What to Know Before Your First Long RV Trip

Contributed post.

Ready to embark on your first RV trip? It's an exciting time, but it's also a massive learning curve for your first trip out, too. There is a lot you need to learn before you even move away from home, never mind everything you'll need to learn as you go. That's all part of the fun for many people. 

However, a few tips can be beneficial to help you find your footing more easily and ensure you have the best experience, even if you feel like you don't know what you're doing.

What exactly do you need to know?

How to Size Up Your Rig

This is really important. You need to know the full size of your RV so you can plot your route and plan your stops. You also need a rig that can fit you comfortably for the length of your trip and the number of those traveling with you. 

This is true for those buying or even renting an RV.

A large Class A motorhome is genuinely comfortable as a full hook-up resort, but difficult at a small state park campground with tight turns and overhanging trees. While a smaller class B or C van conversion can fit most places and doesn't bring the difficulties a class A does. So before you even plan your trip, plan your rig size to make sure it's right for your needs and where you plan to go. You can use measurements from different campsites to help you choose and ask experts for their advice, not to mention diving into forums and chats with those more experienced with this lifestyle.

Where to Find Reliable Hook-ups

This is a must-know before you hit the road. You need to know where the best sites are that have what you need. Because not all sites are equal.

Electric-only sites leave you arranging water and waste manually, while some sites advertised as full hook-ups have low water pressure that's not really useful, and sewer connections in inconvenient places.

You can read reviews on sites such as Campendium, The Dyrt, or RV Trip Wizard to give you a more realistic picture of what is on offer and what to expect, so you can avoid choosing the wrong places. But finding well-run full hook-up RV sites can make all the difference to your trip, as they'll have the infrastructure to deliver what you need.

How to Manage Power on the Road

Power management is one of the skills that separates comfortable RV travel from stressful RV travel. You need to fully understand what your battery bank can support, how quickly your solar panels recharge it under real conditions, and what your generator is actually for. This can take a trip or two to fully grasp, as you need to see it in real time in practice to figure it out properly.

The biggest things you need to focus on are your air conditioning, electric heating, and the refrigerator. And knowing which of these can run on battery and which need shore power or the generator can prevent situations where you're rationing power because you ran the wrong things at the wrong times.