I grew up camping but Mark hadn’t and his only experience was with the military. It took me quite a while after we were married and had kids to talk him into going. I told him MY CAMPING was much different from the military and of course used the guilt of denying the kids the experience. Fortunately he finally agreed.
We started out much like others tent camping with the kids and our first “RV” was a very old and well abused small 72 popup. We kept that for 3-4 years until the canvas completely rotted and it basically fell apart. We then moved up to a newer used and huge Fleetwood popup. We probably only kept it a year or so. From there we lucked into an 84 24’ TT that had belonged to an older gentleman that barely used it. It still had the protective plastic on the carpet and he had never used the restroom in it. (This was in the 90’s) I think we had the trailer for 2-3 years. We moved from the TT to an 85 Pace Arrow MH with no slides in probably 97 or 98. Made quite a few long distance trips in it even for an older MH. 

We trader it in on our first new purchase in 2004 of a Winnebago Minnie Class C 31’. We were empty nesters by now but still working so it was just weekends and vacations but we really liked it and kept it for 12 years until we were ready to retire and go fulltime. We knew it was not a suitable rig for fulltime. So we traded it in on our second new purchase of a 2015 Forest River Blue Ridge fifth wheel. We also traded in my Jeep Liberty for a 2015 Ram 3500 dually. It had everything we wanted for fulltime living (after we added some upgrades) and we kept it for six years. 

Last year we decided we were ready for a change in our camping style and wanted to switch from a fifth wheel to a MH. We knew from our research we wanted either a Newmar or a Tiffin. We found a 2016 Newmar Ventana LE that checked almost every box on our list for fulltime living.  And we are back with another Jeep as a toad, although a Cherokee Trailhawk this time.

So all total - I guess we are on RV number 7 over probably 36 years. And unless we win the Publisher’s Clearing House or (God forbid) something tragic would happen to our current coach, this is probably the last one.

Vicki

We are fulltime and watch all of our TV by streaming apps over cellular service. We don’t use a VPN and have not had a problem with any app yet outside of our domicile/billing address area. We just have to be sure to login every 3 months in our domicile area to YouTubeTV and I can have my son do that for me. Other apps such as Netflix, Prime, Disney, Paramount or HBOMax doesn’t seem to make any difference location wise except when we were out of the country. Then we had to use a VPN and with some apps we had to use certain locations for it to work, at least with Nord VPN.

Vicki

Vern,

Mark has been diagnosed with age-related dry macular degeneration though it is not at the point of needing treatment yet. We looked online for information about an aspirin treatment in reference to AMD but only found where they said it was shown to have no affect. Do you just chew/swallow a 81mg/low dose aspirin daily as you would for a heart condition or is there something else to this treatment you read about?
 

TIA Vicki 

We wouldn’t be without them either. Even made them a condition of one of our purchases. The dealer had to include toppers and install them before we took delivery.

Vicki

We’ve been fulltime for six years now and very rarely reserve in advance. We do of course make reservations for events such as rallies or festivals we want to attend or if we need to be in a specific area at a specific time for something, we will reserve a site to make sure there are no problems.

We are set up well for boondocking so we don’t worry about not finding places and often prefer to boondock. We also have a campground membership that allows us to stay free at many campgrounds but has to be reserved at least three days out. Sometimes we don’t know where we will be in three days or how long we might want to stay. But we try to take advantage of those full hookup stays for a few days when we can, especially after boondocking for awhile.

Actually, being fulltime is an advantage in that we can be very flexible and adjust our schedule or our direction to go wherever the vacancies are.

Happy Travels!
 

Vicki 

The Boomers BOF has 50 sites reserved and we were able to get one of them yesterday evening. I don’t know if there are any left or not. There is information for registration on the Escapees Boomer Facebook page.

Vicki

8 hours ago, Chad Heiser said:

Your welcome.  

Assuming everything was wired correctly, it would be a programming change only.  

The programming change isn’t something an end user should typically try though.  It is fairly specialized and requires several steps to accomplish.  It can be done remotely through VRM, but if something fails during the remote process it will require someone to physically touch the system programming with a specialized communication device and a laptop.  

It isn’t likely to fail, but it can happen.  The system would be nonfunctional until the programming was corrected locally if the remote process failed.  I also wouldn’t feel comfortable doing it remotely without knowing the physical wiring configuration is correct.  It most likely is, but I would want to confirm it.

I have done the programming remotely on systems I have installed.  This way I know the physical configuration will support the program set up.  (It works quite well.)  I have yet to have one fail, but I like to have backups in place just in case.

If we do meet up, I could do the programming change in a few minutes after confirming the wiring configuration will support it.

Thanks Chad. Hopefully we will hear from the tech who actually installed our system when he gets back from vacation. It could be our system is already programmed the way we would like. It would be great to have you look it over in April. We’ll be in touch. 
Vicki

WOW Chad! Thanks for that very thorough explanation! Mark hasn’t read it yet as we are on the road to our next stop but it makes sense to me. Most of our load is carried by inverter 1 with very little on inverter 2 so using opposing programming would be much better I think. 
 

Is this something we can change? Just a programming change and not a wiring change? Maybe with your guidance on a phone call? 
 

Thanks again for taking the time for such a great explanation!
Vicki

20 hours ago, Chad Heiser said:

The rally starts on the 23rd.  I plan to arrive at Deer Run on the 22nd.

I have an appointment in Elk City Oklahoma the 13-15th and then planned to just hang out and meander over to the rally between those dates.

Sounds like we might be able to arrange some kind of meet up when it gets closer to time.

 I do have another question for you about our Multiplus 3k Inverters. We finally got a call back today from the company that installed our system (although the technician that actually did our install is on vacation). A different technician said that when on 30 amp our Inverters should each be set to 15 and then when on 50 amp set to 25. We both remember the tech who installed telling us differently. What do you advise as the correct settings? And do we need to change any settings when we are strictly boondocking? 
 

Thanks,

Vicki and Mark

21 hours ago, oldjohnt said:

Where at in Florida in January ?? I'm in south central Florida that time of year and would enjoy taking a look...

John T

After January 5th, we are going to be following the SKP Boondocking BOF schedule and I think up until January 23rd we’ll be just east of St. Cloud. Then we move to the Three Lakes WMA NW of Kenansville and will probably stay there until February 21st. After that we’ll be heading out of the country for a few weeks. Would be great to meet up with anyone on here. Always love to put faces with names! 
Vicki

22 hours ago, Chad Heiser said:

Maybe some other time.  I will be in Crossville, Tennessee in April for a rally if you might be in that area around that time.

Actually we will be going thru Tennessee on our way to Indiana in April but it won’t be until after the 17th. I guess it depends on when your rally is.

Vicki

22 hours ago, Chad Heiser said:

Glad I could help.  If your going to be in the Quartzsite area in January, I'd be happy to go over your system with you and give you a better idea on how everything interacts and the various functions.

Thanks for the offer Chad. Would love to take you up on it but unfortunately, we are going to be in Florida in January. We were in Quartzsite last winter. 
Merry Christmas! 
Vicki

Thanks John and Kirk for the suggestions. The problem has been solved thanks to a phone call and some troubleshooting from Chad Heiser. I had sent him a PM earlier. Thanks so much Chad! 
 

Don’t know how it happened as we were not in the system doing anything, but somehow one of the settings on one of our new Multiplus 3k Inverters just switched itself to off. Something so simple, yet you had to go thru some screens and menus to get there……and being new to us ….. just never even occurred to us that it could just turn itself off in the settings rather than trip a breaker. Technology….lol! We’ll eventually get it all figured out ….. hopefully without more incidents like this one though.

 Thanks again,

Vicki and Mark

Opened up the box with the transfer switch and found one of the two switches shown below appear to be tripped. Mark says it will not easily move to reset by hand and he is unsure if he should try to force it. Any advice? 
 

2015 Newmar Ventana LE DP currently in park, 30 amp site with earlier incidents of pedestal breaker tripping. No codes on PI EMS protector. We have an extensive solar install almost identical to Chad’s system with the same equipment if you have read his information. Which if it was working correctly, should have provided any additional power we needed over the 30 amp instead of tripping the breaker. But we scaled back on items anyway and the breaker hadn’t tripped the rest of the day.

Come 10:00 pm and suddenly everything connected to an electrical outlet shut off. The overhead lights still work along with the furnace. The generator will run but still no power. We checked every breaker inside and out that we could find. Nothing had tripped. We reset the breakers. Nothing. The business that installed our system is evidently closed today as all we get is a recording when we call. 
Any suggestions on what to look at next? I thought this morning maybe the transfer switch but have no idea how to troubleshoot that.

TIA,

Vicki 

As fulltimers we especially have a problem with this as we definitely don’t need more “stuff”. We have asked them to pay for some of our membership fees to various organizations we belong to. They also know which restaurants are our favorites and will get us gift cards for those or for the old stand by, Amazon. My daughter is good at sending along some small consumable items to go along with the GCs like fudge for dad and wax melts for me. Things that get used up and don’t take much space. 
 

Good luck. That’s a hard one to answer each year. 
Vicki

7 hours ago, palmeris said:

Card limits

To help prevent abuse and fraud, there is a $75 daily limit and a $300 weekly limit on all Pay With GasBuddy cards.

 

DH received an email from GasBuddy stating that due to the increase in fuel prices, the $75 daily limit has been increased to $100. He didn’t remember anything being mentioned about a change to the $300 limit. It helps when gassing up the Jeep but we pretty much stick with the TDS card for the motorhome. 
 

Vicki

18 hours ago, Chad Heiser said:

Yes you can run your dryer with a dual inverter system.  I’m assuming for the sake of this conversation your dryer is 240 volt (like mine).  The inverters have to be programmed properly on installation to get 240 volt from them.  Once the inverters are programmed this way, they will have the capability to produce 120/240 volt power regardless of the power source you are plugged into and also when you have no power source (inverting from the batteries).  (This is the way I will program my inverters.). When your inverters are programmed like this and your rig is plugged into a 50 amp (120/240 volt) power pedestal this power simple passes through the inverters and powers everything in the RV (like normal).  When your rig is plugged into a 30 amp, 20 amp or 15 amp power source, this power is passed through the inverter on line one (L1) and the inverter on line 2 (L2) will only invert from the batteries.  By doing this, the system is always capable of producing 240 volt power regardless of or independant of the power source.

Assuming you will not be programming your own inverters and assuming you have no desire to change the programming of your inverters on your own, the 120/240 capabilities will be there all the time.  There is a way to change this programming “on the fly” so that when you are plugged into something less than a 50 amp power pedestal both inverters can pass through shore power, but it takes a special interface device plugged into an inverter, a laptop, software and some knowledge of how to operate that software.  This is not something most end users want to do, so the functionality I described above is what you end up with.  There is no issue with this as the inverter that sees shore power (L1) will constantly charge the batteries while the inverter that does not see shore power (L2) draws from the batteries.

Thanks Chad for the thorough explanation on the programming/workings of the two inverters. We did actually find that our dryer is not actually 240 volt so is not that much of a concern. But we still have to know what we can run at the same time (ie: AC, appliances, etc) when we are off shore power as we do a lot of boondocking. 

Vicki

Hi Chad,

We are in the process of upgrading the solar on our new to us 2016 Newmar Ventana LE. We already have 10 - 100 amp Battle Born lithium batteries. We are having 2800 watts of panels installed along with the same Victron controller, shunt and the Cerbo and Touch GX that you have.

Where our system differs from yours is in the inverters. We only have 2 ACs (w/HP) so we are installing 2 Victron Multiplus 3000W inverters.  Would we be able to run our dryer on this? I know we can run both ACs, so I would think so, but I hadn’t thought about it until I read your post.

 TIA,

Vicki

We bought a refurbished Dyson from Dyson directly and saved quite a bit. It came with a 6 month warranty and looked brand new. Has worked flawlessly. Really like our Dyson cordless.

Vicki

When we switched to 17.5 wheels and tires, we ordered the wheels from etrailer and found a good deal on some Hercules tires from a truck/semi shop in Texas when we were staying at Livingston. We had the wheels shipped to their shop and they mounted the tires, balanced and installed them. 
Vicki

We stayed at Grand Ole RV Resort in Goodlettsville just north of Nashville (suburbs) on I-65 earlier this year. It had very good reviews and we were there for a few weeks so we definitely wanted somewhere nice. They have a restaurant onsite and even entertainment several evenings. 
Vicki

We occasionally use the Gas Buddy card but wouldn’t call the 3-5 cents discount substantial. If you use diesel the TSD Open Road card/app is a much better discount. If not, Gas Buddy is better than nothing for gasoline.

Vicki

1 minute ago, vermilye said:

I got mine electronically on February 22.

 

We got ours on the 22nd also (direct deposit) which was actually about two weeks or less  after the IRS started accepting returns. I can’t remember the exact date our return was accepted.

Vicki

Indiana is now vaccinating those 60 and over so we have appointments for our first shots on Friday. Mark is getting his through the VA and mine is at a health clinic.

Vicki