Head of Tide

My wife and I decided to quit our jobs, sell our house, buy an RV and travel the U.S. We did all this during the pandemic in 2020 and by October we were ready to set off. Day one and about half way to Colorado this RV Rookie pulls into a rest area that has only one way in and one exit. It looked like we could drive in make a u-turn in the circle down by the river and go back out. Our 38 foot RV and tow vehicle, however, had a larger turn radius than I thought and we couldn’t make the turn. We almost made it. This left us blocking about only half of the parking area. No problem really, I just needed to disconnect the car and then back up the RV, make the turn, reconnect the car and go on. It’s inconvenient but I’m still learning. 

We go to unhook the car and because of the angle and the slight slope of the drive, the tow bar is in a bind. The pins won’t pull out of the bracket on the car.  What you do in this case is start the car and roll it forward a bit to take the pressure off the tow bar. You do that as long as the car starts which in this case it did not. The battery was dead. In our particular tow vehicle you must leave the key in the ‘on’ position so the power steering works during the tow. The running lights stayed on during the first part of the trip thus discharging the battery. It shouldn’t happen but it did. I was prepared for this however, as I have a portable battery booster with jumper cables. It works well if the battery is charged, which in this case it was not. This thing has a flashlight and it was accidentally left on when it was stored in the pouch thereby draining this battery. In addition, while I was ‘fiddling’ with the dead battery booster I dropped the ignition key to the car (which I had made just before we left and it cost me $125 at the dealership) into the engine compartment. I could not see the key and thought it might be lost forever.

Wow. 

Okay…the RV has a generator so we cranked it up and started charging the booster to start the car. In the meantime, my intrepid wife found the key wedged in the engine and fished it out.  God bless her!! We then hammered out the pins on the tow vehicle and moved the RV up the hill out of the way. The booster charged so we turned off the generator then jumped the car with the booster. Drove the RV with her driving the car down the road a ways to recharge the battery, then pulled the fuse on the running lights (because there was no way to turn them off) and reconnected the car to the RV. We burned a couple of extra hours but learned a lot. What a team!!

Welcome to full time RVing!