Thursday, February 27, 2020
Welcome to another edition of RV Travel’s Daily Tips newsletter. Here you’ll find helpful RV-related and living tips from the pros, travel advice, a handy website of the day, tips on our favorite RVing-related products and, of course, a good laugh. Thanks for joining us. We appreciate you. Please tell your friends about us.
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Today’s thought
“Trees are sanctuaries. Whoever knows how to speak to them, whoever knows how to listen to them, can learn the truth. They do not preach learning and precepts, they preach, undeterred by particulars, the ancient law of life.” —Hermann Hesse
Need an excuse to celebrate? Today is National Retro Day!
Tip of the Day
Too tired to level fore and aft? Try this trick!
By Dave Helgeson
When you’re logging long miles and pull into a campsite for the night, the last thing you want to do is take the time to unhitch, just to hitch back up to leave the next morning. If you have a level campsite you can just stay hooked up, but what do you do when the campsite slopes to the front or rear so much that you are unable to level the RV without unhitching?
One option is to raise the tow vehicle, which in turn may raise the front of your trailer enough to obtain level. As an avid boondocker, I encounter this problem quite often. Since you can orient your RV however you want in a boondocking site, if faced with no level options I will choose to leave the nose low. Continue reading.
Wash your rig with dish soap?
When RVtravel.com ran a video that espoused the idea of cleaning RV exteriors with water and liquid dish soap, it didn’t take long for a reader to respond. We were well chastised for the suggestion. “Dish soap is known to soften automotive paint,” came the comment. “Never ever, ever use it on a painted surface.” Here are the results of much (informal) research on the matter.
Yesterday’s featured article: Backroad RVing: Don’t get ‘er stuck!
Reader poll
Quick Tip
Cover your rooftop air conditioner
Is your RV going to “sit tight” in one location for a while and not be used? Like if you’ve been south for the winter and are heading north but leaving your RV there until next winter? Think about covering your rooftop air conditioner. It will protect it against UV damage and keep debris out of the unit.
Use handy silicone lids for cooking & storage
Use on the stove or to seal containers instead of using plastic wrap or foil. They’re BPA, Phalate and PVC free and heat resistant to 440 degrees. Press down gently in the center of lid for an airtight seal. Use to replace missing or broken lids. Use on leftovers and to keep salads and fruits fresh! Learn more or order.
Random RV Thought
It’s nice to introduce yourself to your neighbors at the campground. You never know who you’ll meet, and you might really cheer someone up, or you may even become lifelong friends.
Website of the day
31 mistakes I made with my RV
Here’s a great list from Writerz about mistakes one RVer made with their RV. Good info for all, not just newbies.
And the Survey Says…
We’ve polled RVtravel.com readers more than 1,500 times in recent years. Here are a few things we’ve learned about them:
• 24 percent are affected by altitude sickness
• 22 percent wear their clothes for two to three days at a time before washing
• 11 percent were very popular in high school
RECENT POLL: What do you listen to while driving? Tell us here.
The Most Scenic Drives in America
This trip planner and travel guide will steer you down the most scenic road every time. From Florida’s Road to Flamingo, to British Columbia’s Sea to Sky Highway, to Cape Cod’s Sandy Shores, each featured road trip is pictured in stunning full color and described in vivid text, keyed to an easy-to-follow map. Whether you choose a drive on a distant road or a back road in your own state, this book is your ticket to North America’s most beautiful byways. Learn more or order.
Trivia
A platypus does not have any nipples, so how do they feed their babies? Female platypuses secrete milk from special glands that make the liquid ooze from the surface of their skin. It looks like sweat, but it’s actually milk. Weird, huh?
Where is the middle of America? We told you yesterday, and you’ll want to plan a visit.
Leave here with a laugh
The oldest computer can be traced to Adam and Eve. Yes, it was an Apple. But with an extremely limited memory. Just one byte. Then everything crashed.
Today’s Daily Deals at Amazon.com
Best-selling RV products and Accessories at Amazon.com. UPDATED HOURLY!
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RV Daily Tips Staff
Editor and Publisher: Chuck Woodbury. Managing editor: Emily Woodbury. Senior editor: Diane McGovern. Advertising director: Jessica Sarvis. Financial affairs director: Gail Meyring. IT wrangler: Kim Christiansen.
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Everything in this newsletter is true to the best of our knowledge. But we occasionally get something wrong. We’re just human! So don’t go spending $10,000 on something we said was good simply because we said so, or fixing something according to what we suggested (check with your own technician first). Maybe we made a mistake. Tips and/or comments in this newsletter are those of the authors and may not reflect the views of RVtravel.com or this newsletter.
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I have 1 biological daughter, 6 “step daughters” and 1 “step son”. They are all mine paid for with sweat, worry, taxi’ing them to school, scout meetings, Doctor, school meetings and other school related functions, making sure they went to college, stayed out of trouble, and giving them the benefit of my “wisdom” as it were. So what did I get for that 15 grandkids, 8 great grands, and a built-in love-in. Oh and since all of them are into rv’ing in some form, we have some of the most fantastic family rallies, anyone can attend…….. If I had it to do all over again, I’d do it in a heartbeat…….
Why not include step-kids?
Are you excluding adoptive kids, too?
Some step parents are as “real” as the birth parents, in terms of caring!!
I’ve washed all my vehicles forever with Dish Soap of some kind. I can tell when my wax needs to be re-applied by observing how well the water “ beads” up on the surface. Years ago I used the Car Wash soaps and didn’t notice any difference that made it worth paying more for it.
I’d be more inclined to take advice from someone who’s made very few mistakes.
31 mistakes- I followed the Amazon link to the vent fan that the author says is the only one worth having. It is in fact intended for use as a residential roof ventilator. It does not include the ability to be closed and I very much doubt that it would stand up to continuous 70 MPH winds from highway travel.
In addition, Amazon says “Currently unavailable
We don’t know when or if this item will be back in stock.”
I’m a little dubious of the writer’s knowledge and experience.
This is not meant to be any form of criticism toward RV Travel, I’m certain it must be challenging to provide fresh content every day.
31 mistakes…good article but definitely not correct in the stabilizer article…except, perhaps, for motorhomes. You do NOT use stabilizer jacks to raise your trailer until it just leaves the ground (at least that’s how I read it).
Poll… 17 foster kids; 2 adopted permanently.
Joke: the furst computer was an Apple: one byte, the whole trial system crashed, usage license was revoked, and they got hard-drived and RAM’d right out without any soft-wear on their bare chassis… which exceeded the standard operation temperatures and required cyclic child processes now that spawned tasks were terminal.
Forgot… eve was using snake.io to pirate unapproved IP from her employer’s upper management… 🙂
Hats off to you Wolfe..Must be a huge amount of love to care for all those kids.
It’s like most things in life. Early on you work hard and invest yourself in your family. It’s only later that they pay you back with interest like grandkids!
I have used Dawn dish soap for years. If it is good for man made mistakes to use on animals? It is safe for an RV. Been for years and no problems thus far. IMO not yours
Who says it is safe? The advertisers of course! Do you think they would say the bird died three weeks later… or had cancerous growths in adulthood? Read and look up the ingredients.
a while back i was at an auto repair shop and was talking to the guy in charge. he said they use dawn dish soap to take off all the wax before painting. that was years ago and i quit using dish soap.
Let me add #32, do not follow writerz, your link to The list of 31 mistakes with my RV.. this was painful painful to read and should not have been linked in your article. I realize English is his second language and I knew it in the first paragraph, writerz is not someone I could recommend to follow. I’m no master of the English language but the way it is written was hard to understand when I kept making grammatical corrections in my head.
31 mistakes…good article but needed a lot of editing. Very hard to read and make sense of it.
RE: Reader Poll – Should have added zero kids.
The poll said “For parents”. Zero kids would mean you are not a parent.
My thought exactly. Have never had any kids and that is OK with me. Had enough fun dealing with all of my friends kids over the years. Now you see them and now you don”t!!
The general idea is if you’re a parent, you usually have at least one kid.
I would add, join a club like Escapees before buying an RV, go to them for advice. I wish I had !
I’m still waiting for your response! I am no longer able to participate in your polls. Is it because I am not a paying subscriber to your newsletter?
If you are using Microsoft’s Internet Explorer it will seldom show the poll. I had to switch to Google Chrome to have them show up. I think it has something to do with the program used to build RV Travel.com. MS no longer supports IE so changing the browser is the only option.
I had that problem with my iPhone X for quite a while until I discovered that an app was blocking it.
Roseanne, if 98-99% of the readers have no problem, why do you think you are personally singled out? As has been stated many times, it could be your browser, an ad-blocker or other peculiarities of YOUR system. We have not seen you reply back with what systems you are using either. Help us to help you.
My apologies, Rosanne. I’ve just searched through our comments and don’t see your previous one asking about the polls, which is why I didn’t respond sooner. Anyway, no, we do not restrict the polls to our paying subscribers — they are for everyone. If you’re having trouble viewing them it could be because of the settings on your computer, e.g., popups blocked, spam controls set too high, or possibly something to do with your internet browser. We get occasional complaints about our readers not being able to see the polls, but they’re usually due to settings on the computer or their browser not working with them, and not problems with our polls themselves. Again, I’m sorry you’re having difficulties, and apologize for not responding sooner. —Diane at RVtravel.com
31 mistakes. good advice but too many mistakes in writing. My biggest concern is in a wind or leaving camp I alway put my awning up and not down.
“Just one byte” Love it!
The 31 Mistakes is a good article. After RVing for 40 some years, it’s still good advice.
My only question is how did they come up with 31???