RV Lessons Learned The Hard Way | RV Mistakes, Failures and Success

oh my gosh what a camping trip yeah can you spell stress welcome back to mountain beaches I'm norm and I'm Kim and we're living our dream to discover new adventures because tomorrow is never promised so live for today so we went on our camping trip and we thought we had it all right boy were we wrong so wrong so wrong but we're gonna share with you at the end of this video three lessons we learned from last week's camping trip good lessons to learn so before we get into this week's story we have to just give a big shout out and a thank you to all of you new subscribers we've just been overwhelmed by all the new friends we have it's so much fun and because of that we really need to thank John and Mercedes from RV odd couple yeah they are fantastic people and they have been such a huge help desk thank you John and Mercedes thank you we love you and if you haven't heard of their channel the RV odd couple go check them out they are fantastic so let's set the stage of just what happened last week so what did happen we went camping and we had a lot of fun but we also had some really weird experiences and some failures some big failures yeah we've been doing this a while we're not failures we really aren't newbies we can't be true forever so let's tell them about it let's see what our failures were so we went camping in Idaho at a great spot and we just knew that we're gonna be there all week long and we were gonna be working we were basically telecommuting all week long and we were experimenting with it trying to figure out how this was gonna work for us and so we got everything set up we got our camp set up and then the weather didn't cooperate oh we had the biggest thunder and lightning storm sideways rain hail you name it we had it all right we're in the middle of our first big thunder lightning and hail storm I don't know how bigger the hell oh just pea-sized right now hopefully if they don't get any bigger because that could do some damage to the rig Gary yeah huge huge thunder and lightning close strikes and the sideways rain came in and knocked our refrigerator out we didn't realize that's what it was but all of a sudden we started hearing a beeping and when I what is that so we're checking around and looked at the refrigerator and we saw an error code that said what was the air code P that thing l1 o P or something like that fridge do we have we have atom attic RV refrigerator and so first thing to do I got the manual out and I started reading the manual and sure enough I found the error code and I thought great it's gonna tell me what to do well it did it said take your RV to the dealer to get your refrigerator fixed said that we could not fix it on our own yeah and we didn't want to do that we were just done there we're like day two into our eight-day trip and we were not ready to give up so what did we do next we looked on Facebook we went to the Internet the source of all information we went to the grand design site and norm googled the error code and we found out that if we had a magnet that it might well fix the problem yeah there were a lot of people that were describing the exact situation that we had in fact some were even saying ours happen because we had a huge rainstorm and some water got inside the vent and got on to the control panel and the magnet fixed it so we had some full time our beers right next door to us and Nour went over to see if they had magnets and they did they had a couple that they sent over but neither one of them works so one was too big one was too small so off to the nearest town you went yeah 45 minute drive to the nearest town to buy a $3 magnet and back I came and following the instructions that we learned from people on Facebook that had experienced the exact same thing they said hold magnet in this certain spot for five minutes seemed weird but I did that and we came back into the RV and push the on button on the refrigerator problem the song problem solved if all right fingers crossed hope it worked yay success defects - so for all of those out there that have posted solutions to problems on Facebook thank you thank you yeah that was just a godsend for us and allowed us to keep going yep and and a fun thing that happened from that experience was that are really kind neighbors that were right next door to us knew that we were having problems and frustrated and they brought us dinner they brought us dinner they brought us a delicious lasagna dinner how nice is that RV people are so kind watching out for each other and our and you guys yeah our Mountain beaches community you guys are just awesome and and all the comments we've gotten over the last few days have just been amazing with suggestions from our last video so thank you for that so on this particular problem if you have a refrigerator that maybe isn't the kind that we have or you've experienced other problems comment below and tell us your experience and the fix to that experience because it makes such a huge difference within a few minutes we discovered what the problem was and ninety minutes of driving and five minutes of shopping for magnet we had a fixed it was wonderful so problem number one solved so then let's move on to problem number two problem number two was that we ran out of data yeah we were using our phones as hotspots which we don't use very often so we thought we had plenty of data plenty of data tell lasted all week long and so we lounged in our in our recliners and brought up the TV and used our data to watch YouTube we were watching YouTube and finally my phone told me that I was running almost out of data so we stopped doing that and then it told me we were my phone was out of data but that was ok we still had Kim's phone as a hotspot so she was using hers for work and things were going well for a couple of days but then I got the the notice that I only had 25% more data to use and then within hours hours later it she got the next message saying it's gone yeah and and the problem was is I didn't realize that my connection to work used a lot more data than than I had realized so this was one of the reasons we did this trip to experiment but we didn't expect to fail yeah yeah so I figured okay well we ran out of data that's no big deal we'll just call up AT&T who is our service provider hello buy more data wrong nope that is not even an option that we can get from them we didn't even give them money to keep working we were willing to pay more than we probably should have been willing to pay in order to continue to work and to be functional and efficient yep it is not an option zero and nothing they would or could do to help us our lucky thing about all of this is that we were only two days away from our month what do you got going say our billing cycle - to restart and so yeah we are a billing cycle start date then our data goes back to the 15 gigabytes and we start over again right and so that was either gonna start on Friday or Saturday we didn't know for sure but we had a video to upload so what do we do so we went the 45-minute drive back into town again and we found a McDonald's that had Wi-Fi and this McDonald's my goodness it had amazing fast Wi-Fi yeah and so we set down an order to diet coke and some french fries and we sat there for a couple hours working and using their data and that was godsend number two absolutely yeah and and it worked this taught us that even though we could have gone home from here and to fix these problems we were determined to stay out as if we were far far away and couldn't get home and figure out our problems yeah wait you're at solutions we were only two and a half hours from home but we did not want to fail we don't want to have to pack it up and head so we figured out a solution even though 80 wouldn't give us a solution we figured one out yep and then Friday morning our data renewed and we were able to work all day Friday and and things were great again so but we learned a lesson from that we're gonna share that with you in a minute so that's that was problem number two now problem number three so I think problem number three which are actually in increments stemmed from problem number one and two because we were stressed and we weren't functioning like we usually do as a team and so because of that we made some mistakes with a rig yeah we made some mistakes as we were packing up and getting ready to go home and we we made the cardinal sin of rushing and ignoring our checklist and thinking that maybe we were smarter than we are and we made three bonehead mistakes that were embarrassed to admit I'm embarrassed to admit yep but we're here to share the good the bad and the ugly so I backed the truck into the trailer now that actually sounds worse than it really was I was backing it up to to get it hooked up had the tailgate down and I slowly bumped the trailer and put a little crack in the in the door and it's a crack you can't even notice that he knows it's there I know it's there it didn't do anything to the truck but the mistake was I got impatient Kim was off doing something and I didn't wait for her we do this as a team and she stands there and lets me know that I'm good or I need to stop and I just figured I could do it on my own because you've done it multiple times but nope not this time right lesson learned so then the second one was again my fault and again Kim was off busy and I got rushed and I you think I would have learned my lesson from just a few minutes earlier to wait and follow the checklist where Kim when we're bringing in the slides one of us is outside looking at it and one of us is inside doing the controls so it was the slide right next to the door and so I figured well I can see it I'll just go ahead and bring the slide in yep I did yeah but earlier we had unboxed some things and there was some really sturdy really sturdy cardboard boxes that we hadn't been able to dispose of and we had slid them underneath that slide yeah it had been really windy earlier in the day and they were blowing all over the place so I stuck them underneath the slide and forgot about him and so the slide starts coming in and it got almost all the way in and it stopped and right at that moment I kind of had an idea and I got out of the trailer and I looked and sure enough those boxes were wedged up underneath there and and kind of the wheel well covering was bent out a little bit and so that was mistake number two we pushed the slide back out and pulled the cardboard boxes out and no damage was done we were able to reap end the wheel well coverings and and all is good so that's good but we dodged a bullet there but that was our second mistake and then there's mistake number three I'll tell you want to get the prop yes I did get the prop for the mistake number three so I'm gonna claim this mistake my job typically in the trailer is to take everything off the counters and put it in the sink so that they don't shake rattle and roll down the road and I did that I put all the usual things in the sink but we had brought a couple little decorations from home and I just looked right over that so I looked over at two cuz I was in and out of the trailer a couple of times this little guy which is just a pretty heavy-duty little ceramic bird was sitting on the counter it fell off and ended up right over by the slide yeah it got behind the slide so when we got home and then we opened up the slide so we could clean the trailer out I never saw it and we opened the slide and it was inside tucked down in the corner and as the slide went all the way out I saw the bottom corner piece pull away from the slide and and I stopped and I reversed the slide and I reached back there and yep both this little guy out was it broken at all and so we have a little bit of trim that pulled away but again nothing major but it just reminded us not to make those mistakes and to follow our checklist but can I tell you a secret I am really happy that he made the first two mistakes because it's always easier when he makes the first mistake the first glitch the first little dent yeah and then I follow and it's all okay but the good news was no bad words were used well hey we both just kind of chalked it up to all right let's learn from this and not make the mistakes and share it with you guys although you guys already know this stuff right you know it but we do I oh I'll bet you that you have made some mistakes that you wish you hadn't yeah and so for the fun of it again share in the comments below you're a mistake Sarah you really don't want to share with anybody else what kind of embarrassing they are embarrassing but they're fun to hear that somebody else you know misery does love company yeah so we'd like to hear some of your mistakes yeah please soothe our soul show some compassion yep so and let me just take a moment to those of you that may be our new to our channel thank you so much for joining us and if you like this video please click on the like button but also subscribe that helps us so much huge difference helps us so much with YouTube so thanks for joining us and watching and now we want to share our three takeaways what have we learn from this trip well let me start with the internet we learned that using our telephone hotspots for full-time work is maybe not the best idea and so we need to look for other options and we already have another option that we've ordered and in fact I found even and yet another option today while I was watching another youtube I don't know about that one is maybe another good idea for our backup so okay we need to have a good number one first option and then need to have redundancy and backup yeah let's do it so are those on order one of them is okay all right we'll share with those with you how to get them in yeah try them out and see how we like them and we'll tell you one way or the other we like them or we don't the second thing that we learned was how to fix a refrigerator and that magnets know something that you want to have along with you in your travels yeah just a little 10-pound magnet that fixed our problem and if you have the Dometic refrigerator or a newer remodel and you haven't experienced this problem all it takes is a sideways rain you're gonna need a magnet so buy one and then just store it in the in that little compartment and you'll be ready and we learned that we could find out all sorts of information on facebook on the internet and and be able to fix things on our own that the manual says we can write number three so the third thing I'm gonna look at the cheat sheet here use the checklist don't be overconfident and think that you've got it down and you've done it enough times and you can just go ahead and do something use the checklist and follow your procedures follow your procedures if you happen to be traveling with someone else a spouse a partner work as a team but work is a team that that's what we're out here for is working as a team and if you're traveling on your own boy use that checklist and don't do it when you're tired or if you have to then take extra time just go extra slow and make sure double-check and go through the checklist and actually put a check mark by each item so you know it's been done so and do you have a checklist already formed that you could share with us we'd love to there's no sense in reinventing the wheel yeah so if you have a checklist and want to share particular things oh please do yeah you could email us send it to us you know private message or something but yeah that'd be awesome yeah I'd be fantastic that's today and that's this week and we had just an awesome time on our camping trip but there was some stress involved as well yeah definitely so if you liked today's video you're gonna love the next video where we share with you our 10 top gadgets for RVing see in the next video [Music] you

Channel: Mountain Beaches

Views: 15,806

Rating: 4.9459944 out of 5

Keywords: mountain beaches, rv lessons learned, rv mistakes, rv life, rv lessons, learn from our rv mistakes, rv newbie mistakes, rving mistakes

Id: 4jSNpMzKkHA

Length: 17min 59sec (1079 seconds)

Published: Fri Sep 20 2019