Maiden Voyage: Part II

Although we didn't go into it expecting much, our first campground experience was a raging success. We only made reservations the morning we left, but since there ended up being only a few other people braving the chilly temperatures, we scored a prime spot all to ourselves.

The drive itself was rather uneventful, luckily. Driving on a highway is definitely preferable to driving anywhere else. Once we arrived in Lancaster, we saw quite a few horse-and-buggies, and made a couple of lame jokes about how we could finally sympathize with the horse "towing" the buggie, and how it gave all new meaning to the term "horsepower." (EDIT: OK, Steve just informed me that's where the term actually originated, sooo...in my face.)

Then, we arrived and it was time to check in!

Overall, we ended up learning quite a bit at our first campground stay. So I present without further ado, the six things we learned about RVing at Country Acres:

1. Hooking up is a cinch.

I anticipated it being a lot harder to hook up to electric and water. While I was walking our hyperactive canine around the campgrounds, Steve worked on getting things squared away so we could have a comfortable, warm night featuring our favorite things, lights and water. In Steve's words: "We hooked up to city water supply but then had to fill up our on-board tanks because they were going to shut off the city water when the temperature went below freezing." Yep, I totally would've known how to do that (not). We didn't have to hook up to cable because our TV hasn't been installed yet.

There was another dog in the vicinity, so getting Lola to smile for the camera was not gonna happen

2. Maybe we shouldn't buy our cooking supplies at the dollar store.

In real life, we have all sorts of fancy cooking supplies (thanks, wedding guests!). But I was hesitant to bring anything too nice into our RV kitchen. Why? I don't know. For whatever reason, we picked up a plastic-ish skillet at the dollar store. I used it to cook turkey burgers, which turned out mostly burnt. Now, turkey burgers are usually my forte, if I do say so myself, so I'm going to blame the cheap skillet. Oh, and we forgot to bring non-stick spray. And also? Our damn smoke alarm kept going off, so we eventually just removed the battery. There. So much safer.



Inching my way toward domestic divadom


3. No matter how cold it is, a fire and 'smores are a must.

We're already pretty well aware of this, actually. When we stay at Steve's family cabin in the Allegheny Mountains, campfires are a nightly activity. So the first item on our to-do list upon arrival was checking out the on-site camp store and buying out their supply of graham crackers, Hersheys bars and marshmallows. The adorable old man manning the store said, "Somebody's gonna make some 'smores!" I already can tell I'm gonna love the camp stores.



Nom nom nom...



More nom nom nom...

Once the fire got going, we didn't really worry too much about the cold. We forgot to bring lawn chairs, but each campsite had a picnic table, so we were able to move that over.

4. The radio is amazing.

It didn't bother us one bit to be without a TV. The radio that came with the trailer was pretty entertaining itself! We had it tuned to the same station all night, which happened to have basically every good song ever created. As if that wasn't awesome enough, we also have outside speakers, so we could jam out while ingesting way too many 'smores. Sweet!

5. Lola is the best RV dog.

A lot of people assume she's a complete nutcase 24/7, but she's more of a snugglebug than anything else. In fact, sometimes she snuggles so much it's annoying (she's almost 50 lbs of solid muscle!). It was her first time inside the RV, but she behaved beautifully. She had the couch to herself most of the time as Steve and I were sitting at the dinette.

Yeah, somebody settled right in

6. Our bed is hard as a rock.

OK, I understand that it's not going to come equipped with down comforters, but wow. Neither of us were able to sleep much. And even though we had been talking about buying a memory foam mattress topper for the bed, our sore backs ended up rocketing that item to the top of our priority list. Way overpriced memory foam mattress topper for an RV Queen, here we come!