RV Horror Stories: Real RVers Share Real RV Fails

0:00 This week on the RV podcast. RV horror stories. Real RVers are gonna share some of their most embarrassing fails and their operator errors. And is it right for state parks to give priority camping reservations and special rates only to in state residents? And getting rid of condensation stains on RV shades. There is an easy solution to make them look like you again. Hello, everybody. I'm Mike Wendland, and this is my lifelong traveling companion and my bride, Jennifer. Hi, everybody out there. What happened to summer? Well, just like everything else, it doesn't stay forever.

0:43 Seems like we're, we were just talking about the Memorial Day weekend camping, and then the 4th July, and now we're Labor Day's gone. Labor Day's gone. But I don't think we're disappointed. We're not disappointed because, fall is just our absolute favorite time to camp. And the parks and the campgrounds, you know, they're they're less filled. The weather is more comfortable. And the bugs are on their way out. And, plus, there's fall colors. Mhmm. And speaking of fall colors, we noticed the trees in Maine and now the trees in Michigan. They're, starting to turn as well. And no doubt, the seasons are changing.

1:25 In fact, I should point out we just updated our annual leaf peeping map. We do a post on RV lifestyle every year about this time. And we give you, interactive maps, and you can plan your fall color adventures that shows you where the leaves are expected to, to show up, with, burst of color first. One map we have is from the smokymountains.com, and the other is from hip camp. And, we'll put, you can find that. We'll put a link to it in the show notes below, but they're right on our rvlifestyle.com blog. So we should tell them we got a big tour coming. We do, and we would love it if you joined us on the Great River tour, September 5th to October 8, 2025.

2:10 A year from now. Now over the weekend, we announced that we are definitely doing another fantasy RV tour next year for our lifestyle, RV Lifestyle followers. We just came back from the Maritimes, and we said that we had such a great time. Fantasy RV put together a tour just for RV Lifestyle followers. And, we said we'll we'll we'll probably do another one, and we are, in those states, like Jen said, September 5th through October 8th. So what we're gonna do is we're gonna do the Mississippi River, We're gonna start in Northern Minnesota where the Mississippi River begins. You can literally walk across it, and we'll follow it all the way down to New Orleans where it flows into the Gulf of Mexico.

2:54 So we're gonna explore the river's amazing history, the great river towns. And, we're gonna hang around the different, the banks of the river, both sides of it, learning all about it. We're gonna hear some great music, and we're gonna have some good food and experience the culture. And you can get all the details at rvlifestyle.com/rivertour. Now if you prefer, we'll put a link in the description below because many of you will listen to this podcast as you're driving. Come join us on the great river tour next year. Alright. We're gonna have, some fun here with the conversation we recorded around the campfire and our conversation of the week in just a moment.

3:37 But first, we wanna talk about an opportunity, for you to, avoid those high service costs when you have to have repairs onto your RV. Do it yourself. I know that sounds kind of daunting to a lot of us, but through the National RV Training Academy, there are a couple of courses, online courses that you can do. They're taught by Todd Henson. We've had Todd on the podcast many times as guests before, and, he's just so made complicated things so easy to understand. But if you can learn to do some repairs yourself, no more long waits at dealers for maintenance, and it can literally save you 1,000 of dollars over the years. You will also get the confidence to diagnose and solve, repair issues because that's exactly what the National RV Training Academy does. They train RV techs around the country.

4:32 Now there are 2 courses, and if you buy, either one of these, you get lifetime access to it. There are, 2 of them, the RV maintenance and repair course. We recommend that to every RVer. The other is the RV owner pro course, which goes into a little more detail. Here's the thing, though. You only have 2 weeks to save 35%. They've, set up a deal just for our followers, the RV Lifestyle followers, those listening to this podcast or watching this podcast, if you go to rvlifestyle.com/rvtech35, rvlifestyle.com/rvtech35, you'll be able to get a 35% discount. It's only good till September 14, 2024.

5:20 You need to use this and you need to use the code, but this is such a great thing to have. You know, I consider this like owning a home or having a car. There's certain maintenance that you have to do, and you feel helpless when things happen to your your RV, and you think, man, I should be able to figure this out. And by taking a course or or both courses, I just think it would, help you. You wouldn't be at the mercy of trying to get it into a dealer or trying to get a mobile tech to come out wherever you are in preventative work so that these things don't happen to you when you're in the middle of nowhere. So, again, we can get 35%. The cost is always already very reasonable. We can get you 35% off if you order by September 14th. You know what? I'm thinking about the people that are handy. You know, they're good with cars and engines and all this sort of thing, maintenance. Anyway, they get a taste of all this, and they'll be able to figure it out on their own. And who knows? Some of them might wanna become a mobile tech. Yeah. Yeah.

6:21 That's that's a really it's it's a huge field. Lots of opportunity. Alright. Go check out the relay look in the description below. We'll put a link so you can, you can look up these courses. Time now for our RV conversation of the week, and, this is gonna be fun. You know, all of us have done things that we wish we hadn't done. And, when everybody sits around, well, oh, what up you? Let me tell you about what I did. Oh, man. It makes you feel better about yourself and you feel closer to them, you know, you're kind of brothers and sharing there. And that's what happened here. We were up I think we were up on Prince Edward Island Mhmm. With all these folks up in the Canadian Maritimes, and we were all hanging out around the campfire having a great time. Somebody did and says, well, I did this once. And they said, oh, yeah. Well, I did this. And, yes, I even share my own, but it was, it was very educational. It was also pretty funny.

7:18 In in retrospect, a lot of mistakes are pretty funny, but they're also very educational. So, take a listen to the, conversation of the week about whether RV horror stories, but let's see what we can all learn from them. I was in Syracuse. I'm driving home, and all of a sudden, my GPS is taking me down one finger leg and up the next finger leg. And then down one finger leg and up the next finger. I said, what that? Why can't I go home on the throughway the way I came? This is gonna take forever. I finally figured out that I had accidentally set my GPS to bike instead of car.

8:04 Thanks. Don't be there. So Sherry and I had just started work camping. We were working in a 5 star luxury resort. This place was 1st class. Most of the rigs were a $1,000,000 up. They had to buy their lots and very nice. So we wanted to impress some of our our coworkers and some of the people we had met, and a buddy and I had been out and caught a whole bunch of crappie, so we were having a fish fry. And, of course, we're getting ready and Sherry said, oh, you need to dump the black tank. It's full. Oh, Jesus. So I was dumping the black tank. Well, of course, somebody shows up early and gets talking to me, and I had turned on the flush. And I got busy and forgot all about it.

8:47 Next thing I know, we're standing outside and this is Florida, So the air conditioner's on full blast, and it's constantly dripping off the edge of the roof. All at once, it just starts pouring out. I'm like, man, it's not that humid. Why is that water just running out of there? About that time, Sherry comes flying out of the RV. Tim, you forgot the black tank. So it had flooded just a little bit in the bathroom, but most of it went out the top of the vent stack and was running off of the roof. Of course, now several of our good friends at this place we're trying to impress are here watching. Everybody got a great laugh out of that. This tool here is going to help me because I still have a Cirrus truck camper sitting here tonight.

9:33 Because we were just cooking a can of soup, heating it up on on the propane stove, which has a glass top. And I had taken the soup and poured it off, and I thought I had turned it off, but I had turned it to low. It's the other way. So it had gone so you couldn't barely see it. So Raj closes the lid, or maybe I did, and he's doing dishes. And we have a absorbent dish mat. Dish mat. Dish mat. He put that on top, and he puts the frying pan on top, and all of a sudden, smoke is coming everywhere. We now have a beautiful c of the letter c from a frying pan of red foam stuck on our glass countertop, which Goobie Gone did not take off and so which let me the razor blade to see if I could scrape off. So if you've ever done that, ever put your lid down and it was too hot, let me know how you cleaned off your glass top.

10:36 The only early on in our RV adventures, we were kinda out just doing, short trips, 2, 3 day trips. And so we're in a state park in Texas, parked close to, another couple, and they had been real helpful. We've been chatting back and forth with them. Well, we were, I was kinda climbing around. Susan had been worried about mice getting in. And so we we saw something on YouTube that somebody had said, oh, well, you've gotta look at where the gray tank goes up in. There's a there's it's open up there. You gotta put foam in that to foam it up. So I bought some of that expanding polyurethane foam, and so I figured I'd put that in there.

11:23 And so I crawled down underneath the RV and I'm laying on my back and I've got my foam container out and she's already shaking her. And so I I shoved the nozzle up in there and I'm blowing foam up in, you know. I'm thinking it goes in and expands and gets hard, you know. This is gonna work great. So I'm I'm putting it in there. I can't really see where it's going, but it's going up there somewhere. And then what happened was this big glop of foam comes down and goes plop on the ground right beside me. So I thought, well, that's a waste. So I grabbed onto it, and I'm shoving the foam back up in there.

12:04 And Susan says, do you want me to help? And so I said, no. No. I got it. And so I I finished up, and so I got out, and I got foam all over my hands. Right? And it I'm rubbing it, and it's it's not coming off. And I'm thinking, how do you get this stuff off? So I'm looking at the the so I went inside and, ran my hands under soap and water. I figured that'll work. No. That won't come off. So then I read on the bottle what you're supposed to do, and I got as far as saying, well, you're supposed to use nail polish remover. Yeah. So you're getting nail polish remover. No. Don't have any nail polish. So I'm talking this by now, then my neighbor comes over and he wants to know what I'm up to.

12:45 And so I'm telling him what I'm doing. He said, oh, I don't know about that. And so then they go off someplace. Well, I find out later on that that, I don't know if you know what's in that expanding foam. It's super glue, basically. Oh. It's the same stuff. It does not come off. The way you cure it and get it to set is you get it wet. It'll come off with toluene, but only right away. Later on, it doesn't come off. So how do you get it off? Who's the The humidity for You don't. It never comes off. It doesn't. The skin has to come off. I've already seen the skin peel off.

13:31 I peeled foam. It was like my hand was inside of a plastic glove. And I peeled that stuff off for weeks afterwards. I don't know if there's any mice getting in there, but they they're welcome to it. I'm not going back down under there to do that again. The stories you guys have told have had some humor to it. I didn't find this funny at all when it happened to me. But we were trying to park. We just arrived at a campsite and it was raining. And we were relatively new. I'm pulling the 5th wheel. The roads are kinda small and tight and the campground was pretty full. And there was a camper, trailer hooked to a Ford F150 pickup that was out on an edge campsite.

14:19 And the road, the way they have it set up at this campsite, you go it's directional like most places. So you go in front where you check-in and you make a curve around. Well, I had done that. She checked us in and I was coming around, and a person was going the wrong way, pulling the camper in the rain. So I wanted to be a nice guy, so I stopped. And I was hoping that they would move on up and move around and get out of my way. But it was raining, and they chose not to do that. So I said, alright. I will squeeze through there. So I was relatively new to pulling that 5th wheel and it kinda gets off to one side when you make a sharp corner.

15:05 And I did that, and I I was moving along. I cleared the person that was in my way, and I felt like I hit a bump or something. I wasn't sure what it was. So I kept trucking and moving down, and I dragged my camper across the front of that f 150 and moved it was hooked to their camper, and they were in their camper. I moved the front of that f 150 probably 6 or 8 feet from where it was at there off the corner, and then I just went down and parked. It was like a hit and run through the campground. I didn't know what else to do. They were not happy about me disturbing their sleep or whatever they were doing in there.

15:50 Oh my god. Oh my god. We'd ordered our camper, went up to pick it up in January or February, wasn't it? February. February. And so we drove back to Lafayette, Indiana and had liquid springs put on it. So they were gonna keep it a few days, went home, came back, got the camper, started down a 2 lane road, and got some speed built up. And then I don't know if you put your foot on the brake or No. It just It's all over. Bouncing bouncing. Anyway, the hood of our, engine went forward. So you couldn't see anything. Anything at all. It popped up. Popped up. It wasn't latched. Wasn't latched from Springs. So there was no shoulder, no place to pull off on this 2 lane road. So he looked in the rearview mirror, says, I think I can get out. Well, the time he got out, there was a school bus coming the other way. And so luckily, he got out in time and got it latched down.

16:44 We got home safely. But it was a scary few minutes. All of my really big RV problems come when I'm hitching up or unhitching. And almost all of them start because somebody comes and talks to me while I'm doing that, which is really the rudest thing you can do to an RVer, because if you don't do things right, you're gonna forget something. So we're at the we had just bought our Montana, and we are at the Montana owners rally. And the Montana people, you know, they are all Montana owners. They're all experts in this. This is my first trip out. And I'm I'm coming in, and I'm hooking it up, and all these guys are standing around with the beer and they're hanging, uh-huh.

17:29 Let's see how he does back in this thing. So I I got it in, and I'm hooking it, unhooking it, and people come up and start talking to me. Oh, we hear you about a Montana, and it's great. And I forgot to basically, put the tail on the truck down. And when I pulled away, the jacks had not had been pulled up a little bit, and the whole thing went kaboom, but the jacks caught it. It saved that much room. And they all were looking at me and watching this go and they're all going, you know, like this.

18:10 And I heard one guy said, well, he'll learn that lesson. And I did. Don't talk to anybody when you are unhooking or hooking up if you have a tow of them. Don't talk to them. And, don't feel bad about being rude because they're the ones that are rude because they get you off track. I've got another black tank story. It's the first time I'm out and I'm gonna empty the black tank. I've had a harvest host or or a a boondockers welcome, never been in one before. And on the way out, the fella says, you know, we can empty that tank right here because I had never done it before. I said, yeah, I guess so. I'll pull right over here, we'll hook it right up and everything will be good.

18:53 So this ties into what Mike says. He decides to stand there and talk to me while I'm doing it. And I've never done it before. And I've gotten all the advice from watching RV lifestyle and the fact that these things are pretty easy to use and they work pretty well. So I'm I've got it out. I'm pretty confident. I'm gonna hook it up right over here. And, again, the fella's watching me. I'm getting a little nervous about it. What's gonna happen, not having done it. So I got it all set to go. I turned it on, and I see this snake coming out, which it kinda that's kinda how it works. It was getting bigger and bigger. The hose.

19:35 The hose. Yes. And, it it suddenly dawned on me. I hadn't take the cap on the end off. And maybe one of the worst part is I know someday I'm gonna do it again. So that happened. So somebody I know did the same thing Yeah. At one of our own rallies last year. And, that cap is under pressure now because you turned it on. The cap is under a great deal of pressure. You take the cap off, what happens? So I'm there, and I'm I'm got a lot of trepidation about taking this cap off. I I I see the hose is twice as big as it used to be in diameter.

20:17 And that means it's filled with stuff. Stuff. With foam. In fact, I learned from now, from that point forward or or a similar point forward, I'm gonna do the gray tank first and make sure everything is just great before I do the other one. So anyway, I'm there. I'm going, okay. I take it back out. I got the cap. I go, oh, man. What's going on? And he's still standing there. So yeah. And, I didn't make too much of a mess. The cap explosively came off and went down the pipe. And, I was kinda hoping that no one other than the fellow watching me had seen it and, hoping I weren't gonna do it again.

21:01 And he and he felt sorry, and he gave me a red cap to put back on there. So I still have the red caps that sort of reminds me about it. And I also have labels all over the place that says take cap off. Take cap off. Do great tank first. Do great tank at least a little bit. Get everything going good, and, life will be a lot better. This is not embarrassing for me quite as much as it was for the other person, but we had our small camper van, and the sandhill cranes nest in Northern Indiana on their way back to Florida. So we'd gone up there and, got in late at night because we watched the cranes. It was dark. I had to use the restroom really badly. So, while Dave was registering us, I go to the women's restroom. It's also hunting season. I open the door and there's a naked man standing there right in front of me. And he looked at me, and I looked at him, and shut the door, and ran out.

22:03 So always be aware of where you're taking your showers. I had an f 250 crew cab with a 38 foot 5th wheel. We pulled in the West Virginia campground not far from the state fairgrounds for the state fair show. And there was a guy that had a pickup truck that was sticking out a little bit further than I thought it was. So I said to Holly, oh, just pull the pin on the 5th wheel so it, does the extension. Well, I didn't pull it far enough. So when I started backing in, it cruncled the back of my cab on my truck on the back corner. So and poked a little hole in the fiberglass on the cab of the 5th wheel. So And Oh.

22:50 You didn't wanna be there. Yeah. He was salty about that for weeks. This is not, a nightmare horror story. It's just a that's a camping story. It was fall a couple of years ago, and we were going to, park in Georgia where Jack's sister was gonna go with her new camper. They bailed at the last minute, so we went on our own. Beautiful park. Former Army Corps of Engineers Park. It's now a county park and, right on the water, on a lake, and it's fall, and the leaves are changing. We have this big, nice, lovely, wooded lot, and it's just beautiful. The leaves are falling, all these oak trees around.

23:32 And what did not occur to us, as charming as we thought all of this was, is that the acorns do not stop falling just because it's quiet hours. And so they're falling all night onto our camper with great velocity and, and, forward motion and just, you know, waking us up every single time they hit our camper. And so then, the wind stopped and we, we're there for one more night and we had forgotten about the acorns. Right. And so we, packed up. We're getting ready to leave on Sunday morning. As we drove out, the first stop sign, I put on the brakes, and acorns cascaded over my windshield all down the windshield. It was like, oh, gee.

24:16 Well, we're not alone. Right? Don't make these mistakes. Yeah. We can all share, and the best way to handle it is to laugh. Yep. Alright. Endeler, social media buzz time now from Wendy Boyer. Wendy keeps track of, all the hot issues most talked about on our various social media and RV lifestyle community groups. And, she's got some, some pretty interesting topics that we're getting a lot of buzz this past week. Hi, everybody. Over in our RV lifestyle community general discussion space, we had a recent question from Loretta about RV covers. Now Loretta and her husband, they recently purchased a 2024 Grand Design Reflection 5th wheel, and they plan to be on the road from November through April.

25:02 But the rest of the year, they plan to keep their rig on their property in Ohio, where temperatures can fluctuate between 40 95 degrees during that time. They made a cement pad. The cement pad has some trees and shade over it. They're thinking of getting a cover, but they wonder, under these circumstances, would you recommend it? Well, lots of great tips here. One was from Randall. He said that they used to use the cover, but they found that every 2 to 4 years, they would have to replace it because of tears. It costs about $150 a pop to replace it each time, and so they found building a carport. No. Only worked better, but made sense financially for them. Michael, he showed a picture of his travel trailer all neatly covered and wrapped, and he said it worked great for the northeastern winters.

25:46 But he would be concerned about it being a mildew trap during humidity in the summers, which was a very good thought. And then, Brendan Mark, they said they used to have a cover, but they found the wind or tree branches would rip it. So if Loretta and her husband end up going with the cover route, make sure you get one that's thicker so it will last longer. So lots of good things there for Loretta to think about. And then also in our RV lifestyle community in the travel trips into our space, we had a post that was so much fun to read. It was from r and t, and they wrote, we just retired, and we're heading out for an RV trip to the Outer Banks, and they were just celebrating with the group. So lots of people were like, congratulations on your retirement. Have a great time. Way to go. And then they shared some pictures of, the 2 of them enjoying themselves, living their best life. I mean, there they are parasailing. 1 of them is windsurfing. 1 of them is with their really cute golden dog named Tucker.

26:41 And these sorts of posts are so much fun to read and just builds community, which is what we're trying to do there in the RV lifestyle community. So congratulations on that retirement. And then over in our Facebook group, we had a post that got people talking from Heather. Now Heather had just booked 3 night reservation in Wisconsin State Park for camping in 2025. And when she did this, she noticed there was a new charge, a nonresident charge, $15 a night. And she wondered if anyone else knew anything about this. Apparently, this new charge was going into effect January 1, 2025, and she looked back, and she's never had to pay that before when she camped at a Wisconsin State Park.

27:22 And she looked, and she's like, you know, this is adding up. You know? I'm paying the fee to camp per night there. I'm paying the state park fee. I'm paying the reservation fee. And now for 3 nights, there's an extra $45 charge because I don't live in Wisconsin. And so she just wondered what people thought. And many people chimed in saying, wow. That's a lot of money. And, of course, more and more states are getting into this. They're having this 2 tier price system. We're seeing it in Oregon. We're seeing it in Massachusetts. In fact, for Massachusetts, Alice said she was recently looking at camping at a state park there, and the charge was $17 a night for a Massachusetts state resident. Same spot, nonresident.

28:03 The charge was $54. So her family decided not to camp at that campground, and people, said the same thing's happening in Idaho. That's another place where the the fee is really high. Several Washington state residents said they no longer camp at the state parks in Idaho because of this. Kristen said it costs $40 a night for the spot if you live in Idaho and out of state resident, same spot, same exact same spot, $80 a night to camp there. And so this discussion went back and forth. You know, some people said state tax dollars pay for state parks and state park campgrounds. So it's only fair that maybe like Florida, you get a head start on your reservation, or maybe you pay a little bit more when you don't live there. But some people were saying this price difference is so steep.

28:52 It's keeping it's gonna be a deterrent, and maybe that's gonna hurt tourism in the area. So it was interesting. Wonder what you think. Do you think that this tube price system is fair? Have you run into it out there? Sometimes the difference is really steep. So just curious what what people's opinions are. And, that's it for me. I'm Wendy Boyer, and I'll see you over at the RV Lifestyle Community or Facebook group. Woah. There was lots of good sharing. Lots of things to get the blood flowing in people. Yeah. What do you think about this state park issue? State parks giving preferential treatment to their own residents. I don't like it, but I think the state parks have a right to do that if they want to because you know there's not enough places to camp.

29:40 And I can see why there a lot of people get set. Well, all these people from out of state, I mean, it's a slippery slope because all the states are gonna end up doing this. And as far as those who say, well, I'm just not gonna go there. Well, I don't think anybody's gonna miss you because it fills up. These that's half the problem. They fill up. So they're raising the prices. They hope to make a little extra money on it. But I wonder if all the locals are gonna fill up the parks. There's gonna be no room for any of the others because the locals took advantage of that special reservation, break that they get. Don't worry. They'll figure out a way to raise the rates for the locals because it you know, they gotta have the money. There's so much the expense of running these parks and then the feedback you get when people can't camp in their own state because all these other state people are camping there.

30:34 I mean, I don't know what the answer is other than more parks. And the state parks handed to them. You know, they they really need to upgrade the state parks. Most of them are wholly inadequate in terms of the infrastructure. So, if they can make a little extra money or if they have to raise fees to help make these parks come up to 2024, 2025 standards, all the more for it. In fact, I noticed, the place where we usually like to go every winter and camp, the Kwame Nang Falls State Park in Mhmm. Michigan's Upper Peninsula Yeah. It's closed again this winter. You're kidding. They didn't have it done? Well, they had that done. They did some upgrades to the washrooms and all of that stuff. But now they're doing more upgrades to the Hemlock campground where we camped and also the the one that's down, the lower one by the lower falls.

31:26 And, so they're close. They're doing more work. So 2 years in a row, you can't win or So in other words, if they'd left it charming with the rustic Well toilets. They're trying to make it better. Yeah. Yeah. But it's taken them, like, 10 years to do it. That's the way it is with government work. Right? Well Look at our roads. We never quite get them right, but there's a lot. But I feel really bad because we love winter camping. Now they did have a couple of spots open last winter, but it was they they closed a lot of them. For us to have a gathering because there just weren't enough. And now so there's still Yeah. There there's a There's still fixing. This is all around the country. State parks are trying to trying to upgrade. So And We're on your side, state parks. We really are. Yeah. We really are. And, you know, everybody out there that you don't like this because the price differentials are just huge sometimes.

32:13 You don't have to go to a state park. Okay. Question of the week. And this first one is is I'm gonna put it in your wheelhouse. And, this comes from Pamela, and she says, one of our travel trailer window blinds got stained from condensation in the window. Any suggestions on how to remove that stain other than replacing the whole blind from Pamela? Well, what seems to work best is it make a solution of warm water and mild dish soap or detergent, and you gently scrub the stain on your RV blinds with a sponge or a soft cloth and, to prep you know, to prevent the water damage, thoroughly dry it out. Don't, you know, don't roll it up when it's wet because then you'll have more trouble.

33:00 Using an abrasive material or harsh chemicals, you know, they may damage the Savory, take the color out, give you more grief, then help. So, just slow and gentle and dry and maybe use a dehumidifier. They have little dehumidifiers you could put in. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yes. And try to prevent all that condensation, but you do get it. In warm weather, you know, your air conditioner will help lower the humidity inside of it. So it's a reason to run it, actually. Mhmm. First thing on air before it cools it off is it gets all that humidity out. So alright. Now question number 2. I keep hearing people talk about needing to have a soft start for their RV. What is it, and do I really need it?

33:43 And this is from Jim. Well, Jim, we don't know what kind of an RV you have or how often you use it or how you use it, but many new RVs have soft start built into them. And so you first wanna check and see if you already have it. But most of the RVs on the road, don't, and you can get it as an option. We like to use a product called soft start up. It's so simple. You don't have to climb up on the roof or anything. You just plug it into the pedestal or your power source. And what it does is it lowers that spike of energy. When your air conditioner first starts up, there's this massive spike when the compressor turns on, and it drops that down, and then it runs steady. So you can actually run 2 air conditioners on 30 amps, because you don't have 2 of them spiking up like that.

34:37 Or if you wanna run maybe your microwave and one air conditioner on, 30 amps, it'll again, it's it's dropping that spike that the air conditioner causes. So it it all depends on how you use your RV. If you're always plugged into a campground, you know, you don't have to worry. But if you have 2 ACs and you do a lot of camping, like, we just were up in the Canadian Maritimes with our 5th wheel, which has 2 ACs, and that's a 50 amp unit. So of the 9 campgrounds that we were in, only a couple of them had 50 amp service, which normally would mean that I could only run 1 air conditioner, instead of both of them.

35:18 But with soft start up, I can run both of them on 30 amps. And it's so nice to have that that, because it was really hot out there. If you mooch stock at friend's house and, whether you have a 30 amp or whatever you have, for your your, RV, you can plug in to their say they have a plug in the garage, a 20 amp household plug in the garage or run an extension cord out the back or whatever it is of the house, you can run your air conditioner, with that small amount of household power because it drops the demand, the AC, when it starts up, causes.

36:02 If you're a boondocker and you might have a 2,000 watt generator and that on its own can't give you enough power to run the AC, if you use soft start up, it will allow you to run your AC on just a 2,000 watt, generator. So it's a really good thing to have. We can save you some money on it because we are, big fans of soft start up. And if you go to this address, you'll see you got yourself a pretty good discount, and you can learn more about it. Just go to softstartup.com/rvlifestyle. Softstartup.com/rvlifestyle.

36:42 It is a really great thing that we recommend, for all RVers. It really is great. Thank goodness that many of the manufacturers are making it standard now. So but, until it is, soft startup will work. It comes in a 30 amp version for those of you who have 30 amp RVs. It comes in a 50 amp for those of you with 50 amp RVs. So check them out. Alright. That's it for this week. We love your questions. We love your comments. And you can reach us anytime at mikeandjen@rvlifestyle.com. Happy trails.