RV Experience

Here are some things we do to make life on the road more simple.
Shop Towels: We hate to do laundry. We also hate moldy towels. We solved this by using blue shop towels. There is no comparison with a paper towel and a blue shop towel. Blue shop towels are much stronger. We use them for everything, kitchen towels, bathroom hand towels, and bath towels. Lou tears off a strip of four towels to use as a bath towel. Don gets by with one towel and wrings it out to use over again until dry. We buy the ten pack of blue shop towels from Costco, about $1.44 per roll. Now we don’t have a bunch of towels hanging around drying and our laundry is less than half the size.
Paper Plates, Bowls, and Plastic Utensils: Using paper plates, bowls, knives, forks, and spoons saves a lot of dish washing, therefore adding to the length of a boondock stay.
Plastic Grocery Bags: These are used for garbage bags. They are about the size for one days use.
Spray Bottles: We keep a plastic spray bottle in the kitchen and in the bathroom.
In the kitchen, the bottle is filled with plain water. We use it to wet down pans and utensils that need washing. First the dirty dishes are wiped with a shop towel. Then they are sprayed and wiped again. Now you can wash then with a small amount of water in the largest pan and a little dish washing soap. We can wash and rinse the dishes (a couple of pans, a couple of cups and a knife and big spoon) with about a cup of water.
In the bathroom, the spray bottle has water with a little dish washing soap in it. It is used to rinse the toilet after use. The soap makes the things slick and the #2 doesn’t stick as much. The stream spray knocks off what does. Saves an awful lot of water use. Since our bathroom sink also drains to the black tank, there is actually plenty of liquid in the tank. The two of us can easily go 10-12 days without trouble.
Bathing: When boon docking, shower less often, usually every third day. In between, take sponge baths. Actually “wet-one baths”. We get unscented baby wipes from Safeway. We use them for washing our hands after using the toilet and we also use them for bathing. 2-3 wipes is all that are needed for a good bath.
Tea Pot: We use a nice whistling tea pot to heat water for our tea when we don’t want to use the microwave. A cup of tea uses about 2 ampere hours from the battery. It’s often better to use gas and cook some water. We use the inverter and microwave sometimes but if we’re trying to save battery for more important things like TV or Internet use and not start the generator, possibly to keep a nice campground quiet, a tea pot is a good idea.
Camp Fires: Starting camp fires is very easy. We use a one-hour log and place our real logs on top. The fire is started with one match (actually a lighter) and you have a really nice fire in a couple of minutes. The fire is for looks only, not cooking though.

I went to Best Buy and bought a Slingbox. The SlingBox is a device that connects to your home network and a TV antenna or cable box or other video source. You run a player on your computer and video and audio are streamed from you home to your computer, wherever it may be where there is a broadband connection. It works great from point to point on the network at home.
Our first night using the Slingbox in the RV we were at the Pinnacles National Monument South of Hollister, California. There are two things that occur there. There are no cell phone signals and there are no TV signals. There are great views and there aren’t many places as nice to visit as the Pinnacles, but no signals.
So…
We use Vonage for our IP phone and that fixes the first problem.
Our Slingbox seems to handle the second.
The first time we tried it in the RV using the Datastorm Satellite Internet connection it was a bit shaky to start. The feed was dropping and requiring a manual restart, every 5 sec to 5 minutes, suddenly it started working continuously with occasional short dropout but returning automatically. After becoming more familiar with the thing and making a few tweaks, it works much better. I reduced the sample rate from 310K and 30 frames per second to 220K and 20 fps.
I watched as much as 5 hours one evening and there was no impact to bandwidth of the Internet connection over the satellite. I was even doing a lot of website updates at the same time. In the evening, there was some momentary dropout, not enough to bother me and, just as David Letterman came on, it became perfect and stayed that way until I called it a night after another hour or so. The same effect on a subsequent night. Must be a lot less traffic on the satellite that late. I think it will work out OK.
We enjoy our home broadcast stations. There are a lot of them and occasionally, something is worth watching. I’m too cheap to pay cable of DirecTV rates. The cost is just 2-3 times what it should be. I’d prefer it if they charged by the channel and you could select which channels you wanted. I’d pick a couple and pay my $2 month and be happier, but that’s not this world. So, paying the $200 for the Slingbox seems to be a good alternative. It will pay for itself at that rate in 8 years. Actually, since DirecTV cost $41/month, minimum, as an alternative, it pays for itself in 5 months.
Lou returned home while I was still away. Lou called to say there was a problem with our house phone. It is a Vonage phone connected to our DSL line. The person she called said they couldn’t understand her. I knew right away what was wrong. I was watching TV and there wasn’t enough up link bandwidth left to feed the SlingBox video and the Vonage phone. When she’s home I’ll have to curtail my TV watching until later at night. Interestingly, I can watch TV and browse the Internet here in the RV without any problems.

Article under construction. Pictures to follow.