- This week on the RV podcast, - A massive hatch of billions of creepy crawly bugs is about to invade large sections of the country. And yes, we really mean billions - Loves truck stops are greatly expanding overnight camping spots at a service centers, the company is adding electric and water hookups for weary RVs. - Have you ever wondered what it's like to be part of an RV caravan tour?
Well, you can find out by listening to our interview of the week, coming up in a few minutes with the operations Head of Fantasy RV Tours, - All this plus the RV News of the week, and your questions coming up in episode four 90 of the RV podcast. - Hello everybody, I'm Mike Gland and this is my lifelong traveling companion and my bride Jennifer. Hello my dear. Hello, - Mr. Mike. - Well, we should tell everybody before we get started that uh, this podcast comes to you in audio and video form.
If you want the video version, you can find it on our RV lifestyle YouTube channel. And of course the audio version, as always, is available on your favorite podcast app. So, greetings for everybody. We're in Florida - And, uh, we've spent most of the past three months here. This week we're finishing a major project reviewing five class B models and testing them by driving and actually camping in them. - This has been a huge project and it is seen us drive, um, a couple thousand miles.
We've tested out gas and diesel engines, two wheel drive, four wheel drive, four by four models on three different chassis, the Ram ProMaster, the Ford Transit, and the Mercedes Sprinter. And we've done it in lengths of 2022 and 24 feet. - And thanks to Nick Schmidt of Sunshine State RVs for providing us with the units to test. - Yes, he trusted us greatly, didn't he? He - Certainly did. - Well, maybe not a whole lot 'cause he did have an air tag in each one of those vehicles, .
So he knew where we were. But we really do appreciate Nick and, uh, Nick is a wealth of information about Class Bs. He's, I think, one of the largest Class B dealers in the country. And he, uh, really helped us, uh, take a good sample of what the latest in technology is. And we had a great time. So right now our challenge is we've gotta edit these five in-depth video reviews.
And these are different than most video reviews because not only do we just show you a tour of inside and outside, but we drive it and we camp in it. And, uh, we will, uh, be eventually telling you all the favorite features, which ones we think have the best this, and what has the best that it's gonna take us a few weeks and we'll release these videos one at a time, over six consecutive days, a new video each day. And when we have the dates ready, we'll let you know.
Um, and, uh, we have been sharing some of our preliminary impressions on our new RV lifestyle community and you can find that@community.rvlifestyle.com. Uh, it's gonna be a lot of fun, I think, don't you? - Oh, it's gonna be a great, great, great fun. And it was fun and it's going to be fun to show 'em too. Yep. - So, um, again, you'll find the whole series eventually on our, uh, RV lifestyle YouTube channel, and we invite you to subscribe to that channel.
That way you won't miss any of our video videos. We've been doing a couple videos a week now for years there, and lots of material that, um, will help you, particularly if you're a newbie. Check it out. Alright, the rv social media buzz of the week is coming up right after these messages. Jennifer and I bought some land near Nashville, Tennessee a while back. We got tired of crowded expensive campgrounds and worrying about reservations.
Tennessee is a gorgeous state with friendly people, and it has been such a pleasure coming up On April 13th, the same developer has some new property near us, close to the Natchez Trace and Buffalo River called the Reserve. At High Forest, big properties, five to 41 acres. You can build a house, a cabin or rv. Year round prices start at only $89,900. Your property, your way 100% ownership. The scenery in this part of Tennessee is breathtaking and the property is gorgeous.
Garden landscape, bring your pets, build what you want. There's high speed fiber optic internet, and it is so private, a great place to make your home base ready whenever you want it. They're selling these on April 13th by appointment. Five to 41 acre properties from $89,900. There's even great financing. Check out the site and a video tour@rvlands.net. That's rv lands.net. The one thing that can ruin a perfect RV trip is a bad mattress.
And believe us, we know over the years we've tried many and we have found them all wanting until now. - Now we sleep on the RV mattress by Brooklyn Bedding. Quite simply, it's the best we've ever slept - On. We chose a queen size aurora Lux medium firm mattress that arrived tightly rolled in a box. All we did was put it on the bed, unroll it, and wait for it to recover.
From the compression that we put on the sheets and the bed covers and found, we slept so well that we ordered another one for our home. - That's how comfortable it is. Our sleep is now so luxurious and deep that we can't imagine using a different mattress. - Shipping is free. If you're disappointed with the current mattress in your rv, you owe it to yourselves to try the RV mattress by Brooklyn Bedding. - Brooklyn Bedding sends out all of their RV mattresses from their own factory in Arizona.
This means they're able to use premium materials at a reasonable price for you. With no middleman bringing up the cost. - Don't miss out on the best sleep of your life. Visit rv mattress.com/rv lifestyle. Welcome back everybody. Time now for the RV social media buzz. - And this is the time that Wendy Boyer reports on the hot issues most talked about this past week on social media and our RV Lifestyle Community Group.
- Hi everybody. Don't you just love to see the little things people do to customize their rigs well over in our RV lifestyle community? In the mods and DIY tweak space, we asked if you could give a new RV owner one piece of advice about customization, what would it be? Well, we had so many gems under this question. I have to share a couple with you. Tom suggested installing a tire pressure monitoring system. He says, if you don't already have one, you need one.
It will give you that peace of mind. Heidi said, make sure you pay attention to your bed. Um, replace that mattress or get a memory foam topper if it is not comfortable, because it's really important that you sleep well. And Thomas, he said, to add a battery operator to heat alarm to each bay of your rig and to get another fire extinguisher. 'cause while the RV industry, make sure you have one, usually by your front door, you're gonna need one in the back too. So make sure you get one.
Again, lots of great tips under this thread, so you need to check it out. And also, in our RV community, we had a story from Kay that was quite the story. And I, I have to share it with you. Um, so Kay said, on a recent night, she and her husband, they're both sound asleep, they're in the rig, then suddenly they wake with this boom loud sound and they get their flashlight. They thought something was coming through their ceiling.
And instead there was this big fat frog caught in the screen of their Max Air fan. So they turn off the fan, they, you know, try to get this frog out. It's something like three in the morning. They're trying to get it over the blade. They just couldn't get it to go over. So then they decide they're gonna take the screen out, bring them out from going inside the rig. They get that screen out, they get a garbage bag to try to catch him. And this thing hops out of the garbage bag.
He's on their counter, he's hopping on a water jug. The husband catches him, gets him out. They finally tried to go back to bed. And so Kay shares this story. She calls it a rookie mistake. Um, she said that the thing was they didn't have the lid to close their ceiling fan. And so make sure you get that lid closed on your ceiling fan at night. So you don't have something like a frog catching in there. Um, what a story.
And then over in our RV lifestyle Facebook group, I'd like to share something with you about decorating that Carol shared. So Carol said she wanted a picture above the bed of their motor home. Um, it was just a blank wall, not very interesting. And she had this comforter and pillow set that she loved. It was really sharp. And so she took a picture of this branch that was on her comforter, and then she had it turned into a canvas picture. Um, and she got this canvas picture.
She hung it on the wall above it with command strips. And it was so cute. She shared this picture with everyone of what it looked like. Uh, her colors were cranberry, gray and cream. And that was what the bedspread, the pillows. And then this picture just popped and people loved it. A couple hundred people commented on it. Lots of things like, so cute, creative, great idea. But my favorite comment came from Kim, who wrote, wow, brilliant idea. You win the internet today.
Well, at least the part of the internet that deals with decorating RVs, gotta love it. Um, so that's it for me this week. A lot's happening as always. And, uh, I'm Wendy Boer and I'll see you over in our RV lifestyle community or Facebook group. - My favorite part of that report was the giant frog that was caught in the fan and then hopped away. So well that - Is something unusual. - Yeah, . All right.
Uh, we'll be right back with the RV interview the week, and we're gonna talk about, um, mobile RV caravans, what they're like, you know, and how they're run, where they go. If you've ever been curious, stay tuned. 'cause I think you'll find this one very interesting coming up right after this. We just heard about a land offering out west for RVs in Arizona. They're selling five acre RV ranches, starting at only $49,900.
The company offering it is affiliated with the people Jennifer and I bought our Tennessee property from. They do a great job. It looks amazing. It is at high elevation, so you get cooler temperatures, big mountain views, juniper trees, and green grasses. And it is near everything. The Grand Canyon Lake Havasu, Kingman, Flagstaff, and Sedona. It's a perfect place to have a home base to explore the west. And it is right off famous Route 66. It's called Greenwood Ranches.
And this is the second and final section of the community. They're selling it off this April. We met the sales manager, really nice guy. He bought a property for his rv and he's building a container home on it. Check out their website for a video tour and showing availability. It's pretty incredible. Visit the website to get details and set up a showing Arizona RV land.net. That's Arizona RV land.net. - Welcome to the RV interview of the week.
And, uh, more and more RVs are caravan or traveling groups as part of a guided tour. If you've ever wondered what it's like, our interview of the week will give you a, a real overview of it all. And our special guest is Stacy Berg. No Rainbow Ra. I'll - Read it. I'll read that paragraph. Our special guest is Stacey Raybon and she's the operations director of Fantasy RV Tours. They're one of the oldest and most popular organized guided RV tour groups out there.
Uh, they organize, they run caravans all across the world. So without any further ado, here's Stacy. So Stacy, how are you doing today? - Doing great, Mike. How are you? - I am great. I'm great. So a lot of people have, um, been writing us and asking us about these, uh, fantasy RV tours. Of course, Jennifer and I and a group of our, uh, followers are about ready to do one of your tours in the Canadian maritimes later this summer. Um, explain to people how a guided tour works. What are they like?
- Well, I think the tour is, uh, basically if you could think about, um, taking a cruise on land in your own rv, we are going to provide the entire itinerary for you. We're gonna make all the reservations for you. Uh, we make, um, all the bucket list item reservations for you. Gonna make sure you see everything. Gonna provide some bus transportation. So, um, we take the worry out of the planning for you.
We get guaranteed campsites and you're gonna have guaranteed activities that you don't have to worry about. We're gonna take care of all of that. You show up to the rally point. We do all the rest. - Well tell, tell us where they are held. I mean, where do you do these tours? - We have caravans and rallies all across the United States as well as in, um, the Maritimes of course, we go to Alaska, we go to Mexico. And we also have a couple of overseas tours.
One in Australia in New Zealand and one in South Africa. - N Now are those the, the New Zealand and South Africa, are those in RVs? - They are. They're in rental RVs, which we provide the rental RV for you. They're smaller, the, the little small class B plus, uh, camper RVs. Um, but they are, uh, perfect for getting around. Um, and you drive them everywhere on, um, on those tours. Well, that's everywhere. - I think I'll have you sign me up for both Australia and South Africa.
I would love to camp in both places. Yeah. Um, you know, that brings a question. Uh, what about those who are in Canada or overseas? Um, what about health insurance? People always worry about that. Do they need to get extra health insurance for those countries? - Well, your health insurance will not cover you in those countries. Your United States policy will not cover you.
So you do need to look into something like a travel insurance company, which we have a partner that on our, um, someone books on our website that they can go through them and they will provide medical reimbursement for, um, issues that happen while you're on tour or something like, um, another skymed comes to mind. They have different programs and so they'll, they'll want to look into a different program that will help cover any medical expenses while they are out of the country. Got - It.
So how many people are typically involved in one of these, uh, these caravan guided type tours - On a caravan, we usually have no more than 25 rigs. And that includes the, uh, wagon master and the tail gunner, which is the leader wagon Master's gonna lead the tour and the tail gunner's gonna follow behind everybody else to kind of keep everybody on track, make sure if anybody breaks down on the side of the road, somebody sees 'em and stops and helps.
And so usually 25, no more than 25 on a caravan, our rallies, which are stationary and don't move around anywhere, um, can have anywhere from 25 rigs to our balloon rallies have a hundred, a hundred rigs. - Yeah. But, but those aren't the, the guided tour type of ones. Those are not, - Not, we, we do tours out off the site of that rally, but you don't move your RV once you get there.
- Okay. Now, um, tell us, uh, what kind of RVs, uh, our audience, you know, for, we're in everything from camper vans to huge class a's, uh, is there any restrictions on the type of RVs involved in - We only need that to be self-contained a self-contained rv. We have people that will come. I mean, we do have occasionally people that will do a, uh, truck, uh, truck camper.
Um, but we go anywhere from, you know, the small tiny class Bs all the way up to the 45 foot diesel pushers with the towing of, you know, a Chevy Tahoe behind them. So, so we go all the way. But, um, obviously there are some campgrounds that are a little more rustic than others. Uh, the Alaska and the Maritimes campgrounds are not like to lower 48 campgrounds. Um, so they need to be prepared for that. We'll, we get everybody, we get everybody in, but sometimes it's tight.
- Well tell why would somebody wanna do a guided tour like this? Uh, many RVs are kind of independent. They're used to setting off on their own. Why would, uh, why would a tour like this appeal to somebody? - Well, the first reason is usually because they're safety in numbers. People wanna go to Alaska or they wanna go to the Maritimes. But it's a pretty big undertaking to travel from all the way from maybe Florida to Alaska.
You gotta, you know, it's a, it's a pretty big trip just to get from Florida to the border of Canada to start going into, um, to get up to the Alaska Highway. So that's the number one reason is they, they're a little concerned. Maybe they don't wanna deal with border crossings on their own. They don't know how, or they've never done it before, and they want somebody to show them how to do that. Um, the second reason is because it takes the headache out.
Usually in a couple, one person is the planner and one person is like, okay, tell me where we're going today. Right? And so the planner, for something as big as a 60 day tour to Alaska, that's a lot of campgrounds to make reservations for. And Alaska and Maritimes and the most of the places that we go, it's popular. It's hard to get a reservation. You might need to get a reservation a year in advance in order to be able to, to book.
We fantasy RV tours, because we take so many tours through those areas. We have standing reservations booked out for two years already for, because our tours fill up two years in advance. And so we have, we've already made the reservations for, um, those, those tours. So you don't have to worry about not getting a spot and ending up dry camping somewhere because all the campgrounds were full when you got there.
- You, you, you said it was kind of like a, a a all a, a cruise and I think of a cruise and all inclusive vacations that people are used to. And, and that's kind of what these are like. Besides the campgrounds, is there anything, you know, what else is provided about, what about food? - Every tour is a little bit different. And you're gonna get several meals while you're on the tour. It won't be every single meal while you're on the tour. But we do provide several.
Um, sometimes it'll be a campground meal that's not very often, but maybe it's a long driving day and we don't really have time to get out and go to a take everybody to a restaurant. But we'll have breakfast sometimes, sometimes it's a lunch, sometimes it's a dinner, depending on where we are and what is available. But, um, a lot of times it might be a dinner show. It might be a dinner cruise, um, if wherever we are. And so that would be included. All of the excursions will be included for you.
If we say we're gonna go to the, uh, white pass train in Skagway, then we're gonna make sure we get you there and we're gonna make sure we're, you're, we buy your ticket and you're gonna get on that train and you're not responsible for any of any of that. So there will be some other optional activities. Like if a, if a guest wants to do something on their own, of course they're free to go and do something on their own, of course it would be at their expense.
But if, um, if we're in an area, we'll give you some, a lot of the times we'll give you a free day in a certain area. If we're gonna be there for three or four days, we'll show you around, tell you where to go, uh, popular things to do. And then people kind of disperse and do their own thing if they, if that's what they wanna do.
- Just in the kind of related thing, the flexibility if, do you all have to travel together or can you, you just say, Hey, we're supposed to be at this place at this time and whatever time you leave and however you get there, that's great for you. When you - On a traveling carvan, um, our wagon master will, uh, they'll have a driver's meeting on the night before that.
They're gonna drive somewhere and they'll have a little meeting and the wagon master will say, I'm gonna leave here at eight o'clock tomorrow morning. You can, and the tail gunner's gonna leave here at 11 o'clock tomorrow morning. You can leave any time between that time. If you would like the benefit of having the tail n behind you, then please make sure you've checked out and gotten on the road before 11:00 AM or whatever time they set for that.
So we don't actually recommend that people drive nose to tail on, um, on a caravan. It blocks traffic. It, it creates a hazard and it makes it hard to see wildlife or anything else that might be down the road. So we use family radio systems to communicate. Um, wagon ster might see a bear on the road on the right hand side. So they radio back and they say, everybody get ready to look, you know, a bear on the right hand side. And, but we want, it's people's vacation.
We want them to enjoy their vacation. And they're not stuck to traveling exactly with us all the time. We're gonna give them a very detailed trip log with our, with our best route. Sometimes it matches a GPS, sometimes not. We like to take a little more scenic route and show people something more than just the interstate sometimes. So we're gonna give 'em that map. We're gonna go over it and we're gonna say, now you guys can leave whenever you want.
- And I would assume that the tail gunner at the back is the one who's gonna, if you break down or something, there's somebody there who says, okay, well there's a wrecker up ahead, or two miles away is a gas station, or there's a, a a a repair shop up here. And so you've got somebody that's, that's aware of your situation. - Tail gunners going to stop and help and make sure if they see somebody on the side of the road, they'll often, uh, develop some kind of signal.
Like if you're just gonna pull off and maybe eat lunch, then put the yellow, you know, streamer around your mirror so that we know you're sitting there eating lunch and there's no need for us to stop and check on you if you're, if you're broken down, put the red streamer out so that we know to stop and help you. And so tell them will stop. Make sure that the, that the guest has a help on the way. Do what they can to help. They're not gonna fix the rig.
They're not gonna try to touch the rig or fix the rig unless it's something really simple that, you know, and the, the hem and the owner of the rig decide that they can, you know, put it together to get 'em the next however far down the road. But they're not gonna, they're not mechanics. So they're gonna help. Um, but the main thing is that we're gonna gonna stay with you until we know that help is on the way and make sure you're in a safe location.
And, um, and then the tail gunner can move on once we know somebody is either on route or once somebody gets there to help. And, um, and then, and then we stay in touch with the guest until they finally get back caught up with the tour. - Well, it sounds like you've thought of everything, 'cause you probably do this same tour several times a year, so you, you really are familiar.
Well, I'm looking forward to trying it out and I know we had so many questions since we started talking about it that, um, it was, it would be great to get you on and, and to get a quick idea of what these are like. So, uh, Stacy, thank you so much. I'm looking forward to seeing everybody, uh, yeah.
This summer. And, uh, we're gonna do the care, the, uh, the Maritimes in Canada with uh, uh, and we'll probably do a bunch of live shots from there if we can get our satellite working and, uh, we'll have a lot of fun. - We're really excited you and your group - Now. We're looking to taking one of these tours ourselves in July Yeah. And with a whole bunch of other folks. And we're going to the Canadian Maritimes and we are looking forward to it.
- We're very excited about it. And we'll try and do lots of reports along the way and Sure. You from the road, but it's like, alright, we're gonna take a quick break and when we come back, the invasion of the cicadas right now, I wanna talk about, uh, being connected on the road. And there's no better place to go than mobile must have. Mobile must have is the sponsor of this part of the podcast.
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Must have and schedule a free call and free consultation to see the many different internet packages that are available and the one that is just right for you. That's rv lifestyle.com/mobile. Must have - Welcome back to the news of the week. Have you heard about the billions of cicadas that are coming this spring? That's expected to be so bad. Some are calling the cicada apocalypse.
If not, you soon will for the first time in 221 years, a rare double brood of these one to one and a half inch red-eyed wing bugs will emerge from underground and parts of the Midwest and Southeast at basically the same time. Brood 19 will emerge in 14 states and brood 13 will emerge in five states for the first time in 17 years. The results for the first time since Thomas Jefferson was president.
Parts of the country are going to be covered in cicadas, crawling on your rv, splattering on your windshield, and definitely impacting your camping experience. The bugs are expected to be worse from mid-May until late June. Their lifespan is four to six weeks. And the state to be hardest hit is Illinois. And when they die, the stink is expected to be substantial. So if, uh, you're camping in heavily infected cicada areas, you may wanna prepare now. Yeah. - Uh, I don't know what to make of that.
It is gonna be a mix a mess. Hopefully they won't be any around love's because love's Travel Stops is going to become an RV destination of its own. Now loves have long been a popular place for gas and for people to stop for munchies in the restroom. Well now they're reaching out more and more to RVs with overnight spots. And, uh, currently the company has 57 locations that cater to RVs. They're planning another 31 to open by the end of 2024. Now, these are pretty neat spots. Really.
They're, they have 20, or I'm sorry, they have 30 and 50 amp electrical service, uh, water sewer or a dump station. And they have wifi. And increasingly we are finding that they offer things like a dog park, laundry, showers. They've always had those, you know, for truckers, but now RVs can use them. Propane, uh, fresh water. Um, there's restaurants. So they have pretty much everything there. The company is planning to open a luxury RV resort in Montana near Yellowstone National Park next month.
And, and that one is - Gonna, that's a great idea - That they're gonna have a base, a basketball court. Uh, there'll be a communal fire pit there and picnic tables and of course a dog park and the showers and laundry and stuff. There's definitely a demand among RVs to find quick and safe and relatively inexpensive places to overnight on long road trips. So they are pretty, pretty neat. We are hearing more and more from people who've stayed in and we have not stayed in one yet.
And it's on our list to do this year as we come into one of those areas where they have them. - Pretty cool And yeah, very cool. And Michiganders may soon get a two week head start on reserving campsites and, uh, state parks or forests under a bill that was introduced last week in the Michigan House. Michigan is a popular destination for campers and many campsites fill within minutes of reservations opening, making it hard to get a spot during the summer, particularly in, uh, popular parks.
So under a bill introduced in the State House, res residents would get a two week headstart on reserving a campsite before reservations open to those living outta state. - Now it's interesting 'cause they're really following a couple of other states that have done this for their residents. And the, uh, legislator behind the bill says that since state residents are paying for the parks with their taxes that they should get for St.
Ds. And I think a lot of, uh, the local residents would agree to that. You know, Florida just did this Mm-Hmm. , uh, and it gave its residents in Florida a one month advance window. Places like Florida in, uh, in the wintertime spring break time, you need to book a year in advance. And Michigan, uh, you know, in the summertime, the height of the summer, you, you really need to book a year in advance as best you can.
Uh, more and more states are gonna be doing this, uh, two different prices for campers. One residents, one non-residents, but now two different reservation systems. Um, the Michigan bill has a bunch more it has to do and will follow it. But, uh, pretty interesting to see, uh, this, this trend shaping up, uh, people in the states, in the state that is involved love it. But those who, uh, wanna visit that state may have more of a challenge to, uh, to get there.
- And other news, a man hiking in the, uh, Delaware water gap national recreation area near the Valley View campground was bit recently by a rabid raccoon leading to a warning about staying away from wildlife. I think we forget about rabies. - Yeah. It's a disease. It kills both animals and people. And I think it's, it's transmitted through saliva, like through a bite. Mm-Hmm. . That's why it's so dangerous. - So, uh, rabbit animals often lose their fear of people.
They seem confused. They can be aggressive for no reason. They also may drool or seem tame. And so, uh, the park is urging visitors to stay away from all wild animals and to make sure their pets are up to date on their rabies vaccines. - Um, you gotta be really careful of these things. 'cause every year there's, there's always a couple of these incidents that happen. And many cases people thought that the animal was tame that uh, or friendly and oh look, that raccoon is friendly.
He wants me to pet him. And then they go to pet him and it bites him. And, um, you know, it's rabies is, is still a very serious, uh, thing to be, uh, worried about serious - And costly. - And very costly. Yeah. We have a friend who got, uh, had to get rabies treatment and something like the first check was like $20,000. Something like that. Isn't that - What he said? Yeah. He needed more shots than just - One, two.
Yeah. It was a series that you have to go through, but I think it was like 20 grand now. You know, I think it's insurance handle, but God, my goodness, that's a lot. Anyway, take, uh, take that. You see an animal that's just not looking right. Doesn't seem to have a fear for your report to authorities. - So that's something to think about with your pet as well. Don't leave your pet out at night. Keep an eye on your pet. - Yeah. You don't want your pet to get bit Mm-Hmm, .
Alright, when we come back, a couple questions to the week, including a question about, uh, how, what's the best way to tow a vehicle behind your motor home? Is it flat? All feels flat down, or is it on a dolly or is it on a trailer? We'll talk about that right after this. When we're asked What's the most important modification we made to our rv? It's an easy answer. Battle borne batteries.
Battle borne batteries are quality, safe, reliable lithium batteries that allow us to stay out there off the grid longer. Lithium batteries charge faster. They charge fuller, they're longer lasting, they're maintenance free. And battle borne batteries are protected by a 10 year guarantee. Now in our case, they just dropped into the existing a GM batteries that we have and they'll probably be the same on your rig too.
Battle born battery experts can get those in your rig just like they did with ours. They can also match you up with the right cabling, the inverter, the charger, the solar controller, everything. Jennifer and I swear by our battle borne batteries, they allow us to boondock off the grid. Check him out. Go to rv lifestyle.com/lithium rv lifestyle.com/lithium. Alright, welcome back time now for the RV questions of the week. And we're gonna do a couple of 'em this week.
Uh, you got the first one for us. Yes. - Uh, we recently replaced our awning. It's seemed fine for most of the 2K trips that we were on. I didn't notice anything. I pulled it out to dry when we got home. Now when we're, uh, bringing out powered awning in the, uh, front side rolls up, fine. - That's not, that doesn't make any sense, would you? It doesn't. Now, when we bring our powered awning in the front side rolls up, fine. It rolls up fine. Let's do it again.
That's probably the best way to just do it again. - We, uh, recently replaced our awning. It seemed fine for most of the 2K trips that they were on. I didn't notice anything. I put it out to dry when we got home. Now when we bring out our powered awning in the front side, it, it rolls up fine tight, but the backside has three to four inches of slack left. Has anyone encountered this? How do you fix it?
And that's from Jeff's. And, - Um, Jeff posted that question on our new RV lifestyle community. And the answer came from Brad. Brad Claridge. He is an RV mobile tech from Tennessee, but he is, uh, also a really good friend of ours. And he's the mobile tech we use. Uh, he's our neighbor, uh, at the, uh, property where we like to camp our RV property in Tennessee. So here's what Brad's advice was.
He says, it sounds Jeff, like your awning has slipped to one side of the roller and it has to be realigned. And he said that there should be one screw on each end that goes through the plastic guide into the roller. Uh, they keep the material from shifting and that's where you would adjust it. And, uh, that's a great help from from Brad. Uh, and, uh, it's just another typical example of how helpful this RV lifestyle community that we have has become.
Uh, if you have a question like that, post it, somebody will help you out and, um, you'll see it's so, uh, such a nice service to have warm and welcoming. Uh, you join it by going to community dot rv lifestyle.com. And we have another question that was also posted on our community. You wanna read that one? Yeah, I - Certainly do. Just read, uh, turning from our first, uh, trip in a class C Thor 24 foot, I was wondering how hard it would be to tow a car behind this, or should I do flatbed towing?
And this was from Lynn. - Well, as I was saying, this is another question that was first posted on our RV lifestyle community. And the overwhelming consensus is that flat towing is the easiest and the best way to tow, uh, a dinghy or, uh, an extra RV of our towed as it's known. We had a lot of our, uh, members in the community respond. Bob and Roxy said, for example, that they tow a Jeep Gladiator behind their 27 foot class C motor home. He said, you don't even know it's back there.
And Ken, who has flat towed, uh, behind two class a RVs that he's owned, says that a flat towed vehicle is narrower than the motor home. So it follows wherever you fit. And he said that the only time that you're gonna see it in your mirrors is when you do a very sharp tour. 'cause a, a very sharp turn. Um, so he says it, it's a great way to, to, uh, to, that's the best way to, uh, to tow if you can, uh, Ruth or Beth rather another, uh, RV or Beth, uh, flat tows.
And she said it's much easier than with a trailer or a dolly. And I would, um, I would add my agreement to all of that. But I would also say that not every car or truck can be flat towed. Uh, to be sure that a vehicle is appropriate for flat towing, you need to look at the owner's manual of that vehicle.
Um, nearly every car manufacturer has to specify in the towing or recreational section whether it can be towed with all four wheels on the ground, um, or whether it needs to be on a trailer or whether it needs to be towed with two wheels lifted off the ground and the, the, uh, rear wheels put on a dolly. Um, the most popular vehicle to flat tow by far has been for years is the Jeep Wrangler. And you know why that's, it doesn't weigh that much, right? It's like, uh, right around 3000 pounds.
So it is not too much of a strain. And of course the Jeep Wrangler is great for off-Road, uh, tooling around as well. Uh, next most popular as, uh, Bob and Roxy, uh, said in their response, uh, to the question is the cheap Gladiator, and then some other popular toads or dinghies, the Honda CRV and the Ford Ranger. Uh, we will put a link in the show notes for this episode at rv lifestyle.com/podcast. Uh, and it's to a website called, uh, run by a, uh, a website called Etrailer.
And, uh, it's a page that they have that lists the most popular vehicles to flat tow behind an rv. And we will again put that link, uh, on the, uh, rv lifestyle.com, uh, podcast, uh, page under the show notes. Um, so there you go. By far and away flat towing, everybody seems to agree is the best way to tow. Just not all vehicles can be all four wheel flat towed. Do you have a question? Do you have a comment?
Anything you heard today? You can reach us, uh, at our private email address, which is Mike and jen@rvlifestyle.com. Alright, that's it for this week. Thank you guys so much for watching and listening. Happy Trail.