By Greg Illes
If you camp mostly hooked-up, you probably have an electric toaster which meets your needs. But there are many camp situations where an electric toaster just isn’t a viable choice. Maybe you’re not hooked up, and perhaps it’s quiet-time and you can’t run your generator (or maybe you just don’t want to listen to it).
Personally, I love a slice of toast in the morning, but I hate starting the day listening to the rumble and roar of my generator. Inverter power is a possible option, but an electric toaster at 900W will draw 80A from an inverter — four slices of toast can use up three to four percent of battery capacity. It’s always possible to pan-fry bread, but let’s face it, that’s fried bread, not toast. Besides, it’s just another dirty pan to wash.
Enter a delightful little product, the stove-burner toaster. These inexpensive, compact little tools can cook up a slice of toast in about a minute or so, with no battery impact and only a miniscule consumption of propane. There are multi-slice models from camp-equipment vendors like Coghlan and Coleman, but the best-working unit I’ve found is the single-slice device (models available from Primus, GSI, Chinook). These take longer to make multiple slices, but the results are very controllable and uniform. Besides, who’s in a hurry when camping?
To use one of these, un-fold it and place it over a stove burner. Light the burner, and adjust the flame and toaster position to produce an even dull-red-hot heat in the lower layer of the toaster. Using tongs, place a slice of bread on top of the toaster and count to 30 (maybe more or less, depending on your stove and personal preferences). Flip the slice over, repeat, done.
The one-slice units fold up as thin as a slice of bread, and come with a tidy little storage bag to be cleanly tucked away in the tiniest of RV rigs. And, at $10-$15, they don’t dent a wallet.
Greg Illes is a retired systems engineer who loves thinking up RV upgrades and modifications. When he’s not working on his motorhome, he’s traveling in it. You can follow his blog at www.divver-city.com/blog.
If you only need to register, your traveling partner can stay behind. But if you’re both going out for an hour or the day, some other method is needed. Typically, a camp chair or a cooler will suffice to “mark your territory”, but these aren’t always noticed or heeded. I recall a time when we pulled into a site and got all situated, and the real occupant pointed out to us his “marker”, a camouflage jacket draped over the far picnic bench, virtually out of site of where we were. Poor technique, but we didn’t argue.
Many think “crank up” RV TV antennas are perfect for bringing in FM radio signals. Why so? In the “old days” of analog signals, the FM radio band rode in between TV channels 6 and 7. It’s still there, the trick is to coax the signal out of your coax — short for coaxial cable.
A look at the back of your FM radio will help you determine how to hook up the coax cable. For radios that allow the use of an external antenna, you’ll either see a fitting like that on the back of your television where the round coax fitting screws (or slides) on; otherwise you’ll find two small screws, side by side. If you’ve got a coax fitting, you’re set to go: simply connect up the coax fitting. If you find the “two screws” style, you’ll need one more attachment, a Radio Shack purchase.
RV refrigerators operate most efficiently when cold air is allowed to freely circulate inside the unit. Food that is packed too tightly will prevent circulation and quickly spoil. To prevent this expensive problem always keep your food purchases to a minimum when taking your RV out on the road. Buy your items at least one day before departing and store them in your home refrigerator until leaving. Placing cold food items inside a cold RV refrigerator puts less demand on the unit.
The recreation maps are large-scale, grand-view depictions of terrain and land-use, with major highways and arterial roads; Landscape maps are topo-style, smaller-scale, with secondary roads, campgrounds, contour lines for elevation, and so forth — exactly the kind of detail needed for serious exploration (or just for finding that great out-of-the-way campground).
On a visit to a Flying J truck stop we found bulk propane for $2.75 per pumped gallon. The same truck stop offered Amerigas exchange cylinders for $21.99. A quick nod at your calculator says you’re paying $1.64 more per gallon for the exchange, but you’re getting a “fresh tank.” Not exactly!
A couple of our favorite foil-wraps can be prep-worked before pulling out, then on arrival fire the grill and toss a packet on. Go about the rest of your set-up business and in a short time the appetizing aromas will signal the meal is ready. Best of all, cleanup is easy!
Whatever conditions your roof is exposed to, the right coating system will help give your roof a brighter, cleaner look over a longer period of time and enhance the value of your RV investment.
Many national parks are often by national forests or Bureau of Land Management (BLM) lands. These are great alternative camping options. Use their campgrounds for first night camping with the goal of securing a national park campsite the next day.
We were trapped at an RV dealership in New Mexico for two weeks because it was a cold winter and our heater would not stay running. The mechanic pulled it out once and said it worked fine after bench testing it. He then sold us a new propane regulator and filled our coach tank with a drying agent to the tune of three hundred dollars. The heater would still not light, and we were then told we had electrical problems in our converter and the furnace was not getting enough juice.
It’s almost always a case of having traveled into soft terrain. Mud, loose dirt, or sand have swallowed up the tires — more throttle just means more stuck. Tow trucks are hideously expensive and many of them won’t venture onto dirt roads anyway. The seemingly desperate situation doesn’t have to be so. A simple shovel can usually extract your rig from its predicament.