shower for

an hour. UM. I went through about half of that bottle of shampoo because I just I wanted to have every gross feeling off of me. UM. I brushed my teeth, threw away my toothbrush afterwards. You know, anything I used I basically threw away, including the towel and the clothes I was wearing. Um, even though they were like my favorite pair of jeans. I didn't care. I'm not dealing with that. Um. But so I get back up and I, you know, I hook up the dump tank and get

it all taken care of. And the problem is, I don't want you to ever have to go through what I went through. It was a traumatic experience, horrific experience. And you just you're gonna be a lot happier knowing that you don't have to go through that, like I didn't. UM. So that's all get dumped, the tanks, I disconnected the hose, I washed it out. But anyways, this is about hooking up that, not actually disconnecting it. So well look over that in a tiny bit longer, because there's a couple

more things that you're definitely gonna want to do. UM. And this is also why you wear gloves when you're in this situation, when you're hooking up your dump tink um, and then you're gonna want to always keep those closed even though you have the hose connected. UM, when you're

dumping it, you want to open up those. You dump your waists, and then you close those emergency safety lovers again, even if you're there for a week, because you're gonna want to dump your tanks about like every couple of days, But you don't want to keep those traps open because you know then you'll have different like flies and possibility of animals or rodents getting into your r V. So you want to keep these things closed at all times.

Even if you just like leave your dump posts hooked up like I do, you don't want to leave it open. So basically you will be collecting waste within your r V and then dumping it every couple of days. UM, and that's just to make sure you don't have rodents

inside of your r V. UM. We never really had any issues with this, but I've been told about the different kinds of flies that can grow UM there spawn like satan and coming to you r V. So we just be safe and we learn from other people's mistakes in that aspect, because I've rather learned enough around the

dump type that I don't need to learn anymore. Another thing you're gonna want to do is you're gonna want to just make sure that your pro paint tanks are on and that your supply is full when you're hooking up, just so that way you can cook. You know, you can UM you can bake in your oven, you can cook eggs on your stovetop, whatever you want. You just want to make sure that you have that. UM. But now once you've done that, you've learned your lessons and

never mess with the dump tanks. You've hooked up your water and your electricity, you're ready to throw out that awning fire, up that barbecue, and put out that outdoor equipment because it's time to have a good time camping. UM. Really easy and a super super fun time. UM, as long as you don't make mistakes. So basically you're gonna

reverse that now, UM. To get out of there, You're going to you know, I always leave the water electricity until the end because basically your MAT's always gonna be in there, maybe like making a cup of coffee in the morning or making his oatmeal or something like that, so I'll need some of those things. UM. And so basically the uh because we take off pretty early in the mornings, you know, we try to get out of places by eight or nine am, even though you have

till eleven. UM. So when you go around the RV, you're gonna take away your dump pose first. So you're gonna dump your waists. You're gonna do your black tank first. You always do your black tink first because that's gonna be your feces and like bad bad stuff. Um. And then you do your gray tank second. And that's because that's just your like gray water. That's why it's called gray. And that's because it's just the water that was from your shower or from washing dishes, things that are not

as you know, nasty. Um. But basically you're gonna dump those second. Once it's all done, you're gonna close your emergency valves, put your cap back over your r vs who are inlet, and you're gonna take your accordion uh dump hose and you're gonna wash it out. And this

is where it requires a second hose. You don't want to use your normal water hose because you don't want that to actually touch and then all and you have like nasty water, So you use a special hose to clean that out, rinse that out, uh cord in it. You put your caps on, you make sure it's nice and dried out and like rinsed out, and then you put that away. Um, really easy. Next thing I do

is I'll take the water. I'll check with Matt to make sure that he's all good, he got his water that he needs, and then UM, i will take that water hose assembly apart and just you know, round it up and I'll put it in my UH wet storage container on the outside of the r V, which is one of the storage units that like it's better for wet wet stuff. Then I'll take our electrical cord and I'll wind it back up into our r VS UM side UM organizer holder place and basically that will go away.

I'll make sure that all of my awnings are in, that our slideouts are in. I'll do a three sixty surveillance of the area to make sure that there's nothing else hooked up or that our scooters UM still hooked up and not like UM laying on the side or anything like that, because we tow around our scooter UM to get around to different areas in different neighborhoods that we travel to. And so basically I'll do a three

sixty check. I'll check my tires, UM, I will make sure that everything is working and we're ready to hit the road safely. UM. So once that's all done, I'll jump in, I'll pull forward a little bit and you

know what you have to do again. After you pull forward about five to ten ft, you stop it and you go do another three sixty because a lot of times you'll have chalk blocks and you don't want to leave back your chalk box because those can range anywhere between forty dollars to like a hundred and eighty because some of these chalk blocks are like eighty bucks of chalk for like these specialized ones. Luckily we don't have those,

but you don't want to leave anything behind. Uh. And then you basically get in your r V and go on your marry way until you have to do it again the next day if you're living on the road full time, or if you're going home, then to go home again. So there's a lot of fun things about r V living and hooking up your r V can be a fun thing and a bad thing. Most of the time, it's just a lot of work. It only takes fifteen to twenty minutes, and it's it's not really

that difficult. But you'll find your system. You'll find two places where it's you store things, and you'll make it. You'll make it work for you. Um I make sure that Matt never has to deal with this, but this actually reminds me. Um, you have to remind me to pick up some more gloves because I just ran out when we hooked up this time. Okay, all right, yeah, well you you've been listening to park Landia, a show

about National Park. Parklandia is the production of My Heart Radio, created by Matt Carouac, Brad Carouac and Christopher has the otis producer and edited by Mike John's. Our executive producer is Christopher Hasiotis our researcher, It's Jescelyn Shields. A special things goes out to Gabrielle Collin's Crystal Waters and the rest of the Parklandia crew and hey listeners, if you're enjoying the show, leave us a review on Apple Podcasts.

It helps other people like you find our show. You can keep up with us on social media as well. Check out our photos from our travels on Instagram at Parklandia Pod and join in on the conversation and our Facebook group Parklandia Rangers. From our podcasts My Heart Radio, visit the heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows, and as always, thank you for listening,