I remember starting our full time RV life thinking we had it all figured out--that we were prepared for anything because we watched videos, did research, and planned for quite a while.

Boy, were we wrong! Below are the things you don't see in most videos that few people are prepared for.

Roof Leaks

In our case, we redid the roof of our rig, let it stand the ultimate test--two Manitoba winters in minus forty degree weather--and it never leaked once after we redid it. We set out on our new adventures and everything was great...until five months later when we were sitting stationary on Vancouver Island during their rainy season.

All of a sudden, we were waking up one morning to hear a small waterfall. Turns out, while we were sleeping all snuggly in our beds and listening to the rain plummeting down over our roof, glad we were warm and not outside in the torrential downpour, water was accumulating on our roof and slowly making it's way through it to where my kids keep their books. By morning, that slow accumulation had pooled in their cupboard and formed a small waterfall onto my son's bed.

Let me tell you, that is NOT how I imagined getting woken up in the morning! Instead of turning the generator on to make coffee, I was trying to save books and mopping up water from the shelf with towels.

Upon further inspection, my son's clothing cupboards on that same side, our office supply cupboard, and our bathroom cupboard on that side had the same issue--although to this day, we are still not sure if it was humidity build up in the bathroom cupboard, or an actual leak.

We cleared out all of the aforementioned cupboards so nothing else would get wet, forcing us to navigate a hamster maze of our items which were lying everywhere at this point, as we have a small rig. We laid down towels everywhere and waited out the rainy weather. The first nice day, my husband climbed up onto the roof with leak seal and sprayed the crap out of everything and anything that could possible leak. Problem fixed.

leak seal, no more water, fixed the roof

While we were very lucky to have leak seal on hand, it was black and our roof is white, but who's that tall anyway...right? hahaha!

Awnings Flying Off

While you may be very familiar with this one, I'm sure you haven't heard this incident told quite this way before.

We were parked at Horseshoe Lake in British Columbia--a true diamond in the rough! Previously, I had mentioned that it was getting a little windy and that my gut was telling me perhaps we should take in the awning because it was moving quite a bit. After my husband reassuring me it would be okay, I thought perhaps I was paranoid so I climbed into the shower.

Upon stepping one foot out of the tub, I heard, "Oh no!" In that second--words I would normally assume were uttered because my kids did something they weren't supposed to do--I knew something much worse was about to happen. I threw a towel around me and walked the five feet from the tub to the kitchen window to see a giant gust of wind had kicked up and threw the awning off the ground, lifting it up over top of our rig. My husband was hanging onto it for dear life!

Naturally, the towel was my least concern as I hit the floor so as not to get impaled by the awning on its descent over the other side of our rig. Let me tell you, vinyl flooring does not make for a very cushy landing in panic mode.

hit the deck, fall on floor, don't get impaled

I can't remember a time I ever got dressed so quickly, ran outside with a knife, climbed a ladder that had a trash can strapped to it, and sat on top of something I wasn't sure would remain beneath me instead of teaching me a parachuting lesson.

There have been many times prior and since where my gut feeling has been strong about things, but I was sure I was overreacting once my husband expressed his feelings about the same issues. Our lesson learned here--always trust your spouse's gut feelings!

spouse's gut feelings, listen to your gut, instincts

Gray Water Back Ups

For anyone who has ever stayed in a campground that has water hookups and a dump station instead of sewer hookups, chances are you have experienced this.

We decided to stay at such a campground to get a bunch of laundry done so we wouldn't have to keep finding somewhere to empty our tanks. We have a washer in our rig, so after our third load of laundry, and me not watching the water consumption doing dishes, our rig got a VERY foul odor in it.

Upon searching high and lo trying to figure out the smell's source, we discovered that our gray tank had backed up into our tub. Now normally, this wouldn't be a huge deal--go dump and problem solved, right? Wrong!

We use our shower for storage when not in use. There were two pails, two jugs of water, and a heater in the bottom so we couldn't see how much water had accumulated until we started removing things from the tub.

Upon doing so, we discovered three inches of water in the bottom of the tub and were convinced the heater was ruined (it wasn't, we got lucky). Because everything was set up for us to stay there a few days, and evening was approaching, we didn't have time to tear down and go dump. Thank goodness this particular campsite also had a mobile sanitation dump that you could call and someone would come empty your tanks at your site--for a fee of course.

Make sure if you have a washer, or if you are a family who showers a lot or runs a lot of water that you keep track of your consumption. We now do dishes and shower into plastic tubs and dispose of the water after so as not to overflow our tank! Believe me when I say you will only do this once. The smell can only be compared to eggs rotting on a hot summer's day.

water backup in an RV smells like rotting eggs

Clearance Is Huge

If you're like us, we didn't stop to think about the clearance of our rig, as it was meant to be driven on roads. We found out many times the hard way that having more clearance IS a necessary thing, especially if you are driving on hilly or mountainous terrain, or if you are planning to go onto a ferry or boondock off the highway.

The first time the bottom of our rig dragged on the ground, we were still at our house. Turns out the slightest short incline, like the one we had to drive over to get onto our driveway, would cause the bottom of the back of our rig to dip drastically and drag on the ground.

RV dragging, RV bottoming out, inclines and RV's

After that, we found ourselves in a tight spot at my mother-in-law's wherein my husband had to drive up an inclined driveway. This one was scary. Our whole back end from the tires back was on the ground! I remember screaming "stop" and panic setting in as I didn't know how he was going to back out again.

I covered my ears as I heard scraping metal, imagined having no water tanks, and imagined the hitch flying off, hitting me square in the forehead, and knocking me out cold behind the rig! So sure that this was the end of our grand adventures before they even began, I had started to think of ways to reattach a rig that had been ripped in half so we could still live the dream life we wanted to! (sadly, not kidding)(learning to weld was in the mix haha)

We got out of that sticky situation and were much more cautious after that; however, sometimes the bottom of your rig scraping is sadly unavoidable. We bottomed out again on town roads with steep inclines, really bumpy railway tracks, getting on and off ferries--one of which we had to completely miss because it was too steep an incline on the other side for us--and going down some logging roads with potholes.

Make sure you know your clearance. We got lucky. Many situations could have been a LOT worse than they were!

Sani Dump Websites

We were excited when we discovered the Sani Dump website. The thought of having all dump stations at the tip of our fingertips as we travelled along was a very settling thought...until we went to the first few.

The first one we ever went to was mapped at the wrong campground entirely. We ended up driving down a back gravel road to get there and arrived to find it was the wrong campground. They wouldn't let us into the front gate at all...on a dead end road.

So there we sat in our thirty four foot rig, wondering how we were going to turn around to drive back the other way. In the end, we had to pull an Austin Powers, narrowly missing a very friendly meeting with the ditch behind and beside us, to get turned around.

Several times we drove to where the website said there was a dump site to find none. When we were lucky enough and the website was correct, we found a car parked on top of the dump site as a parking spot.

Needless to say, after several attempts, we relied on freecampsites.net for dump stations after that.

There are so many other things that come up while on the road. It's nearly impossible to ever account for every single thing that could happen. These were just some of our encounters that we thought we had all figured out before starting our new life as full time RVers.

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