Hello, everybody, and welcome to RV podcast episode 510. This one, being released on August 14th 2024. I'm Mike Wendland and this is my lifelong traveling companion and my bride, Jennifer. Hello, bride Jennifer. Hello, husband Mike and hello dog Beau. Beau is with us here in the RV. We are actually, as we record this, on Cape Breton Island Nova Scotia, and we would be outside. However, it is extremely
windy. It is, one of those wind advisory days of 40 mile an hour winds, and this is the remnant of, that hurricane that swept through, the gulf up the Gulf Coast and then the eastern seaboard, this past week. So, we had a little bit of rain, but a lot of wind today. So we're inside. Otherwise, you'd hear nothing but wind noise. And, it's it's, it's nice if you hide behind RVs, but, that's what that's what we have done. We are making a great windshield for our neighbors. We are.
So, this episode, we are going to offer up a bunch of tips from Jen and me and then from a bunch of other RVers that we, are with this on this fantasy RV tour of the Canadian Maritimes about, long distance RV travel. Not necessarily on an organized tour like this, but for a long distance trip where you are going to be gone for multiple weeks. Some tips and actually some of these tips apply no matter how long you are in
the camp. But some handy tips that I think, you'll all pick up a couple of them even if you're experienced. And if you're a newbie, you'll get lots of ideas, and that's coming up in a little bit. We have the social media buzz and, then, we've got an extended version of, RV Questions that we'll get to at the end of it. So that's what's coming up in this episode. How's our trip been? Our trip has been wonderful. It's starting to wind down now, and, 27 day trip in 1 week. Nicely. It'll
be over. Actually, we're done Saturday. Can you believe Saturday, as this is being released on August 14th? On August 17th, the trip ends, and we'll be up in Prince Edward Island, Nova Scotia, and we'll then have to make our way back, to our home in Southwest Michigan, or maybe not. Maybe we'll just stay up here. We've had just a great time in the Canadian Maritimes. They are indeed, a bucket list. And hats off to our friends at Fantasy
RV Tours for, organizing this. Most of these are RV lifestyle friends and followers that we're traveling with. It's been a it's been a great experience, isn't it? It has been a super experience. These folks are so nice, and I wonder if it's because they're people that follow us that they're so extra nice or what it is. But, this is, like, encouraging to travel this way because you're with people. You come back to the same base. You go to have adventures together,
and you become good friends. Yes. It's amazing how, in just a short period of time like this, you do become friends, and we have indeed. It's time to check-in with Wendy Boyer. And Wendy always has some good information to share as she monitors our social media folks, and, you're gonna learn something. On the RV social media buzz. Hi, everybody. Over in our rv lifestyle communities general discussion space, we recently had a post
from Kathy. Now Kathy's camping in Oregon, and she's having this problem she's never had before, and it's of these bugs creeping into her RV, Dozens and dozens and dozens of them. She said they're elm seed bugs, and she doesn't know if they're trying to escape the heat or if it's the smoke from the fires that are in that area, but they keep trying to get into her rig by the dozens and dozens and dozens. So she'll vacuum them up and they're right there
again. They're crawling on her while she sleeps. She says she's starting to affect her mental and physical health and asked if anyone had any ideas that would help. Lots of people responded, but 2 responses that really caught my eye, one was from Chris. He suggested that she buy a fumigator. He said this puts a smoke in the air, so none of that sticky residue that a fogger does, and it kills the bug.
He said that he's had different insect issues in the south, and so he will set the fumigator, leave for a few hours with his pets, come back, air the whole rig out really good, the bug's gone, and there's been no issues, you know, health issues for himself or his pets, and it's worked great. Another one was from Doug. Doug lives in Oregon dealing with the same bug getting into his house, and he said one thing that helped him was to put sticky tape all around the windows,
and that's helped, keep them out. So a couple ideas there for Kathy, and Kathy, I hope you got some help with that. Also in our community, in the RV apps and tools place, we had a question from Jojo. Now Jojo's a new RVer, just got a class a, planning to go full time, and so she asked the group, what is the one app that you would recommend? And a couple people like Brenda and, Mark said, you know, we don't use just one
app. We use a couple, and some of the apps that came up quite a bit in this thread were RV Life Pro, Adventure Genie, RV Parkie, Spot Tonight, and I Overlander. So if you're looking for some good apps, you might wanna check out that space. And then over in our RV lifestyle Facebook group, we had a recent post from
Glenise. Now Glenise and her husband have a 7 year old golden retriever, and they love to bring their dog with them when they go on trips and travel, but she said they were getting really frustrated with the pet policies of places like Airbnb. So they were considering getting a travel trailer so they could still travel but include their dog. And so she sent this post in the group saying, has anyone else done this?
What do you think? And as you can imagine, the majority of the group, and we're talking something like 460 responses last I looked, said, this is great. Bring your dog. You won't regret it. RVing and camping with your pets goes hand in hand. Many people, in fact, like Lisa said, that's the whole reason they got an RV was so they could include their dog with them in the RV lifestyle. And she said they were recently at a campground, and every single camper had their dog with them.
So that was fun to read. Now some people did say, you know, there are campgrounds that are more dog friendly than than others, and there are places you can't bring your dog, like, you know, let's face it. National parks aren't always the most, pet friendly. So there are some limitations, but by far, the majority said it's it's works out great. And what I loved about this post is people got so excited they started sharing pictures of their dog living
the RV lifestyle. So we had dogs, you know, going out for a walk in the campground, hanging out in their RV, sitting outside the rig by the picnic table. It was just really fun to read, so if you are a pet lover, check that one out. And that's it for me this week. I'm Wendy Boyer, and I'll see you on the RV lifestyle community or Facebook group. Alright, Wendy. Thanks a lot, and we wanna invite everybody, if you haven't already, to please think about joining our RV lifestyle community.
Obviously, we have a very big Facebook group, 430 +1000 members there. It can get pretty noisy. Things can get, out of control sometimes with that many people, and that's why we started the, RV lifestyle community. And you find that. You can join. It's absolutely free. Communitydot rvlifestyle.com. It's a safe place. It's a friendly place. Don't be embarrassed about asking questions. You'll get friendly people who will really help you. Easy to find stuff.
Please think about joining that if you haven't already. Alright. Time now for our RV conversation of the week. And this week, we're gonna talk about some tips for long distance travel. And long distance travel is a little different than just a weekend or maybe a a brief holiday trip. You gotta think a little bit further in advance.
So whatever you can figure out ahead of time, like care of your engine on your truck or your car or whatever you're towing with, your motor home, whatever you can do ahead of time will prevent any grief down the road. So get your oil changed. If you have a diesel, top it off with DEF. Make sure your maintenance is all done. Check your tires. Check the torque on your your tires on both the RV or a towable that you have. We recommend using a tire pressure monitoring system.
Look over everything, particularly your towers your tires at the start of the trip, and then every day that you're on the road, check it out as well. And know your RV's maximum occupant and cargo carrying capacity. That's the OCCC. Or how, much food you can bring, clothing, lawn chairs, ground mats, camping gear, and How much you weigh, your pets weigh, how much propane. People forget about that. How much propane weighs. And, you know, you forget how much water
adds to it. And for that reason, we don't recommend that you fill your freshwater tank unless you know you're going to be just boondocking, and you can't get water wherever you're gonna boondock. We don't recommend going with a a full tank. And that's because water weighs £8.2 per gallon. And, when you think about it, most class b's have, you know, class b, class c from 20 to 40 gallons. So, that's, like, a 164 to 328 gallons or or, pounds. 6 164 to £328. That's a lot of weight.
And if you have a class a or a big 5th wheel, those are 75 to a 100 gallons, and a full tank on those of water can weigh 6 15 to 8 20 pounds. So, taking fresh water with you, is is not a good idea. Maybe enough just to flush toilets and wash your hands and stuff on the road, but if you're at a campground where you can get water, use use your city water and don't travel with a full freshwater tank. How many times have we seen
freshwater tanks that have broken off? Well, it does happen, and you don't want it to happen to you because you know how bumpy and dreadful some of those roads can be. So be aware of what everything wear weighs because it adds up faster than you think. Otherwise, you're not gonna be able to eat because you can't add any more weight. Not to we recommend, by the way, not driving all day. Don't do record trips. Lots of people have different
ideas of how far you should drive. Our personal rule is, we want to be in place by 3:30 in the afternoon, if at all possible. And we don't wanna drive any more than 330 miles. Now, do we keep that all the time? No. Do we do a much better job than we did before? Yes. And something you might not think about. Don't be one of those people that likes to see how far you can drive before you have to get gas. Try to drive on that top half. And don't get yourself in a situation
where you're, oh, boy. What do I do now? And that's easy to have happen particularly out west, but in other parts of the country as well, especially if you have diesel. Drive on the top half of your gas. We can get to the half of half of tank. Go gas. Again. Yeah. Other things, you know, these are kind of rookie information, but, we see this all the time, and it gives RVers a bad rep. Don't hog the passing lane. Now, I will say there are times when
you don't have a big choice. Sometimes, you know, on a 2 lane road, the right hand lane is so beat up and filled with potholes, and the passing lane is not as bad. That's understandable, but you're gonna still get people mad as they pile up behind you. And don't forget to check the local news and the weather and, road conditions. You need an app, something like waves or something to help you so that you don't find yourself in a situation that
you don't need to be in? All the apps, Google Google Maps, Apple Maps, Waze, do a pretty good job of alerting you to hazards along the way. We prefer Waze. One of the things we like about WEEs in Canada is it will flag you, it will show you your speed limit in miles per hour rather than kilometers. And then you have to do a little math so you can figure it out because they are different.
But it helps with ways, and then if you go over the speed limit, it kinda flashes red, and you know that you're violating it. But Waze is kind of our go to app out there. Now I bet all of you have an emergency road kit, but are there more things that you could add to that kit that would help make you safer in case, something happened. Like yeah. You have flares and flashlights and overalls and gloves and rain gear and tools. But have you thought about a reflective vest or jacket?
Something that will help people see you. And speaking of potential problems, make sure that you have your road service and your insurance phone numbers and policy numbers, all that on your phone, in your wallet, in the dashboard of your vehicle, always carry that with you. Now there are lots of tips about packing that we can pass along, but in general Okay. In general, try not to take too many clothes. It's harder now that we have a big rig because there's more space. And you think,
well, maybe I could use that. Maybe I could use this. It's easier when you have very little space because then you really gotta boil it down. But, think about what you're taking. What do you really need to take? And, try to bring clothes that don't need to be ironed. I brought along this trip a steamer that I have so that I can and close-up a bit. Because some of the things that are cotton, they have to be ironed.
And, we've got a couple favorite things. I keep trying to tell him, don't wear that shirt. But he does because he loves it. But, think about your appearance. How can you make it as simple as possible? Now we have been really lucky because, this is the 1st trip we've traveled, with our own washer dryer. We put a washer dryer in, earlier this spring. Oh, my. That is a game change. In fact, we're doing washer dry we're not doing it right
now. Now that means, now and we're hooked up to 30 amp instead of 50, which we normally are in this big 5th wheel, but the dryer works fine on 30 amps. We've been using it all across Canada. It's a combo washer dryer. It's vented outside, but we do usually 1 or 2 loads every day. And, it's been it's been really great, hasn't it? Yes. It would be better to have a queen-size bed than a king, but we have a king. So if you like your sheets perfect, not wrinkled at all, you'll have to Good luck.
To, go to a hotel. Get some wrinkles or else, press them to get those wrinkles out. But what a gift it is. I mean, it's an expensive luxury. Bring, if you're doing laundry in campgrounds, bring your own and even if it's your own, obviously, bring your own laundry soap and detergent. And at the campground, we have seen on this trip that we're in with a lot of other people, there's kind of rush hour at the laundry rooms. I mean, we are 26 rigs, and we stop, and almost everybody has to
do laundry. And since most of us are older, we get up early in the morning. So it's an early morning thing. So it becomes a little bit of a test of your patience. And there are trips and things scheduled that you wanna do, so it becomes a little bit of a challenge getting your, washing done. And something else, as soon as you get to the campground, find out what hours their machines are available.
They might be 24 hours, which is awesome, but they might stop at 6 or 7 or 8, and you can't do any laundry at that time. And, also, you need probably coins. And in Canada, that's Canadian coins. And other places in the States, you know, our coins are, I think really now, they want you to use a credit card, which, credit cards and other games Yeah. Work most of the time. Actually, credit cards out in Canada work great. That's we haven't we've had very little need for any Canadian cash up
here because we just use credit cards. Yeah. It's wonderful. If you're gonna cook, in your RV, cook as much as you can in advance. True. We met a couple here last Sunday, and they spent the whole day. It was a free day. They spent the whole day cooking, but they were cooking the meals for each of the days during the rest of the week. So that the rest of the trip, they don't have to fuss over food, and they're not gonna be like the
Wendland household. Shall we have grilled hamburger, grilled chicken Or a hotdog. We'll just keep that going. Eating out is really costly. And No matter where you are. It takes time, costs a lot. Yep. And it's not good for you. And you'll find, you know, half the restaurants you pick are not as good as you had hoped. So it does so much better than than bringing it all.
A couple of last tips, and then we wanna hear from we're gonna introduce you to a whole bunch of folks who will share their tips. Travel with a dog or a pet. Always have their vet records with you, all of them up to date. In fact, we make multiple copies. One that we can provide if we have to give it to a vet. One we keep in the RV. And, always carry Don't leave home without it. Always carry a poop bag with you. In fact, I put 1 in each pocket. It's the first thing I load up every
every morning is, is poop bags. I didn't realize what a round of laughter was caused when I said something about bow. I said, this is a 2 bagger. Everybody's like, oh, I'm happy they have little dogs. Yep. Yep. Alright. One last tip. Okay. Let people know where you are. Schedule time with loved ones, friends, somebody to let them know where you are in case you need to be reached. You might be just fine, but there might be something else in your life that you need to be told to be aware of.
And and they should always know where you are and where you're expected to be next. That's really a big part. Alright. Those are our tips. But, there are so many other things that we are going to tap into some crowd sourcing here. And you'll meet some of the people that we are traveling with. And, we've asked them to share their trips about long distance RV travel. And, here they are back to back. On the road a long time for dependable Internet, get Starlink. Starlink. Starlink.
Check with the local people. You could do that at a grocery store, you could do it at a gas station, you could do it at a laundromat, but they're gonna give you some hidden gems that you would normally not go to. When you're on a long trip, don't think you have to pack every single thing you're going to need because you can buy things along the way. I would say look ahead and check where you're going to see if there's any sites to see along the way because the the traveling is just as
good as the final destination. And you might be surprised what you might see. So not only look ahead, but, if you're the passenger, look for signs. There could be a some a turn off somewhere that you didn't expect that you thoroughly enjoy. We like to travel 200 miles and be in the campground by 2 PM. Why? So we have time to relax, explore the area a little bit, and then, early night and on the road the next
day. So even if there's something that you must get to, you budget enough time in advance to get there at 200 miles a day. Correct. Even, try to plan for some of those unexpected things like traffic or construction or some something like that that comes up. Definitely have an extension cord and your extra dog bones. Yeah. I like to keep them in a bin that's covered, and I label it. I also have another one for that we keep the big power cord in. It's actually a cat litter box.
A place for everything and a play and everything a place. Yeah. And then we keep the big portable post and surge protector in here. That's what we do with our cable. So long distance travel tips. Something will always go wrong. Something happened to you, and what's the tip we can learn from it? Well, I think the the deal is to to really not panic. Don't get too excited about it. You can probably fix it yourself. And if you can't, you can always get a technician to come
out and help you. But everything seems to work out and you learn something every trip. Now you learn something just now. I see you messing around with a couple of things you're up on the roof. What happened? Well, a bolt came out of the, air conditioner and it was rattling around and you could hear it from inside. You were on a very bumpy road. Yes. Yeah. Yes. It was very bumpy and and one of those bolts came out and I was able to just put it back in and it was great.
What did you think it was? You thought it was a little I didn't know when I went up there and took off the, the cover, but when I looked at the cover, I saw the bolt. And I said, there's supposed to be 2 bolts, and there was only what? So And the other one was just in there? Just laying in there and it was rattling around. So before you go on your long distance trip, take a really short trip.
Make sure everything in your rig works the way you want it to work, but do it with enough time so that you can fix the things that are not working, such as, in our case, it turned out the solar controller failed, and we had to fix that. We it's just a fuse, but we would have been deep trouble if we hadn't fixed it before we thought. And you didn't wanna find that in the middle of a trip? No.
Okay. For me, I guess, a couple of very important ones are, water regulator, pressure regulator, to protect you from any ultra high pressure at a campground that you might not realize, could damage your plumbing and or get a leak. The other thing would be the, surge protector on the electricity. Haven't used them a lot until recently, but one of the campgrounds on this trip, we plugged it in, and it would not let us use it not let us plug in there because there was no ground.
So, we moved to a different campsite because If you had not had that that, that management system Yep. Your electrical plug, you could've been in big trouble. Yeah. We wouldn't have known until we were until it was too late. What a wealth of information. Yeah. You've got you know what would have been fun? To ask everybody how many years they've been RVing. We probably could have had couple 100 years of RVing wisdom. Yes. We could just make up a number and say 2 centuries worth of
it probably is close to that. Yeah. There were there's some great great great advice from our folks. So, that's, that's what we got for you in terms of RV travel tips. If you have something that you think we should share or you wanna, comment on anything you heard, you can send us an email mikeandjenrvlifestyle.com. Alright. RV Questions of the Week And, we've we're gonna try and do, 3 or 4 of them this week instead of
our normal 1 or 2. So Okay. We got a lot of people who are still asking about, this trip and what it's been like because many people wanna do a Canadian maritime strip. And It's amazing how many people this is on their bucket list. Yep. It wasn't ours. Wasn't ours for years. It was. Now this question is, we looked into cell phone service in the Maritimes. It looks like purchasing a local, SIM is the best option, and this is from Dave. A local SIM card.
I don't know, Dave, if anybody here has done that or has had a need to do that. We have, Verizon as my provide my provider and Jen's provider, and, we have their international plan which allows, stuff. It does limit data, slows it down, but we have Starlink. And so even if we're getting slow data from Verizon, we can use Starlink for Wi Fi phone calls. And, we've not missed a beat yet. We've had just rock solid snarling conditions. So,
try buy it. If that's what you're comfortable doing, getting a a SIM card from a Canadian provider, go for it. But I don't think I don't think anybody in our trip has done that, and no one seems to have, have felt the need to do so. So, that's that's as best I can give you. We sure haven't, and, you know, I'm not I'm not I'm I'm all about saving money, but I didn't have to spend anything extra, and phone service works pretty good.
Now our second question, are there shopping, repair places for your RV, services, and the comforts of civilization? And this is from Dallas. I wonder where Dallas lives. Yeah. Well, yes. There's there's plenty of all of that here. This is not much different than traveling in the states, really. Think of the of a resort area, clean air, but, we've stayed in the campgrounds have been fine.
Maybe there haven't been as much 50 amp service as we're used to in the US, but that's not been an issue at all. Even though it's been extremely warm up here, all of the comforts of civilization are here and more so, some things are just more convenient. I mentioned credit cards and handling stuff. Everybody has the chip cards, and, it's very efficient. Shopping, you know, we're not big shoppers, but you we've gone we've already found a couple of
favorite supermarkets that are chains up here. Great Atlantic is one we go to a lot. Mhmm. And being here, you're gonna hear a lot of French. If you took French in high school or college, brush on it brush up on it a little bit before you come here because you hear, I bet you half the people are speaking French. About half the yeah. I would say, Everything is bilingual. But that's the thing. They're all bilingual, so they also speak English. But it is it is, nice to hear French. It really is. It
makes you realize, hey, I'm someplace else. Like, when you go on a tour, they'll they'll be both explanations in English and then again in French. As to repair places, we've had 2 people here who've had, some, broken leaf springs in their vehicles. It's nothing to do with the roads. The roads are fine. It's just that, you know, they had bad springs. But interesting that 2 out of the 26 had them. Both one of them, well, in fact, both of them had repair shops that were able to fix them within
just a little bit of time. 1 guy took his unit to a welder. The guy came out in the parking lot, welded it back together, fixed it for him, and, the same thing with another one. He went to a dealer, and he went to a repair shop. He found 1, and they had exact the exact springs that he needed replacement, and he was back on the road in an hour. So and we have seen mobile RV techs in the campgrounds, so none of the none of the issues that you you might think. It is not as remote
as one would think. Yes. There are some wide open territories here, but the roads are in great shape. I would say in better shape, by and large, than they are in the US. Wouldn't you agree with that, the roads? Yeah. We were in a national park yesterday, and the roads were fantastic in the park. We did the Cabot Trail, and, there was a couple of rough spots. They had a real rough winter up here last year, and there were some frost heaves, but they're fixing those.
But in general, the roads, even way up here in the Maritimes, better than in the US. Alright. Okay. Now here's another question. Have there been any disappointments or surprises on your maritime trip? And that's from Patty. Disappointments. Maybe a little bit with the Cabot Trail, but it was only because the weather wasn't as cooperative. We drove the Cabot Trail, and you'll see that in the next YouTube video we released in Nova Scotia.
Just let's just one of the most iconic road trips anywhere in North America, gorgeous trails, but the weather didn't cooperate. You know, that hurricane remnant was still there. We had gray skies, So, you know, when the skies are gray, the water is gray, and it's sometimes hard to get that, you know, the beautiful blue of the Atlantic, as you make those curves. So that this is weather disappointments, but, but but that's about it.
Surprises, I think what Jennifer mentioned at the top, how quickly you become make new friends. That that's true. It it's like instant friendships popping up all over the place, but that's what our viewers are like. They like to share life experiences. They ask questions about where they should go and where they've been to help others. But, you know, each night, we all gather around and outside
usually outside multiple RVs. There may be a group of 5 or 6 over here and a couple over there, and everybody wanders about and talks. And, when we do go out to eat, you find somebody to, sit with, and, you know, you go with another couple of people and but close friendships that you can make in a trip like this that I think will carry on for the rest of their RVing lives. Don't you? Mhmm. Yep. Alright. Let's do one more question, and, and we'll take, take this one. Okay. How has Beau been
doing on this long trip? Sasha and Ted. Sasha and Ted. Beau has been a really good boy, but I will say it's probably been hard on him. Some of our days, are spent touring, and they're like 5 and 6 hours long. And dogs can't come on the bus, and they can't come on the organized tours, so Bo has to be left back here in the RV. Fortunately, we've all had air conditioning, and he we've he's been comfortable. It stresses him to be left that long, and it stresses us because he's always at
the back of our mind. We went today, for example, to see an awesome, fortress, the fortress at Louisbourg, not far from here, a re recreation of a French fort that the British destroyed in the early 1700. And we couldn't bring Beau there, so we had to leave him here for 4 or 5 hours. And, it's very windy, and the RV was making noises. You know? The wind went howling out there, and he was stressed. I can say that, normally, Bo won't speak to us.
He's mad at us when we leave him, but he was so thrilled to see us because Yeah. Because he was afraid because, you know, the unit was shaking. Yeah. He was mighty glad to see us. But it's been challenging. Dogs are very welcome in Canada, but, on an organized trip like this where you're gone for protracted periods of time and stuff. Some of the folks have hired dog sitters.
We have not done that. We're told in the next couple of campgrounds we're going, there will be, some friends of our wagon masters, the leaders of the tour, who have offered to, watch dogs and walk dogs for free pool, which is great, and I'm sure we'll take advantage of that. But, I'm glad we bought bro, but, and we've we've always managed to find places where he can run and have have a little bit of of exercise, but, it's not been as much fun for Bo as it has been for Jen and me.
And, I think a disappointment might be that I was expecting cooler weather, but it's warm up here and humid, but it's warm and humid, I think, just about everywhere. 80 81 degrees right now as, as we record this, and it's been in the eighties most days, which is very unusual. Now this morning, it got foggy as we got near the ocean to see this At the Fort. French Fort. Yeah. And, actually, it added to the atmosphere Yeah.
Of course. The drama. You'll see that in, in our next video, which will be on Nova Scotia. I I I'd hope to have had it this week for you, but, we're so busy, actually creating content, going out and seeing stuff, and taking advantage of the organized activities on this tour that I I wasn't able to get it edited. So we'll start editing it, over the next week, and I'm not sure when it'll be ready. But when we get it, we'll let you know. We're working on it. Yeah. So we have a couple more
coming. We have one on all of Nova Scotia, and then we'll do a separate one on Prince Edward Island. And, we'll probably do one on our return as well. Do you have a question? Do you have a comment? We'd love to hear from you. Mikeandjen@rvlifestyle.com. Alright. That's it for episode 510. When the next episode is released, we will be somewhere on the way back home from the Maritimes to southwestern Michigan, and we'll be coming to you from the road. Thanks for watching. Happy trails.