Tell us about your first ever Rving/camping trip and what stood out

Quite a first time adventure, Mike!

I really can't say that I remember my first camping trip since it was a bit more than 77 years ago. I'm told that 9 months before I was born I left on a family tent camping trip with my father and came home with my mother.

The earliest camping trip I do remember was when I was 7 or 8 and I elected to sleep outside our family tent under our aluminum canoe. During the night, my father heard me talking and asked me what was wrong. I told him Tippie (our Irish Setter) was laying on my sleeping bag and I couldn't stretch me legs out. Shortly after, he came out of the tent with a flashlight, telling me Tippie was in the tent. When he shinned the light where my feet would go, there was a very fat, very old raccoon sleepily staring back at us. It took some shooing to get him to move, but he finally waddled away and I decided to spend the rest of the night in the tent.

 

That raccoon story is hilarious!

The first time I went camping, was with the Girl Scouts. It was so long ago that I don't remember much. I remember sitting around a campfire at night, and then the next day I rode horse for the first time, only for the horse to run away from the group in its own direction, scaring the daylights out of me. They told me the horse was just living up to its name, "Mischievous".

Actually, that was both the first and the only time I ever rode a horse. Fortunately, it didn't affect future camping interest.

 

I've camped out many times in my younger years in just a sleeping bag and also in tents and the back of a pickup sporting a camper shell. Nothing much to tell about all those trips as they were all a hekalot of fun and left me with a lifetime of memories. I can however tell you folks about the first trip we took in the motorhome and it too has left a lasting memory. Let me preface the following by saying this trip was my first exposure to drivng a full height, full width Class A coach and you can let your imagination go along with me from here. After maneuvering our way down the steep and narrow tree/ditch lined road from the house to the road out of town, I managed to pull my frozen to the steering wheel hands off the wheel for a second and extract my finger nails from my palms. My co-pilot was nice enough to hand me a tissue to sop up the blood. After reaching the interstate and getting safely onto it I decided I'd best stay in the slow lane until my heart stopped pounding. After a mile or so I found out that it was not the lane to reside in as semis did not like me in front of them doing 55 mph and would pull out and pass me on the left in the middle lane, which of course meant fingernails stuck in palms again. Found out the middle lane was indeed the lane to be in. That is until the semis began passing me not only on the right but also in the left/fast lane as they came up from behind in "my" lane. Okay, from there on it gets worse. The highway over the Tehachapis, the Cajon Pass and then the dreaded I-15 south to San Diego where everyone but me was going 80 plus and honking their horns at me. Very rude of them by by the way as I was by then doing 60 and feeling somewhat under control. Or at least I thought I was. Got to our destination and by some stroke of pure luck managed not only to get to our reserved site but also back into it without breaking anything, small trees included. All was fine from there until we left and I had found that I very much enjoyed having this big beast as a home away from a real home. Unfortunately I got to experience everything I did on the trip going again on the trip back. Only we took a different route home so as to see more of the country, something every good RVer is supposed to enjoy. Unfortunately I hadn't given any thoughts to "The Grapevine" on I-5 north out of the LA area. You can take it from there, I've rattled on enough. Suffice to say it took several trips like this one to where I finally settled in and found out how neat driving one of these beasts can be. The several scars on both palms have healed over time but the main one does turn a reddish brown color every so often to remind me of those initial first few trips. Oh, and if I had thought going down our road was scary then I got an even bigger surprise going up it when we got home. Did I mention it's at about 30 degrees both ways! Ten foot wide, tree and bush lined on one side with a three foot deep water drainage ditch on the other. And it's a "snake" road also. Being 8.5 feet wide I had just 9 inches on either side to keep that beast centered or we may have never taken another trip in it ever again. Thanks for this thread Mike, you managed to bring back fears and tears I had forgotten about years ago, not to mention having to look at those faint scars on my palms again..............

BankShot...............(aka Terry)

 

It's a shame all highways don't make trucks go in only the right lane. One of the big highways I take is like that, which is great because the speed limit is 70. It's the road everyone takes to the mountains, the direction of all the camping areas away from the city, so a LOT of RVs are on it; they are usually in the second lane where there are 3 lanes, and the first lane were there are 2.

 

My family and I have been camping for almost 30 years and have lots of stories; but the one that really sticks out is something that happened to us on while driving up to Alaska in the summer of 2017. We started driving up to Alaska in the middle of July 2017; we had two dogs with us. The trailer started smelling really bad by our dining room table. We vacuumed and cleaned the floor and carpet. By the time we reached Kamloops BC the smell was unbearable; we thought it was one of dogs relieving himself on the carpet. We tore out the carpet underneath the dining room table; and disinfected the area. When we reached Prince George the smell was still there. We found a pet store and bought a gallon of Nature's Miracle. We tore more carpet out around the area and still nothing changed. While at a campground in Prince George my husband asked a fellow camper to see if he might be able to figure out what was wrong. He and my husband took apart the dining room table and tore up the tile underneath. Finally we found the culprit; our dining room was on the slide out. Apparently a piece of chicken fell out of our freezer and wedged up way underneath the slide out. Not sure how long the chicken was there but of course long enough to thaw and smell. Needless to say we rather destroyed our trailer trying to find out what happened.