Bonus Episode! Boondocking With Brad: The Essentials

that's what I thought at least, but they don't. UM. And we're gonna be talking about things like sewer hoses, water hoses, dump poses, you know, all the different kinds of tanks and things like that. But first thing you probably have to start off with because you really want to protect your asset, which is that r V. Is when you um hook up, you're hooking up into thirty

amp or fifty amp electrical ports on the outside. There are specific surge protectors for thirty AM and pick ups that you want to use us because this will protect your RV from having a surge into the r V park just in case there electrical isn't great. You want to protect your asset or otherwise it'll just be sitting and they're getting warranty work done or you'll have a big bill if you don't have a warranty and you don't want that one on the road. So this little

fifty eight tool really makes a difference. But going from there, UM, I thought that water hoses and dump poses would come with us. But I guess it's good that they didn't sell me a used dump pose, right, because that's just weird. I mean, it's already bad enough when you have to deal with the dumps, uh and those tanks and everything

like that. Uh. So these dump poses basically hook up to your r V and what it is is you have two tanks that come from your r V. You have your Black tank and you have your Great tank, and then they going onto one hose and that hose goes into the ground where you dump your stuff. Every r V park, almost every r V park has full hook ups, but there's some that don't, so you might have to use a dump station and things like that.

But we'll talk about that in another episode, UM as we dive more into this RV living and what that actually entails. So basically, you have your black tank and your Great tank. When you get those sewer hoses, you cook them all up. It's all good. You're gonna pull your black tank first because this is your bodily fluids. This is more of like these um, you know, feces and things like that, and so you want to dump those first, so that way, when that hose it goes

through that hose and into this the ground. You know, you take care of that first. Then you dump your great tank, which is like your washwater, your shower water, things like that. It's more clean. It's called gray because there actually is like a grace tint to it, because you know, there's dirt that you're washing off and it's

going through your systems. But you do this in this order because that water will then go through that hose and it will kind of clean it out for you, so you don't have to spend a lot of time, um cleaning out that hose at the end to something that Matt does not do. Ah, he will not do it, And that is absolutely fine because I don't blame him. Yeah, not my area of expert. But that's why you're going

over boondocking with Brad with me. I'm learning from boon docking with Matt, right, Yeah, I know, maybe this was just more subconsciously a lesson for you so you could help me out more. That's not gonna happen, I know, but that's absolutely fine. UM. So basically, once you're done with that, you're gonna want to make sure you always

close your black and your great tanks after you're done dumping. Um. And that's because otherwise it will be like the Santa Fe issue, which we're gonna talk on of the next boon docking with brand and that we keep on teasing you with because it gets nasty. Water hoses, Um, you're actually gonna want to You're gonna want one to hook up to your r V to put feed water into your r V, and then you're gonna want in a day after for that one that will go into your

boon docking tank. So basically you have an extra tank where you can put water in there if you want. If you know that you're gonna be on the lamp for a few days around the road for a few days, boon docking overnight without any hookups, you're gonna make sure you have water in there so you can still use it. UM. But the second hose is your cleaning hose. And so that is the hose that you're gonna want to use

to clean out your sewer hose. And that's because when you're doing these different activities, you don't want what you're

drinking out to clean up your feces. Every r V liver, every r V traveler will know that this is super important, UM, and we all talk about it when I'm going to When I was in Albuquerque Balloon Fiesta UM last year, I was talking to people about dump tanks and great tanks for like days because it was just you know, there's ways to make sure that there's proper hygiene when doing this, like always wearing gloves when for you're working with your black and gray tanks because you don't want

those to get on your hands and things like that. Right, I mean pieces seem madd He was just like right and like just yeah, um, when you buy your r V at the beginning, you're not gonna have any betting, any towels, um, some window coverings or r vs don't come with window coverings, uh, and things like that. So the things that you think are really basic you need to look for when you're buying r VY. Do they

come with this? Do I want someone else's use sheets if you're buying it used, you know, where do you find these things? Because ours is a queen size short with a flip up. Our bed takes specific sheets and bettings that you can't find at Walmart. You know, you have to actually order these from Amazon or go to camping World and find these different objects and things because of the way that they're sized for an RV. Something that Matt always throws in my face his DVD collection. Yeah,

what happened. When we first got on the road, I was like, we don't need it. We'll have Netflix, we'll have Hulu, we'll have Disney Plus. Well Disney plustn't exists then, but now it does. So like what, um, what happened? Well? I had a large DVD collection when we're in Chicago because we have the space, and it was something I amassed over years, and I just I was attached to it. You know, there's a lot of movies I have that I haven't watched in years and probably never even feel

like watching. But it's just something that I'm connected to. And so when we downsized and how to like really getting like minimize our possessions, I put a good amount of those DVDs in storage and then only brought like I don't know, a small amount I could fit in a binder or something into the r V with us.

And then when you're back at the storage facility at one line over the summer or something, I asked you, like, could you go to this storage place and like get the rest of my DVDs because I need them, And they found a box and I brought that one back. Yeah,

well that was that was like one. I didn't realize there was like three boxes full of DVDs and so, UM, I keep on getting lambasted over that every week and he goes to look for a different DVD they he had, but he doesn't have it, and I understand it, but

this thing has These DVDs have really coming clutch. There's multiple times where we just have bad internet and so we watch a DVD and it's been great, or even we have great internet, but we just want to watch a DVD because it's not on one of those channels or those streaming services, which leads me into mobile hotspots and WiFi. Man, what a disaster. Um. We bought a Verizon hot spot and we use that and it works sometimes to be honest barely honestly, our team mobile like

tethering from our phone from my iPad work better. UM. You know, I'm actually halfway a tempted to get one of those team mobile sync up and drives because I think that that also offers tethering and that might even offer better tethering or mobile WiFi. But basically it kind of comes into this thing where you're gonna realize that really quickly you're gonna need multiple access to internet, especially if you are are you living and you're working from

the road. R V parks sometimes offer WiFi. Uh. Sometimes it's great, sometimes it's down the dumps uh. And then sometimes you have to pay for it, and you can pay for different levels like you know, basic and then Premium and then streaming levels and everything. But it gets really expensive really quick. So you're just gonna want to make sure you have some things on the road with

you that makes sense. UM WiFi for us is just the biggest thing we're actually looking into going to camping World and grabbing one of those mobile UM there are these mobile hotspot and WiFi extenders, so basically it'll extend your service and they're like UM plus installation so it's probably like five bucks, but it might be one of those things that actually just boost all of our signals

to where we don't have to worry about that. So, you know, there's just a lot of different options out there when it comes to WiFi specifically UM and even the different versions of mobile hotspots there are. Uh so tethering from your phone might work um for us. Sometimes it does, sometimes it doesn't. So it's just all spotty

and different depending where we're at. And we're in natural parks, we really don't care because we're out there to see nature, and you know, we'll watch a DVD because it's fun. And of course you have to get your basics, your cleaning supplies, your kitchen and organizational items, your toilet trees. Um. And that actually brings me to r V friendly toilet paper. Don't use Sharman. I'm sorry, Sharmon, but that stuff will

clog up your r V so quick. Um. I remember that's what I tried to use, you know, Sharmon soft. I was so excited and it just clogged it up. So we had to pay someone to come out hundred fifty bucks to back flush our r V tank to get all of the like cluttered up toilet paper out, so get used to not using the good stuff. Um in the r V. You're definitely need to find your r V friendly toilet paper because you don't want to make a hund fifty mistake because again, that's your resources,

that's your money that you're traveling. We could have went out to dinner a couple of times multiple times with that, but we had to spend it on back flushing r V. So don't make the same mistake as we did. There's a lot of brands of like r V friendly toilet paper, and honestly you can find these at like Camping Worlds. A lot of campsites actually carry our V friendly toilet paper in the little mini camp store because they know

that's so important to your r V system. So you can when you're traveling through our V parks in different places walmarts, you can actually find a lot of places that have friendly r V toilet paper all along the road. And the last thing I really want to bring up our trailer hitches because they're so important when you're driving down the road. So for us we me nowadays just have our Class S motor home and our scooter, but there's a specific thing that we have to put our

scooter on. You know, we have this motorcycle hitch, so it just goes right into our hitch. And then there's a ramp that we can put our scooter up in and then we use tie downs straps to tie down our scooter. So that's one option of a trailer hitch. Another trailer hitches their ball hitch, and those are the ones that you're gonna trailers use. UM. They you know, you just drop the trailer on it, you lock it in, you use your latches, and you can take off, you know,

plugging your electricals. That way, there's break lights on your trailer. But then there's the fifth wheels like we talked about in the last boon decking with Brad, which are in the middle of your truck. So this wouldn't be for an RV. No, this is not for our r V, but this is to go into a truck. UM. So there's many different options for trailer hitches. UM. And our saving grace this year was definitely the load bar sway

bar combo. UM. This this load bar sway bar combo was like bucks, but it just it saves your rear when you're driving eighty miles an hour down the road in your RV with the trailer behind it, and then you get a big, huge gust to win like we did in Texas. I mean, I still had to pull over because it didn't feel safe, but I know for sure that this load bar sway bar combo really helped.

Now with this, what this load bar sway bar combo does is it takes the load off of your rear wheels and it puts them more towards your front wheels, making it more even. And that's what a load bar does. The sway bar what that does is it hooks up to your trailer and it makes sure your trailer doesn't sway back and forth or fish tail, so while you're

driving your you have complete control over your vehicle. One thing that I learned is because I was pulling so much weight in our trailer this year, is that we needed to get front shocks that could hold up better too. So we actually blew out like our shocks on this year and so we um had to get those replaced. That wasn't it was a cheap upgrade, but basically now it's ready for that next time we ever have to

pull trailer behind us. So there's a lot of little technicalities when you're towing behind um a trailer like we were. I mean, this one had it was probably a full capacity between the weight of our ur V itself because you have to factor that into towing power for your engine, your specific engine, your chassis. UM it was like nine thousand pounds, and I remember there was a point where between what our housing was or r V itself and the trailer behind us, because you have to factor in

the weight of the trailer itself. Even the toebar hitch was like a hundred pounds U. The load bar sway bar combo is a hundred pounds UM, and then the weight so we had like two pallets of syrup, which was another like five or five thousand pounds. So basically we had seven thousand pounds when I was done calculating it UH and eight thousand pound toe limit. And that's good because you don't want to push to your limit

the whole time. But we were only driving for like twenty hours with that, and then we dropped off one old palette and kept on going out north when we were heading to Las Vegas UM last year. So there's definitely a lot of different instances, and you really need to make sure that you understand what your limits are for your vehicle and what they need. So just because you have a Class SEE doesn't mean you can tow whatever you want because it doesn't have the correct amount

of power to actually pull those behind. So then that leads you into maybe upgrading to that Class A diesel um or Class A gas. You know, you could do that, but it's always better have diesel. It's definitely a better pusher. It's better for when you're going through the Blue Ridge Mountains in the Great Smoky Mountains, or if you're going

through the passes over Breckon Ridge and Veil. You know, you definitely want that diesel pusher because otherwise you're gonna be going up these at like forty miles an hour and it's gonna like drive you and everybody around you crazy. So knowing your limits and how to tow and where you're going is so important when traveling. But I guess that's something that will have to cover in a future

episode of Boon Docking with Brad and Uh. Today, I was really happy to be able to take you through the essentials that you need for RV living and just go a little bit more into understanding your r V specifically, uh, understanding your need and what it is that drives these beautiful homes across this country. You've been listening to park Landia, a show about national parks. Parklandia is a production of by Heart Radio, created by Matt Carouac, Brad Carouac and

Christopher hasiotis producer and edited by Mike John's. Our executive producer is Christopher hasiotis our researcher. It's jeff Lyn Shields. A special things goes out to Gabrielle Collins, Cristal 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. BA