After buying our RV months before, Pat and I finally were able to head to Phoenix to pick up our RV in March of 2014.
Phoenix in March means Spring Training, beautiful weather, and an abundance of Snowbirds. {Snowbirds: noun: People who reside in Arizona half of the year during the cooler weather to escape the snow). Because it was peak season, and we were late finding a place to stay, finding a vacant RV lot in the city was a bit tricky. Luckily, we had joined Good Sam’s Club on the advice of some RV friends, so we had many tools at our fingertips to find a decent RV park in the city, close to the vicinity where we wanted to be. If you are a new RV’er, we highly recommend joining the Good Sam’s Club, because there are benefits such as discounted gas, discounted RV supplies, discounted nights at certain RV parks, and other great perks. We finally found a place that had clean facilities {because we had not as much as put a sewer hose on an RV yet}, and had good ratings according to other Good Sam members. This particular park was a 55+park with both full-time residents, and allowed younger than 55’s to come through on a stay-by-night basis. We stayed at The Desert Sands RV Park and were more than thrilled at their hospitality, full-hook up sites, clean restrooms, showers, pool, activities area, and the RV site in general.
Setting up an RV for the first time can be tricky. I, for one, know very little about anything mechanical, so I left all of the setting up to Pat. We have an agreement: I am in charge of getting things set up on the inside {READ: organized and pretty} and Pat does a lot of the stuff with the outside set up. I do help him with the stabilizers, the hitch, and getting the RV balanced just right, but he does all of the rest. There are a lot of things you learn along the way after making mistakes, and you make those adjustments to not make those mistakes again the next time. One thing we did do, and continue to do, is make a checklist that we keep on a clip board. We print two copies, and mark off each item as we set up (to not forget something) and then repeat the process when we take down the RV and head out to a new location. We have learned as we became more comfortable with the set up and take down, that we didn’t look at our list. After forgetting to re-tract the antenna once, and almost forgetting to check that the lights were working and plugged in {which they weren’t} we decided that a list is necessary, and must be used EVERY time, comfortable or not. Maybe you are like me, and get distracted quite easily…SQUIRREL! …and then, boom, you forgot to lock the storage door or tie down the items on the top bunk. Trust me, it happens. I’ll post our list that we use for our RV and truck set up in the next blog for anyone who is interested.
Once we got everything set up, secured, and ready to enjoy, we sat outside and partook in a cold, frothy beverage. If you are the type who loves a cold brew, or a glass of wine, we highly recommend after the stress of getting to your site, spending time getting everything set up, and getting everything in its place, to sit and decompress with a drink. The maiden voyage was so long in planning, that we were giddy with excitement to sit under our awning in the warm sunshine. We sat with our feet up in our reclining camp chairs with a cold beverage in our fists watching the beautiful Phoenician sun set. We plugged in our super-cute LED lights that go across the awning, and couldn’t believe we were finally in our own RV.