How To Set Up Your RV at a Campground | Site Selection, Hookups & More Tips!

this week we show you the basics on setting up your rv at a campground from choosing a site and what steps in what order to hook up we'll share our tips and show you how we set up camp so come on along you know one of the questions that we get asked a whole lot is what's it like setting up camp so i guess the best way to do it is to show them huh some are easier to set up than others well there's two ways you can set up one is when you're boondocking because you do that a little different and then the other way is in the campground so since we're on the way to a campground right now maybe we should uh we should show what's what's involved climate whether it's easy or hard to park is whether to pull through or back in yeah and how many trees and how many fire pits and picnic tables ah all that sort of thing that's where an expert guide a traffic director comes in that's you my dear ah you know one of the things that we should also point out is when to stay in the campground we like boondocking but the weather out here as we're doing this video is really hot the real-time temperature is over 100 degrees so we want to run our air conditioner pretty much all night long and for that we want an electrical hookup so that's one reason you'd pick a campground correct because yeah gotta be otherwise you gotta camp alone me yeah i thought you because i'm going someplace where it's cool but uh anyway we'll show you so we're going to one of our favorite campgrounds it is in michigan and it is the addison county park and uh it is a beautiful campground and we'll see if we can get a good spot we should be able to get a good spot in the peak of the summer travel season the absolute best time to get a spot is sunday sunday afternoon usually everybody leaves about a noon one o'clock so you're you're pretty safe in most places if you're gonna get in one without a reservation to try on sunday afternoon which it is for us right now as we're doing this video so we don't have any reservations and we are going to go give it a try we like this park a lot we've been here several times even had a gathering here we did we had a bunch of friends come and uh from all over the country and they enjoyed it you know that's the one thing i miss in these days of masks is uh our rv lifestyle gatherings where we would say hey we're at addison oaks today everybody come on out or we would schedule a week's camp out and hikes and all sorts of stuff but or just to get together for dinner or a visit and then go out for dinner or potluck or something but hopefully those days will be back sooner rather than later i sure hope so so we're at addison oaks we're pulling in now to the campsite and of course there's a big sign says camping and slow down because i got a lot of tall grass and there's deer a lot of deer live here wandering around most campgrounds like this will have a speed limit that is about 10 to 15 miles an hour hi do you have any camping spots do we have any right now yeah yeah so you want to go take a look around and find a spot you like thanks okay thank you all right here we are heading now towards the campground now it's time to choose the campsite and as we have driven around we've got a pretty good idea of the lay of the land what are some of the things that we're looking for we would like a shady spot with shade preferably in the afternoon if we can get morning and afternoon great but if we have to pick and choose go for the afternoon sunshine in the morning is a little more agreeable than when it's hot in the afternoon and we also like a little space between us and our neighbors if we can get a spot like that that's awesome when you get your spot they'll give you a sheet and normally you rip it in half like this one you put half on your dashboard and the other half on a post in front of you where your campsite is to show how long you're legally there and here is the spot we picked and we have uh both sides of us clear across the street clear and this is our site it's like 128. now let me um get ready to back in and we'll show you how we do that before you back in you need some help you don't want to back into a fire pit or a picnic table or trees or anything else so i like to go to the far back corner of the site that we're going to camp at and i make sure that i can see myself in my side view mirrors make sure that he can see me make sure that he can see me good and we do hand signals we both agree upon what the hand signals mean stop because he might not be able to hear me so the hand signals it's important that we're communicating look up before you set the campsite up make sure there are no dead limbs on those trees up there they can do a lot of damage to your rv and to you too if they should fall want to pull up the emergency brake sure i'll be glad to okay first step always when it's this hot so you can run the air conditioning is plug into the uh the power supply now we have a surge protector built into our rv otherwise i would take a portable surge protector and plug that in first to make sure that the electricity on the pedestal is clean electricity sometimes they miswire them and it could do some damage to your unit if you don't have that surge protector we have one built into ours so i can plug this straight in and there are two plugs here that's the 50 amp for the great big guys this is the 30 amp so i plug it in and up here are some fuses this is the one marked 30 amps i'm flipping that on and you can see if you look on the thing the little blue lights on that means it's getting power so that's good this by the way is a switch this one for just if you don't have a 30 amp you have like a 20 amp supply you know for electric frypan you can plug that in there so you have usually a number of these different plugs available on the pedestal now you want to plug it in to your coach this is our electrical connector so simple plug it in push it in and then turn it to lock it in and then there's a little wheel here that tightens it up and that way it's not going to come loose in the middle of the night or if somebody or a dog or a kid should run through and trip over that cord you'll be all set so now we have switched over and we have 30 amp supply all the electricity is in the vehicle and the first thing we can do is turn on the air conditioner mike is it okay if i turn on the air yep it's good all right sounds good so we're going to hit cool here we go it's between 89 and 90 in here so i've got it set for 68 so we're gonna cool this off all right we got the air on usually the first thing i do is uh level it but uh because it's so hot out here i thought we would put the air on first the levelers are pretty cool it's right here look at this auto level see that bam next up water and before i hook up my water hose i'm going to hook up this this i've shown you this before this is the clear 2 0 solid carbon water filter and it's actually like a two stage water filter this is solid carbon and this is uh is like that little blue the little blue filters that you see in many other stores that this is also solid carbon the other ones are granulated carbon and water kind of this doesn't do as good a job as the solid does so the two-stage system really makes this water great and i hook this up right here to the spigot all right that's on now i take my water and i connect the hose to the bottom of this filter just tighten that up and the next part of this i'm going to let jen show you this is this took us a long time such a simple thing a quick connect for the water jennifer will show you that this is called the quick connect you see how you take this down you release it and it goes up nice and tight this is well worth the investment so gotta get down here get on my knees i gotta go through what they call the mouse hole go through there get this hose around take it up go through there come on up come on up come on up and now we're gonna take it down let her go up and we're good just a little thing on the hose and your cable leave them wound so that they're not so much work when you leave hopefully put them back a little bit so you're not going to trip on them nobody's going to trip but leave them wound and if you can tie it up even better when you get camp set up you don't want the step going in and out so there is a switch step override put it on and now the step is going to stay out so that it's not going in and out in and out every time you open the door love putting the awning up in the summer the switch is in here the awnings are so nice to have but even if you have a wind sensor don't go away and leave your awning out and particularly with us we're going to close it every time we go away for a couple of hours we're not going to leave it out we're not going to take that chance that some wind could come along and damage it just too often these awnings get broken we've seen it so often so make sure you put it down if you go away at night close it put it away even if it doesn't look like rain close it put it away it's just too expensive you don't need the grease turn on your hot water heater now some of them need to warm up a little bit some of them are instantly hot but when you want hot water you want hot water so as soon as you get set up at camp turn it on if the campground has cable tv hook it up as soon as you get to the campground you want to secure your pet if you have a little dog there's some portable pens that you can bring and your dog will be good but if you have a big dog like bo you might want to hook them up to a picnic table or what we like to use is on the back our hitch just drop this through hook it up and make sure bo's leash isn't too long because you don't want him to get into any kind of trouble but bo is good one more thing before you kick back and start to enjoy your camp out we always travel with some little post-it notes some sticky notes and on them i always write down the name of the campground that we're staying at our site number the campground address and phone number and i just put that up someplace where we can always find it in the tenseness of an emergency you're not going to have to fumble around trying to find all that information you've got it written down in handy we bought this mat 10 years ago when we first started out and we have used it so much you can get them we bought it at an rv show but you can get it at different uh rv supply stores and just make it as big as you think you're going to need you need lots of room or maybe not quite so much room something else i like to do is have another rug that you bring out we picked this one up at bed bath and beyond and put it here it's just that extra little guard against tracking in things that you don't want inside so got all of our mats down our rug down take off your shoes but don't leave your shoes outside you don't know what's going to crawl inside we've heard lots of stories about scorpions my snakes spiders you just don't know what's going to decide your shoes would make a lovely home so bring them inside make sure you know what to do with your trash some places have big bends that you put it in other places you just put it in front of or by your rv campsite and they come and pick it up various times of the day so make sure you know what to do with your trash if you'd like a written list of all the things that we did to set up at our campsite we've made it easy for you we have we have written an article that accompanies this video on our rv lifestyle travel blog we'll put a link in the description below and when you get done watching this video would you do us a favor and give it a thumbs up and don't forget to also subscribe to the rv lifestyle channel right here on youtube and when you do that click the little bell icon to be notified when new videos are online we are mike and jennifer wendland thanks for watching happy trails

Channel: RV Lifestyle

Views: 93,091

Rating: 4.9761696 out of 5

Keywords: setup your rv at a campground, campground rv setup, rv, camping, rv living, rv life, rv tips and tricks, rv camping, rv newbie, rv tips, rving, rv basics, rv lifestyle, how to set up a campsite, rv campsite setup, travel, how to, camping tips, rv travel, rv setup, rv park, rv campsite, rv set up, the wendlands, rv site hookups, rv water hookup, rv electirc hookup, rv water filter

Id: cYlVFmnQNMM

Length: 14min 42sec (882 seconds)

Published: Sat Aug 01 2020