2024 Alpha Wolf 17CB Trailer – Our Goldilocks RV!

After our big beautiful Ram diesel truck gave up the ghost in May 2024 right before our summer RV travels, we sold our 2022 Genesis Supreme toy hauler and quit RVing. Just like that!

It was a bitter blow to turn our backs on a lifestyle we loved, and it took a few months to adjust to the idea. After all, we’d been just weeks away from a summer of RV travel adventures when we walked away from it all!

But we’d had it with modern diesel trucks and were ecstatic to trade in our now unreliable 2016 Ram 3500 for a trusty little gas powered 2021 Toyota Tundra. It couldn’t tow a big fifth wheel trailer, but it was perfect for hauling a tent.

Above all else, we didn’t want to make an investment in an RV until we’d thought it all over for a good long time. We were willing to think it all over for as many years as necessary!

Periodically we’d notice a trailer for sale on a street corner or we’d peruse the online ads for various types of rigs, but we had no inclination to do any serious RV shopping. The tent was just fine for now…or forever.

As time went on, though, we really began to miss having a rolling weekend getaway home. We began talking about small trailers the Tundra could tow comfortably. We even took a very long look at an ad for a barely used popup tent trailer. But for some reason we didn’t pick up the phone to go see it.

And then, on the very last day of 2024 — New Year’s Eve — everything changed.

2024 Forest River Alpha Wolf 17 CB Travel Trailer RV

Our cute new digs.

Mark had noticed an ad in Craigslist for a small, “NEW” and “NEVER USED” pre-owned trailer.

Huh? How could a “pre-owned” trailer be “new” and “never used” ??

He contacted the seller to see if it was a scam or if it was being sold by a dealership. No, it was for real and the seller was a private party who’d towed it home from the dealership a few months ago and never used it!

In Arizona there is no sales tax levied on private sales of used vehicles, so buying from a private seller would be very advantageous.

I shrugged it all off, though. I was standing by our strategy of waiting to get back into RVing…indefinitely, if need be!

But on New Year’s Eve morning, Mark said, “Hey, we’ve got nothing going on today. Why don’t we go kick the tires on that trailer I saw in Craigslist?”

Aw heck…it was a beautiful sunny day…why not?! So, the three of us hopped into the Tundra and drove 100 miles to take a look at it.

As soon as we stepped inside, we were smitten. It was perfect!!

The funny thing is we’d had no idea what “perfect” was before we opened the door of this trailer. But we knew this trailer was it when we saw it!

Within an hour we were signing papers.

We drove home in shocked silence. We’d had no idea when we woke up that morning that we’d be buying a trailer that afternoon. But we sure were getting 2025 off to a great start!

2024 Forest River Alpha Wolf 17C Travel Trailer RV & 2021 Toyota Tundra truck

One of our first shakedown cruises to Canyon Lake.

This trailer is a 2024 Forest River Arctic Wolf 17CB travel trailer. It’s 23’ long end-to-end and it has a single slide-out.

It has an open floor plan with a walk-around queen bed, super comfy wall hugging theater seat recliners, a small but functional kitchen and a big enough bathroom to do what ya gotta do comfortably.

It’s light and airy inside and has a pass-through basement compartment underneath.

Forest River Alpha Wolf 17CB Floor Plan

2024 Forest River Alpha Wolf 17CB. In our unit the dinette was upgraded to theater seats. More details here.

The biggest surprise, though, was that it has many features of a much larger trailer despite its small size.

It stands on two axles and has a cargo carrying capacity of nearly 2,400 lbs. Yet it’s GVWR (Gross Vehicle Weight Rating) is only about 7,000 lbs., a weight the Tundra can handle, even in the mountains (its “limit” is 12,000 lbs.). It can carry 81 gallons of fresh water, has a whopping 10 cubic foot refrigerator and a 15,000 btu air conditioner.

These large capacities are not at all typical in small and lightweight travel trailers!

Forest River Alpha Wolf 17CB Specs

Basic specs for the 2024 Forest River Alpha Wolf 17CB. More details here.

But was it really “new” and “unused” ?? The seller had an interesting story.

He’d owned a huge $200,000+ motorhome outright and wanted to get the cash out of it quickly. But he’d had trouble selling it. It occurred to him that it would be a whole lot easier to unload a super cheap and small travel trailer.

He’d been a car salesman at a big name dealership for 25 years, so buying and selling vehicles was old hat for him.

He traded in the motorhome at an RV dealership for one of the smallest brand new trailers on their lot. He got his cash out of the motorhome, and he also avoided paying sales tax because his net outlay on the transaction was negative (he’d already paid sales tax on the motorhome when he bought it).

All he had to do now was sell the little trailer.

2024 Forest River Alpha Wolf 17C Travel Trailer RV & 2021 Toyota Tundra truck

The Tundra and the Alpha Wolf 17CB make a nice and tidy little package.

We lucked out because he did all this during the holidays and he had more trouble selling the trailer than he’d expected. By the time we came along, he was so thrilled to get out from under it that he happily let it go for a song. We were equally thrilled to find such a cute little brand new trailer at a bargain basement price. Win-win!

Best of all, it’s homey and cozy but has enough space for the three of us to move around without crowding each other.

Come on inside and have a look around!

Welcome into our 2024 Forest River Alpha Wolf 17CB Travel Trailer RV

Welcome to our new digs!

When you walk in, the kitchen is on the right (passenger’s side), the bed is up front and the recliners are on the left. It’s surprisingly spacious!

Interior of our 2024 Forest River Alpha Wolf 17CB Travel Trailer RV

It’s an open but compact layout.

The kitchen is small but it has everything we need, including an oven, which we might use if we’re out for a while and Mark gets a hankering to make muffins or banana bread!!

The microwave is a wonderfully small low energy unit, drawing just 900 watts. It is hard to find a modern RV that has a low wattage microwave like this, as most are residential size and draw 1,500 to 1,800 watts. But this little guy is perfect for warming a small plate of food which is all we’ll ever use it for.

There are only two upper cabinets for our pantry and dishware. However, there are three full-size drawers for everything from eating and cooking utensils to office supplies like pens, paper, scissors and other goodies.

There’s also a very large cabinet under the sink that can hold 9 one-gallon bottles of drinking water. We like carrying our drinking water this way and storing it on the floor of a lower cabinet.

Kitchen in the 2024 Forest River Alpha Wolf 17CB Travel Trailer RV

The kitchen storage is modest but we’ve found it is plenty adequate for the three of us.

The bed is a walk-around queen. The mattress is 80 inches long but the platform under it is actually the length of a short queen (75 inches) or perhaps an inch or two longer. The mattress is firm enough that it doesn’t flex a whole lot at the foot end even though it is unsupported there.

“Walk-around” is a little bit of wishful thinking because the bedside tables (which are actually the ceiling and walls of the basement below) stick out far enough that it’s a challenge to tuck anything in along the top of the bed unless, perhaps, you’re over 6′ tall! But it’s good enough if you aren’t super fussy about how beautifully the bed is made!

There are closets on either side of the bed with hanging space for shirts and jackets. Above the head of the bed there are three doors that open to a single upper cabinet that runs the width of the trailer.

2024 Queen bed in the Forest River Alpha Wolf 17CB Travel Trailer RV

Each side of the bed has a closet and a drawer.
The cabinet above the bed runs the whole width of the trailer.

The earlier editions of this trailer a few years ago came with a window at the head of the bed. Many small trailers are built with windows like that and it really makes the interior bright and gives you a cool view of the stars while lying in bed.

However, some people—including a friend of ours—have had the nasty experience of a rock flying up and breaking the front window on their trailer when it was being towed. For our friend, the expense was covered by the trailer’s factory warranty, but the time lost to repairing their new trailer was frustrating.

The wall hugging theater seat recliners stole the show for us. If anything clinched the deal, it was when we both sat down in those chairs. They are super comfortable!!

For us, being able to relax completely in a comfortable recliner at the end of the day is really important.

We had recliners in our full-timing fifth wheel and we actually went through two different pairs of wonderful recliners during our 12 years of living in that RV. We loved being able to come home, kick back and put our feet up, and chat with each other about that day’s adventures or mess around on our laptops.

2024 Theater Seats Recliner in the Forest River Alpha Wolf 17CB Travel Trailer RV

The theater seat wall hugging recliners clinched the deal.

We didn’t have recliners in any of our other rigs besides our full-timing fifth wheel — not in our popup tent trailer which we owned before full-timing, nor in our 27’ Lynx travel trailer that we used for our first year of full-timing. We didn’t have recliners in either of the rigs we used part-time after ending our full-time travels either…these were a truck camper and a fifth wheel toy hauler.

And we really really missed them in those rigs!!

It is possible to sit sideways in a dinette and put your feet up in front of you, but it’s awkward and not relaxing. We did that in the truck camper and Lynx travel trailer, but it wasn’t great.

Our toy hauler’s Euro Chairs could recline a little bit, but they weren’t anything like truly cushy recliners. Toy hauler furniture has to be easily moved, and we tried replacing those chairs with gravity chairs and thick cushions, but they were hard to lock into position so they’d stay at the right reclining angle. The arms weren’t cushioned either and the chairs were uncomfortable for sitting with a laptop in your lap.

But these wall huggers in our new trailer are absolutely fabulous.

It’s embarrassing to say, but we almost feel like we’re towing around a pair of recliners. The rest of the trailer is just icing on the cake!

2024 Theater seat Recliners in the Forest River Alpha Wolf 17CB Travel Trailer RV

We’ve sat in a lot of recliners and these are among the most comfortable!

We aren’t the only ones who love the recliners. Buddy loves them too, especially my side.

Fortunately, the bed is a perfect height for him to spread out and still be part of the scene with us near his eye level. So there’s a place for each of us to relax.

2024 Sharing the Recliners in the Forest River Alpha Wolf 17CB Travel Trailer RV

Buddy claims my side of the twin recliners.

Dog on the Recliners in the 2024 Forest River Alpha Wolf 17CB Travel Trailer RV

“Mine… Don’t even think about it!”

As you can see, the kitchen is compact. However, it works better than the L-kitchen did in the big fifth wheel toy hauler. There’s a flip down top for the stove and a slotted insert for the sink that extends the counter space so we can stand side by side and not get in each other’s way.

2024 Forest River Alpha Wolf 17CB Travel Trailer RV Kitchen

We can maneuver side by side without crowding each other

Hmmm…Buddy wants to show you what’s in the bathroom!

Who's there in the 2024 Forest River Alpha Wolf 17CB Travel Trailer RV

“Hi Dada! Can we come in too?”

There is a big stall shower, toilet and vanity. It’s funny, not all stall showers are the same. This one has a long wide shelf for soap, shampoo, razors, etc., that’s very convenient. It also seems larger than some other stall showers.

Bathroom in the 2024 Forest River Alpha Wolf 17CB Travel Trailer RV

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There are two things in the trailer that gave us pause, though. But we decided they weren’t deal breakers and thought we might actually appreciate them in the long run.

One is that gargantuan 10 cubic foot 12 volt refrigerator. Sure, plenty of RVs have full size 110 volt residential fridges that are 18 to 22 cubic feet. But we’ve always had a propane fridge that was 8 cubic feet or less, and even though one had to be replaced, they’ve worked well enough and not put any demands on our solar power system.

We like to boondock and were off grid about 98% of the time when we were full-timers. An electric fridge will require a lot of solar power to support it. So, we’ll have a much bigger solar power system than any we’ve had before, yet we have less roof space than ever before too!

The other thing we weren’t crazy about is the “instant” hot water heater. I had an “instant” hot water heater in a liveaboard sailboat in the mid-1990s, and all I can say is that we never had hot water at the kitchen sink even though it was located just two feet away.

You had to waste precious water while it ran cold until it finally heated up, and if you turned the faucet on and off while you did dishes or took a shower, it wasted even more water as it went from cold to hot every time you turned the faucet back on. Frankly, I hated that thing.

While we would have been perfectly happy with an 8 cubic foot propane refrigerator and a 6 gallon hot water heater, that’s not how this trailer or many other 2024/2025 small trailers are being built.

So, we decided to take a “wait and see” attitude…and hope we could fit enough panels on the roof to satisfy the fridge and hope that “instant” hot water systems have improved over the last 30 years!

Let’s head outside again and have a look at the exterior once more.

We got a lovely shot of the trailer at sunset and then another at sunrise!

2024 Forest River Alpha Wolf 17C Travel Trailer RV

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2024 Alpha Wolf 17CB

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We feel a little Like Goldilocks and the three bears with this trailer! When she entered their house, the papa bear’s porridge was too hot, the mama’s too cold and the baby bear’s porridge just right. Then when she sat it their chairs, the papa bear’s chair was too hard, the mama bear’s was too soft but the baby bear’s chair one was just right!

Since we moved out of our full-timing fifth wheel back in 2020, we’ve tried several different types of RVs.

The truck camper turned out to be too small and cramped (among other things).

The toy hauler ended up being too big and ungainly (among other things).

But this new Alpha Wolf 17CB travel trailer may be just right.

We’ve taken it on a few shakedown cruises and have MUCH to report about how those went.

Hint: It wasn’t until the THIRD shakedown cruise that all the systems were fully operational (YIKES!). We even had to cut the second journey short and head home earlier than planned because of a catastrophic failure!! (YIKES AGAIN!!). But we’re still smiling about this trailer because it’s just right!

We’ll have more on our shakedown cruise (mis)adventures coming up!

2024 Forest River Alpha Wolf 17CB Travel Trailer

Our second shakedown cruise was fun but had to be cut short!!

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Reese Goose Box Review: 20K Gen 3 TESTED + How to Hitch

This page is a review of the Reese Goose Box 20k Gen 3. We’ve used ours for over a year and tested it thoroughly towing our 15,000 lb. Genesis Supreme toy hauler over 2,000 miles of varied terrain that included mountains, back roads, interstates, switchbacks and dirt roads. If you’re curious how to hitch and unhitch a Reese Goose Box, we’ve included some tips and tricks we’ve found make it as easy or easier than a traditional fifth wheel hitch!

This hitch is essentially a replacement for the original kingpin that came with the trailer. So, you remove the original kingpin and replace it with the Reese Goose Box. The beauty of the Reese Goose Box is that it hitches to a gooseneck ball in the truck bed, eliminating the need for a fifth wheel hitch all together and freeing up the truck bed completely when you’re not towing!

We paired the Reese Goose Box with a B&W gooseneck ball that is designed for the Dodge Ram OEM puck system (we have a 2016 Dodge Ram 3500 long bed dually truck).

Reese Goose Box Review 20k Gen 3 Tested + how to hitch and unhitch

What do we think of the Reese Goose Box after towing with it for 2,000 miles over the course of a year?
Read on and find out!

For over a year now, we’ve towed our trailer on all kinds of roads, including freeways, secondary roads, around tight winding switchbacks and on very lumpy, bumpy, potholed dirt roads on our way to remote boondocking locations. We’ve also climbed up and over several towering Colorado mountain passes, including Monarch Pass, Hoosier Pass and Slumgullion Pass (twice!), each of which is more than 11,300’ in elevation.

The Reese Goose Box has performed flawlessly everywhere. The ride is much smoother than any fifth wheel hitch we’ve ever used, and it’s easy to hitch and unhitch.

Reese Goose Box 20k Gen 3 Hitch - How to hitch and unhitch

The Reese Goose Box replaced the original kingpin that came with our trailer.

We installed Reese Goose Box on our trailer ourselves, just the two of us. It was intimidating but it wasn’t difficult, despite the heavy weight of the original king pin and the even heavier weight of the Reese Goose Box. (There’s a trick to it!)

However, before we describe that process and present our step-by-step installation method (in a future post), we wanted to explain why the Reese Goose Box is so unique and also show you how to hitch and unhitch a trailer so you can see exactly how it works.

How to Hitch and Unhitch the Reese Goose Box 20k Gen 3 Hitch

The 20K Reese Goose Box is rated to tow up to 20,000 lbs.

Here are some shortcuts for this article:

 

WHY A REESE GOOSE BOX?

We’ve been towing fifth wheel trailers around for 15 years now, and we’ve used a variety of fifth wheel hitches made by Pullrite, B&W and Demco.

While each one was a fine hitch with certain great advantages, the drawback with any fifth wheel hitch is that when you aren’t towing a trailer, the bed of the truck is occupied by a large and heavy fifth wheel hitch.

It is awkward to remove the hitch, even a lighter weight one (as we discovered with our Demco hitch), and it’s all too easy to avoid this chore and simply leave the hitch in the truck bed indefinitely. Unfortunately, with the hitch in there, you lose the use of the truck bed except for hauling smaller items that fit around the hitch!

Reese Goose Box 20k Gen 3 - how to hitch and unhitch

With the Reese Goose Box there is no need to have a fifth wheel hitch in the bed of the truck.

When we were full-time RVers, we didn’t need the truck bed except for carrying whatever we used in that lifestyle: spare water jugs, patio mat and chairs, portable generator, bbq, etc.

However, now that we RV seasonally, we wanted to have the full use of our truck bed during the off-season when we’re at home. It’s no fun hauling plants, soil, mulch and lumber in the trunk of a passenger car or trying to fit those things around a fifth wheel hitch.

How to Hitch and Unhitch the Reese Goose Box 20k Gen 3

The “business side” of the Reese Goose Box is the driver’s side with the locking lever and air bag status window clearly visible (more on those important items below!).

By using a gooseneck style hitch instead of a fifth wheel hitch, all you need in the truck bed is a gooseneck ball and gooseneck receiver. The gooseneck receiver can be a factory installed OEM puck system or can be an after-market installation. What an easy way to free up the truck bed!

For this reason, some people switch out their fifth wheel kingpin for a gooseneck hitch. However, that puts a lot of strain on the fifth wheel trailer frame (fifth wheels are a lot taller than horse trailers…), and fifth wheel manufacturers advise against it.

Unlike a gooseneck hitch which has a long vertical lever arm that creates strain on the frame as it sways back and forth, the profile of the Reese Goose Box is angled and shaped like an ordinary fifth wheel kingpin. That reduces the strain on the frame significantly.

We were surprised to learn that the Reese Goose Box is the only gooseneck style hitch that Lippert Components Inc. has approved for use with their fifth wheel frames. I spoke to a Lippert sales rep to verify this, and he stated that, unlike other gooseneck style hitches, the use of a Reese Goose Box does not void the warranty on a Lippert fifth wheel frame. Like most fifth wheel trailers, our Genesis Supreme 28CRT toy hauler is built on a Lippert frame.

Obviously, many things can ultimately contribute to the failure of a fifth wheel frame, so I have no idea how that would play out in the event of the frame developing a crack. But it’s an impressive endorsement.

In our research, we came across some comments on the internet asserting that of course Lippert Components endorses the Reese Goose Box because they own Reese Products! However I looked into it, and that’s not true. Reese’s parent company, Horizon Global, was purchased by First Brands in early 2023, and neither Horizon Global nor First Brands is related to Lippert Components.

We have the 3rd generation of the Reese Goose Box that is rated to tow a 20,000 lb. Trailer. The Gen 3 version of the Goose Box was released in the Fall of 2022.

Reese Goosebox
Reese Goose Box 20k Gen 3 hitch as seen from behind the truck

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We decided to pair it with the B&W gooseneck ball designed for the Ram truck OEM puck system on our 2016 Dodge Ram 3500 long bed dually. This gooseneck ball is a very nifty piece of gear with a huge handle. You can easily latch the gooseneck ball into the gooseneck receiver in the truck bed and also pull it back out using that handle rather than grabbing the ball itself with your hands.

B&W Gooseneck Ball and Safety Chain Kit

The B&W Gooseneck Ball and Safety Chain Kit fits in a cool suitcase.
The actual chains themselves are sold separately.

That may seem unimportant until you’ve actually lubed up the gooseneck ball and used it a few times! It’s much nicer to use a big handle to pull the gooseneck ball out of the truck bed rather than grab the greasy ball itself! We would have used this gooseneck ball with our Demco 21k Recon fifth wheel hitch, but the handle got in the way of the hitch.

B&W Gooseneck Ball for Ram Trucks

The B&W OEM gooseneck ball kit also comes with two safety chain anchors that get inserted into the OEM puck system on a pickup. These are used to secure the safety chains (which are not part of the kit — we got the safety chains separately here).

Reese Goosebox Safety Chains

 

HOW TO HITCH UP A TRAILER USING A REESE GOOSE BOX

REESE GOOSE BOX vs. FIFTH WHEEL HITCHING PROCEDURES

Hitching up a trailer using a fifth wheel hitch involves backing the truck (and its fifth wheel hitch) into the trailer’s king pin. It is a horizontal movement of the truck, and the connection locks in place once the truck has backed the hitch into the kingpin.

Hitching up a trailer using the Reese Goose Box involves lowering the trailer’s kingpin (the Goose Box) onto a gooseneck ball in the bed of the truck. It is a vertical movement of the trailer’s kingpin that is controled by the trailer’s landing jack leveling system. The connection locks in place once the Reese Goose Box is completely lowered onto the ball.

So, the hitching technique is quite different for each type of hitch.

ALIGNMENT: LEFT to RIGHT (DRIVER’S SIDE/PASSENGER’S SIDE)

With a fifth wheel hitch, we always found we had some room for error in aligning everything from right to left (driver’s side / passenger’s side) due to the shape of the fifth wheel hitch jaws.

If we backed the truck up so the fifth wheel hitch was slightly misaligned with the kingpin, the jaws of the hitch would catch the kingpin anyway and still make the connection and lock the two together.

However, with the Reese Goose Box, if the truck is slightly off, the kingpin will lower down and hit the top of the gooseneck ball and stop right there rather than slipping over the gooseneck ball as it is lowered into the locked position.

Where we could always “eyeball” the left/right alignment when backing up the truck with a fifth wheel hitch, we now use a small telescoping magnetic pole with a bright yellow ball on top to get a perfect alignment between the Reese Goose Box and the gooseneck ball.

Amazingly, that little pole makes this process a cinch!

I place the magnetic pole directly in front of the gooseneck ball and then Mark uses the pole to align the truck and Reese Goose Box side to side as he backs up.

How to hitch and unhitch the Reese Goose Box with a magnetic telescoping alignment pole

Put the magnetic telescoping pole directly in front of the gooseneck ball

Reese Goose Box 20k Gen 3 Hitch - How to hitch and unhitch

This simple little device makes it possible to be precise when backing up the truck.

We have the two Ram OEM backup cameras in the truck, but Mark finds them inadequate for this job and he prefers to use the magnetic telescoping pole with the ball on top.

He then backs up the truck until the kingpin hits the magnetic telescoping pole and tilts it forward.

How to hitch and unhitch the Reese Goose Box Gen 3

The magnetic pole helps the driver align the gooseneck ball and the Reese Goose Box left to right.

How to hitch and unhitch the Reese Goose Box Gen 3 Hitch

When the magnetic pole tips forward, Mark stops the truck for a moment so we can adjust the alignment from front to back by an inch or two.

Magnetic Trailer Hitch Alignment Kit

ALIGNMENT: FRONT to BACK

The Reese Goose Box has to be aligned accurately from front to back as well as left to right. For this, Mark relies on me peering into the bed of the truck and guiding him verbally until the alignment is correct. For folks who hitch up solo, you’ll probably have to get in and out of the driver’s seat a few times to get the truck positioned correctly. If you have some tips and tricks for solo drivers, let us know in the comments!

At 5’4” I am just tall enough to see into the bed of our 2016 Dodge Ram 3500 dually if I stand on my tiptoes.

When we were researching the Reese Goose Box, we saw reports that it is hard to hitch up. After learning how to do it ourselves, we suspect that those comment might have come from people who were either trying to eyeball the left/right alignment or were hitching up solo and struggling with the front to back alignment.

If you have a driver and a spotter, it’s a piece of cake.

LOWERING & LOCKING THE REESE GOOSE BOX – TRUCK IN NEUTRAL

Once the truck is positioned correctly, I use the landing jack leveling buttons to lower the Reese Goose Box onto the gooseneck ball. We’ve found it helps to put the truck in neutral at this point. That way, if the positioning isn’t 100%, the truck can shift a little bit as the Goose Box is lowered.

Our truck has an auto leveling option, so as soon as the truck senses the weight of the trailer in the truck bed, it inflates its airbags and raises the truck bed up. This effectively pushes the gooseneck ball up into the Reese Goose Box. At that point I generally don’t need to lower the trailer much further to complete the connection.

Just like a fifth wheel hitch, the Reese Goose Box automatically locks its connection to the gooseneck ball.

It’s easy to know when the Goose Box/gooseneck ball connection has locked. First, as the Goose Box slides over the gooseneck ball, the locking lever on the driver’s side of the Reese Goose Box moves slowly from the Locked position (green label) to the Unlocked Position (red label). Then, once it has locked in place, it snaps back to the Locked position (green label).

How to hitch and unhitch the Reese Goose Box Gen 3 and locking the gooseball

Before the Reese Goose Box slides over the gooseneck ball, the locking lever (blue arrow) is in the Locked position (green label)

The Reese Goose Box Gen 3 hitch unlocks autoamtically

As the Reese Goose Box slides down onto the gooseneck ball, the locking lever (blue arrow) slowly moves into the Unlocked position (red label)

The Reese Goose Box locks onto the gooseneck ball automatically

As soon as the Reese Goose Box locks onto the gooseneck ball, the locking lever (blue arrow) snaps back into the Locked position (green label)

At this point I can finish raising the landing jacks up all the way into their fully raised position for towing.

SAFETY CHAINS and POWER CORD

The final steps to hitch up with the Reese Goose Box are to latch the two safety chains to the B&W safety chain anchors in the truck bed and plug in the power cord.

Reese Goose Box 20k Gen 3 Hitch safety chains

Next step is to connect the safety chains to the B&W safety chain anchors in the truck bed.

Connecting the safety chains to the Reese Goose Box 20k Gen 3 Hitch

Connecting the safety chains.

How to hitch and unhitch the Reese Goose Box 20k Gen 3 Hitch: connecting the power cord

Last of all, connect the power cord.

Like all kingpins, the Reese Goose Box has a trailer breakaway cable that engages the trailer’s brakes if the trailer accidentally disconnects from the truck. With our fifth wheel hitches, we always looped this cable around the hitch handle. With the Reese Goose Box, we loop it through the hook on one of the safety chains.

Reese Goose Box Gen 3 hitched up with safety chains attached

Ready to tow.
Note that the trailer breakaway cable is connected to the safety chain hook on the left side.

The trailer breakaway cable is shorter than the safety chains. So, if the trailer were to become detached from the truck, the breakaway cable would snap and engage the trailer brakes before the safety chains were fully extended. At that point, the drag of the trailer brakes would keep the safety chains taut, and the driver would slow the truck and trailer to a stop.

 

AIR BAGS

The Reese Goose Box is equipped with internal air bags that use the same technology as the Trail Air fifth wheel hitches. They are inflated using the Schrader valve on the top of the Goose Box. We used a pancake air compressor to inflate them.

That pancake compressor is too big to bring with with us in our RV travels, so we bought a Ryobi cordless power inflator to use on the road if needed.

Unfortunately, there isn’t enough room in the Goose Box’s Schrader valve compartment to attach the cordless power inflator’s locking valve to it. So, we purchased a 135 degree valve extender to use with it. Luckily, we haven’t needed to use that setup at all yet.

Reese Goose Box 20k Gen 3 has the air bag inflator on the top of the kingpin

The Gen 3 Reese Goose Box has the Schrader valve for inflating the air bags on top in the center. Previous generation Reese Goose Boxes had this valve on the underside and it was hard to reach.

Ryobi Portabe compressor 135 Degree Valve Extension

The Reese Goose Box 20k Gen 3 has a gauge on the driver’s side that allows you to see the level of inflation of the air bags. This is another new feature with the Gen 3 that wasn’t on the previous generation Reese Goose Boxes.

When the air bags have no air in them, the viewing window is a black circle. Once they begin to fill with air, a silver bar appears in the top left part of the window.

Reese Goose Box 20k Gen 3 Hitch inspection window shows the air bags are not inflated

The air bag inflation window lets you see the status of the air bags. Here the bags are barely inflated.

As the air bags become more and more inflated, this bar moves lower and lower in the window.

When the air bags are inflated to the ideal amount (somewhere between 40 and 50 lbs. of pressure), the bar crosses the middle of the window at a slight angle.

Reese Goose Box 20k Gen 3 Hitch inspection window shows the airbags are properly inflated

As the air bags inflate, the silver bar moves down from the top.
When the bar is in the middle, as it is here, the air bags are properly inflated.

We have not had to change the inflation of the air bags at all in the two months we’ve been traveling with our trailer, despite being in altitudes ranging from 3,000’ to over 11,000’ and being in temperatures ranging from 30 degrees to 95 degrees.

 

HOW TO UNHITCH A TRAILER WITH A REESE GOOSE BOX

UNHITCHING CAN BE DONE SOLO (WITH AN EASY-TO-MAKE MODIFICATION!)

Unhitching a trailer with a Reese Goose Box is as easy as pulling on a cord and extending the landing jack legs! I love it because one person can easily do it solo.

Unhitching with a Reese Goose Box (as opposed to a fifth wheel) is particularly handy in situations where you won’t be driving the truck by itself but still want to raise the nose of the trailer to make it level.

For instance, when you stop for a quickie overnight in a rest area on unlevel ground, you might want to level the trailer from front to back by raising up the front end.

All you need to do is raise the trailer off the gooseneck ball to the point where the trailer is level from front to back and leave it there. When you are ready to continue driving, simply lower the trailer back down onto the gooseneck ball and away you go!

With a traditional fifth wheel hitch, the truck and trailer must be completely unhitched, i.e., the truck must be driven out from the hitch in order to level the trailer from front to back.

All this is truly awesome, but we did have to make one minor modification to the Reese Goose Box to make it possible to unhitch so easily, as explained below.

 

RELEASING the GOOSENECK BALL EASILY — With a SIMPLE MODIFICATION!

The Reese Goose Box is locked onto the gooseneck ball by a lever, as shown in the three hitching up photos above. While hitching up, the lever moves from the Locked position to the Unlocked position and back to the Locked position automatically as the socket on the Reese Goose Box slides onto the gooseneck ball.

For unhitching, however, this lever must be held open in the Unlocked position to allow the Reese Goose Box to slide up off the gooseneck ball. You do that manually by pulling back on a long cable that connects to the locking lever.

The cable rests on a hook on the side of the Reese Goose Box. It has a nub on it that can be secured in front of the hook, forcing the lock to remain open while you extend the landing jack legs.

How to hitch and unhitch the Reese Goose Box lock release handle

The hitch locking mechanism is automatic when hitching up. When unhitching, a long cable (above the arrows) must be pulled back to unlock the hitch and allow the Reese Goose Box to rise off the gooseneck ball. The white arrow shows the nub that can be secured in front of the hook (blue arrow) to keep the Goose Box unlocked.

We’ve found it very difficult to reach the cable’s handle from the back of the truck when the truck’s tailgate is open.

Ironically, the truck’s tailgate is always open at this stage of the unhitching process because you are disconnecting the safety chains and power cord. Also, you can’t drive the truck out with the tailgate closed.

When we did successfully maneuver ourselves to reach the handle, we found it extremely difficult to pull the cable back far enough to place the nub in front of the hook!

I’m sure Reese will address this issue since it has been raised by many people. However, in the interim, we found a super easy solution.

We tied a strong cord onto the latch cable’s handle and then used a short dowel to create a mini handle at the other end of the cord.

Reese Goose Box Gen 3 lock release handle modification

We tied a strong cord onto the handle of the hitch latching cable. Again, the white arrow is the nub that can be secured in front of the hook (blue arrow) to force the lock to stay open, but we found it tricky to do.

Reese Goose Box lock release handle modification

We made a handle at the other end of the cord with a short dowel.

Now, all we have to do to get the Reese Goose Box off the gooseneck ball is to pull this cord to open the lock and extend the trailer’s landing jacks. Then the Goose Box rises off the gooseneck ball very easily.

Reese Goose Box lock release handle modification

One person can simultaneously pull the hitch lock open and extend the trailer’s landing jacks!

The beauty is that one person can do this job alone by holding the Goose Box’s locking cord in their left hand and pressing the trailer’s landing jack control buttons with their right hand.

Once the Reese Goose Box is clear of the gooseneck ball, the Goose Box’s locking cord can be released and the truck can be driven out from under the trailer and parked elsewhere.

To tidy things up, just snap the safety chains onto the back of the Reese Goose Box and stow the power cord inside. Be careful, though, because there’s 12 volts coming from the trailer batteries on one of the pins.

How to hitch and unhitch a Reese Goose Box 20K Gen 3

There are two holes in the back of the Reese Goose Box to hold the hooks for the safety chains.

How to hitch and unhitch the Reese Goose Box 20K Gen 3

Chains and power cord are out of the way.

 

TOWING WITH THE REESE GOOSE BOX

As I mentioned, we have used the Reese Goose Box to tow our 15,000 lb. trailer all over Arizona and Colorado for two months on all kinds of crazy roads. Not only has the towing been smooth but we’ve been super happy with how easy it is to hitch and unhitch.

The airbags inside the Reese Goose Box make the ride super smooth. There is no chucking and no bouncing, and best of all, no noise! The trailer kind of floats along behind us.

We’ve taken some very sharp turns and haven’t had a problem with the Reese Goose Box touching the bed rails of the truck, and we’ve gone over some serious bumps and sharp inclines and declines and haven’t had the overhang of the fifth wheel come too close to the top of the bed rails either.

We are delighted with the Reese Goose Box and the B&W gooseneck ball. Best of all, now we’re able to haul anything we want in the truck bed, even 4×8 sheets of plywood. All we’ll have to do is remove the B&W gooseneck ball, clean it up and put it away in its little suitcase. Then the whole bed of the truck is available to use!

So, that’s our review of our fully tested Reese Goose Box 20k Gen 3. If you have any questions, please put them in the comments below. We’ll be happy to answer as best we can. If you own one of these very cool hitches, we’d love to know what you think of it!

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Here are all the parts listed in this post and where to get them:

The Goose Box:

The Gooseneck Ball:

Magnetic Pole for Hitching Up:

Compressors:

More info about Reese Products:

Other blog posts about trailers and hitches:

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Quick Release Pull Pins for Fifth Wheel Landing Jacks – YES!

One of the very first upgrades we did to our 2022 Genesis Supreme toy hauler was to install quick release pull pins for the fifth wheel landing jacks. Our full-time Hitchhiker fifth wheel trailer had come with this kind of landing jack pin installed at the factory, so we assumed it was standard for all fifth wheels with electric landing jacks. Not so! And what a difference they make!

Quick Release Pull-Pins for Fifth Wheel Landing Jacks Installation

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Our Genesis Supreme toy hauler came with goofy D-ring pins that were clumsy and fussy and added a frustrating and unnecessary step to hitching and unhitching our rig.

https://amzn.to/3xJ4mVD

These pins were slow and frustrating to use!

After messing with these things two or three times, I got online and started hunting for the really nice quick release spring loaded pins we were accustomed to, hoping that they were something we could get our hands on. They were! We got ours HERE.

Tools and parts needed to install Fifth Wheel Landing Jack quick release pull pin

The quick release pull pins (left two) and the tools necessary to install them (right two). Not much to it!

We put a bottle jack under the front of the fifth wheel to support the trailer while we removed the silly pins that had come with it and replaced them with the quick release pull pins. You can also hitch the fifth wheel to the truck and work on the legs that way instead. However, the bottle jack worked just fine.

Bottle jack supports fifth wheel trailer for landing jack quick release pull-pin installation

We supported the front of the fifth wheel trailer with a bottle jack.

Fifth Wheel Landing Jack D-ring Pin 2

We removed the D-ring.

The hardest part of installing the quick release pull pins on the landing jacks is simply lining up the two pieces. They fit on either side of the landing leg like a clamshell with two long bolts holding them in place.

Make sure the handle is on the outside of the fifth wheel where you’ll be grabbing it.

Installing fifth wheel landing jack quick release pull pin

One half of the quick release pull pin.

Installing quick release pull pin for fifth wheel landing jack

Both halves of the quick release pull pin with long bolts that will hold them in place.

We used Loctite to make sure the bolts wouldn’t unscrew and walk back out.

Using Loctite to install fifth wheel landing jack quick release pull pin

We applied a little Loctite.

Then we tightened the bolts.

Installation of quick release pull pin for fifth wheel landing jack

Getting the bolts started.

Installation of fifth wheel landing jack quick release pull pin

Tightening the bolts down.

And there it was — a fabulous new quick release pull pin on our fifth wheel landing jack.

Installation of quick release pull pin for fifth wheel landing jack=k

Ready to go!

We installed the other quick release pull pin on the other landing jack and sighed a huge sigh of relief. These things are so much easier to use!

To hitch up: Simply raise the electric landing legs with the Retract button. Once the jacks are in their fully retracted position, pull out the spring loaded handle and slide the lower portion of the leg upwards into the upper portion. Then release the spring loaded handle to latch it in place.

To unhitch: Pull the quick release pull pin’s spring loaded handle and let the leg drop all the way down so the foot is on the ground. Then raise the leg slightly until the spring loaded handle snaps into place through the hole in the lower leg.

Fifth Wheel Landing Jack D-ring Pin

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And that’s it! We purchased this quick release pull pin for our 33’ 15,000 lb. GVWR trailer, but there are others available> too.

Hitching and unhitching a fifth wheel trailer can be stressful enough as it is. For us, having a super simple mechanism for getting the landing jacks in position is an important stress reliever. It was an inexpensive upgrade, but has made a huge difference.

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How to Replace Electric Fifth Wheel Landing Legs – Easy DIY!

Have you ever wondered how in the world to replace electric fifth wheel landing legs? Well, it turns it’s a surprisingly easy DIY project! We’ve done it twice now, once on our full-timing Hitchhiker fifth wheel 10 years ago, and again on our current Genesis Supreme Toy Hauler a few weeks ago. Yikes!

How to Replace Electric Fifth Wheel Landing Legs

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At the end of our RV trip to Colorado last summer, our 2022 Genesis Supreme toy hauler fifth wheel landing legs started acting up when we were getting ready to hook up and leave one day. Our fifth wheel landing legs are electric, not hydraulic, and they are driven by two separate motors, one for each leg.

Suddenly, the driver’s side leg started making a clicking sound as we raised the front of the trailer to hitch up. The sound was coming from the gear box which is driven by the landing leg motor. The gears were slipping for some reason.



The Reese Goose Box was a GAME CHANGER for us. We got the bed of our truck back (yay!) and hitching/unhitching is easy.

Check out our review: HERE!



We were able to get hitched up despite the slipping gears, and we stayed hitched up all the way from Lake Granby in Colorado, to our home in Arizona. We didn’t unhitch once the whole way!

When we got home, Mark removed the landing leg from the trailer to do some investigating. With the trailer hitched to and supported by the truck, it was easy to remove the driver’s side landing leg to check it out.

When you remove the top cap from the leg, you should be able to turn the shaft on the side of the leg by hand. However, he could barely turn it. Something was binding and making the leg very stiff to retract or extend.

We weren’t sure just how stiff this gear should be, though. So, just to verify whether the gear on this leg was unusually stiff, he removed the passenger side leg and repeated the process. On that side the leg was butter smooth and he could easily turn the shaft by hand.

10 years prior, we’d had a similar problem on our 2007 Hitchhiker fifth wheel. However, that fifth wheel had had only one motor to drive both landing legs — not a very rugged frame design.

We’d been pleased when we bought the Genesis Supreme that it had a dedicated motor for each leg. Nevertheless, here we were again! Argh!!

The Hitchhiker landing leg motor was made by Venture Manufacturing in Ohio. So, when those landing legs failed, Mark purchased a replacement landing leg kit from them. He installed it while we were boondocking in the Arizona desert. We never had any trouble with our landing legs after that.

Mark called Venture Manufacturing again this time to see if they could help us with the binding landing leg on our new toy hauler.

He was delighted to speak to the same customer service rep as he had 10 years prior, Sue Haller. She asked him for some details about the landing legs on our toy hauler. It turned out that they were made by a Chinese knock-off company.

Once he heard that, he decided to replace both landing legs, gear boxes and motors with parts made by Venture Manufacturing. These come in a kit.

The installation was surprisingly simple and the new parts are super smooth. We now feel confident in our trailer’s landing legs as we get ready for our next adventure.

Venture Manufacturing Fifth Wheel Landing Leg Replacement Kit

All the parts that are in the Venture Manufacturing replacement landing leg kit.

Having a good quality socket set in your RV is important. Check out what other tools we keep in our RV basement and in our truck here: Basic RV Tool Kit - Essential Tools & Supplies for RVers



 

Here are the basic steps for replacing the landing legs on a fifth wheel trailer:

  1. With the trailer hitched to the truck, run the landing legs all the way up.
  2. Turn off the battery disconnect switch
  3. Pull the spring pin and drop the lower legs and foot all the way out and set them aside
  4.  
    Do these next steps for each landing leg:

  5. Cut the positive and negative wires to the landing leg motor
  6. Remove the 8mm bolt from the lower gearbox shaft and slide the plastic collar off
  7. Remove the two 10mm bolts (11 and 5 o’clock position) from the motor and slide the motor off the shaft
  8. Slide the gearbox assembly off the motor shaft.
  9. Remove the two 9/16” nuts and bolts holding the leg onto the “U” channel
  10. Spread the “U” channel slightly to slide the leg out.

To install the new landing leg assembly, simply follow the above steps in reverse order!

Here are some pics from our installation:

How to replace Fifth Wheel Landing Leg - Venture Manufacturing Lower Leg

Remove the lower leg section to be able to drop the upper leg assembly out from trailer.

How to replace fifth wheel landing leg - Venture Manufacturing leg view From Outside

Looking in from the outside: The landing leg and gearbox.

How to replace Fifth Wheel Landing Leg - Venture Manufacturing Plastic anchor

To remove the gearbox just remove this screw and slide the plastic piece off the shaft. The gearbox will slide off next.

How to replace fifth wheel landing leg - Venture Manufacturing leg view From inside

Motor & gearbox removed.



If your fifth wheel has electric landing jacks but didn't come with Quick Release Pull Pins, they'll make you're life easier and they're super easy to install!

 
 
How to replace Fifth Wheel Landing Leg Upper Bolt

To remove the upper portion of the leg, remove the upper leg 9/16″ nut.

How to replace Fifth Wheel Landing Leg - Venture Manufacturing Lower Bolt

Remove lower 9/16″ nut. You may need to spread the “U” channel a bit to slide upper portion of the leg out.

How to replace fifh wheel landing legs - Looking from inside

Ta Da! New motor and gearbox attached.

All done! To install the replacement fifth wheel landing legs, do these steps in reverse order.

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CargoBuckle Retractable Ratchet Tie-Downs – SO EASY!

Trying to tie down an ATV, side-by-side or boat on a trailer for safe towing can be a real pain in the neck! Fortunately, we’ve discovered the CargoBuckle Retractable Ratchet Tie-Downs which are a total game changer for us.

CargoBuckle Retractable Ratchet Tie-Down System is SO EASY!

Easy to install and a cinch to use, the CargoBuckle retractable ratchet straps revolutionized our tie-down process!

For the past six years, we have towed our Polaris RZR 900 side-by-side in three towing arrangements:

  1. On a flatbed trailer behind our fifth wheel in a “double tow” arrangement (also known as a “triple tow”)
  2. On a flatbed trailer behind our dually truck (with and without our truck camper)
  3. Inside our Genesis Supreme toy hauler.

 

TRADITIONAL TIE-DOWN RATCHET STRAPS – NOT GOOD!

Using traditional tie-down ratchet straps, we found it was nearly impossible to keep the straps fully tightened as we drove. We’d have to stop after an hour or so to tighten the straps, and then we’d stop to check them every hour or so after that if the trip was long. More often than not, they’d have loosened again and we’d have to re-tighten them.

Also, the setup on our flatbed trailer had some sharp corners and awkward angles that the tie-down straps had to cross in order to secure the side-by-side onto the trailer. This caused the straps to sever completely multiple times. We bought at least three sets of ratchet straps in just a few months of towing our side-by-side!

Needless to say, all of this was very annoying, and also made us quite uneasy when we were underway!

Triple tow Fifth wheel and flatbed trailer with side-by-side double-tow arrangement

Traveling with The Train, we got a LOT of chucking in the caboose…!

Tow Polaris RZR 900 XC EPS Edition on utility trailer-min

Mark used traditional ratchet straps at first.

 

CARGOBUCKLE RETRACTABLE RATCHET STRAPS – WHAT A GREAT CONCEPT!

Cargo Buckle Retractable Ratchet Strap secures a side-by-side onto a flatbed trailer

CargoBuckle G3 Retractable Ratchet Tie-down permanently mounted on a flatbed trailer.

Mark did some research and found a product called the CargoBuckle Retractable Rachet Tie-Down System that mounted permanently to the flatbed trailer, one for each corner of the side-by-side.

In order to tie down the side-by-side, you simply pulled out each strap and hooked it onto a tie-down location on the RZR and ratcheted it tight. To unload the side-by-side, you simply released the tension on each strap to unhook and then let it retract. Easy peasy!

Mounting the straps on the utility trailer eliminated the need to tie everything down from scratch each time we secured the RZR to the trailer. Instead, the strap was right there where we needed it. All we had to do was pull it out!

CargoBuckle Retractable Ratchet Tie-Down system for permanent instsallation

CargoBuckle G3 (2″ strap).

This is a super slick concept and it completely revolutionized our tie-down process. Now we could tie the RZR down in just a few minutes by pulling out each strap, hooking it onto the RZR and ratcheting it tight. Even better, the straps never loosened underway, so we never had to stop to tighten them or worry that they might come loose as we drove.

Cargo Buckle Retractable Ratchet Straps for front of a side-by-side on a flatbed trailer

The front of our RZR is tied down with two CargoBuckle retractable ratchet straps mounted on the front of the flatbed trailer.

Two CargoBuckle Retractable Ratchet Straps secure the back end of a side-by-side on a flatbed trailer

The back of our RZR is tied down with two CargoBuckle retractable ratchet straps mounted on the rear sides of the flatbed trailer.

It was just a matter of a few minutes to get the RZR off the trailer too. All we had to do was release each ratchet handle, unhook the strap from the side-by-side and let the strap retract. Best of all, we didn’t have to deal with long messy tie-down straps or stow them anywhere.

We loved this whole concept so much that when we bought our fifth wheel toy hauler we got another set! In addition, we got an S-hook Adapter to bolt onto each CargoBuckle so we could hook the CargoBuckles into the D-rings rather than bolting them permanently to the garage floor.

CargoBuckle Retractable Ratchet TIe-Down System for a toy hauler

The CargoBuckle G3 ratchet strap is bolted to an S-adapter hook for removable installations like the D-rings on a toy hauler floor.

Besides providing a very secure tie-down as we drive, these straps are work with that we don’t hesitate to unload the RZR to go exploring for an while and then load it back into the toy hauler and carry on. This is ideal for seeking out boondocking locations down unfamiliar dirt roads.

 

FLATBED TRAILER CARGOBUCKLE INSTALLATION:

Our first CargoBuckle installation on our flatbed trailer was straight forward.

We aligned each of the retractable straps so there was a straight line between the CargoBuckle and the tie-down point on the RZR. Then we drilled a hole in the frame of the trailer for each strap and bolted the CargoBuckle onto the trailer frame. Done!

We angled the CargoBuckles slightly to ensure the straps wouldn’t cross over anything sharp that could make them chafe through. And that was it!

Use an awl before drilling a hole in the side of a flatbed trailer

First we made a starter hole in the flatbed trailer frame with a center punch.

Before drilling into a flatbed trailer frame spread 3-in-one oil on the drill bit

Then we lubed a small drill bit with 3-in-1 oil to keep the metal cool while drilling.

Drill a hole in the frame of a flatbed trailer before mounting CargoBuckle Retractable Ratchet Straps

Then we drilled a pilot hole.

We then selected larger and larger drill bits and repeated the lubrication/drilling process until the hole was big enough to fit the bolt.

Bolt the CargoBuckle Retractable Ratchet Strap onto the frame of a flatbed trailer

Once the hole was drilled, we bolted the CargoBuckle ratchet strap onto the flatbed trailer frame.

Cargo Buckle Retractable Ratchet Strap secures a side-by-side onto a flatbed trailer

One down, three to go!

 

FLATBED TRAILER CARGOBUCKLE TIE-DOWN PROCEDURE:

Securing the RZR to the flatbed trailer was now just a matter of extending each retracted strap and placing its hook in the tie-down point on the RZR and then ratcheting the strap until it was tight. Once all four straps were hooked up and tightened, the RZR was fully loaded and ready to go.

Unloading the RZR was equally easy. We released the tension on each strap, removed the hook from the RZR and retracted the strap into the CargoBuckle on the trailer.

We didn’t even have to mess with coiling and storing any long straps because they retracted out of sight on the side of the trailer!

CargoBuckle Retractable Ratchet Strap tie downs for a side-by-side

We positioned the front CargoBuckles close together to absorb the most severe shocks which is front-to-back.

The straps are 2 inches wide and are made of the same material as a car seatbelt. The ratcheting and releasing mechanisms are very smooth.

We’ve towed our flatbed trailer behind our truck, both with and without our pickup camper, for about 1,000 miles with no trouble whatsoever!

 

TOY HAULER INSTALLATION:

Polaris RZR side-by-side with Genesis Supreme Toy Hauler

Buddy checks out our toy hauler as the RZR waits patiently to be loaded.

The garage floor on our Genesis Supreme toy hauler has D-rings mounted on the floor (bolted to the frame) that are intended for tying down whatever toys you bring along in your travels — ATV, side-by-side, motorcycles, etc.

With an open box floor plan like ours, our garage is also our living room (yes, the RZR travels in our living space!) and the D-rings are right in the middle of our living room floor! So, the permanently mounted CargoBuckle retractable ratchet straps weren’t suitable.

Fortunately, the manufacturer of CargoBuckles, IMMI (Indiana Mills Manufacturing Inc.), makes S-Hook Adapter Straps specifically for situations where the CargoBuckles can’t be permanently mounted.

The S-Hook Adapter Straps gets bolted onto the CargoBuckle (G3) creating a single unit that has an open hook at one end, a locking hook on the other end and a ratchet mechanism in the middle.

Attaching the S-hook adapter strap to a Cargo Buckle Retractable Ratchet Tie-Down System for a toy hauler installation

The CargoBuckle G3 ratchet strap is bolted to an S-hook adapter so it can be hooked to a D-ring in the toy hauler floor.

Bolting the pieces together took no time at all and gave us four ratchet straps to hook into the D-rings in the garage floor and clip onto the tie-down locations on the RZR. The D-rings are not positioned symmetrically in our toy hauler.  However, we found four that worked well for tying down the RZR, two in the front and two in the back.

CargoBuckle Retractable Ratchet Tie-Downs for use in a toy hauler with D-rings on the floor

All four CargoBuckle ratchet straps have S-hooks attached for use in our toy hauler.

 

TOY HAULER CARGOBUCKLE TIE-DOWN PROCEDURE:

When loading the side-by-side, we simply hook the CargoBuckle S-hook onto the D-ring in the toy hauler floor, extend the strap so it can reach the tie-down location on the RZR and clip the CargoBuckle hook onto it. We do this for all four contact points on the side-by-side.

When unloading, we release the tension in each CargoBuckle, unclip it from the side-by-side and unhook the S-hook from the D-ring in the floor. We stow our CargoBuckles on the floor by the toy hauler ramp door along with the rubber mats we place under the RZR wheels to protect the flooring as we travel.

OVERALL IMPRESSIONS:

We have towed our RZR using the CargoBuckle retractable ratchet tie-downs 10,000 miles so far. We’ve set up camp in 64 different campsites and loaded and unloaded the side-by-side each time. In addition, we’ve loaded and unloaded the RZR dozens of other times for scouting and exploring while in transit.

Loading and unloading the RZR has been a sheer delight, and the whole setup has been rock solid in the garage and has never loosened once.

Tightening a CargoBuckle Retractable Ratchet Strap

Tightening the CargoBuckle at the rear of the side-by-side in the toy hauler.

Tightening a Cargo Buckle Retractable Ratchet Tie-Down

Ratcheting the rear of the RZR in the toy hauler.

Perhaps the most impressive testament to the security of this tie-down system was our 94 mile drive between Shiprock and Gallup, New Mexico, on US-491 in 2023. If you can avoid this highway, please do! It is loaded with shallow dips you can’t see as you drive but that sent our entire rig flying any time we were going faster than 50 mph.

When we finally got to our destination, we were astonished to find that the RZR hadn’t budged and the CargoBuckles were all still completely secure. However, the Lifetime cooler that we keep tied down in the back of the RZR was another story, Even though it was tightly secured on the side-by-side, it jumped clear out of the RZR on one of those flying dips.  When we opened the toy hauler ramp door, we found it dangling off the back end of the side-by-side!

Back end of a Polaris RZR side-by-side is tied down in a toy hauler using CargoBuckle Retractable Ratchet Straps

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If you have to tie down anything in your travels, whether it’s a side-by-side, ATV, motorcycle or boat, no matter what kind of trailer you’re tying it down to, your life be a whole lot easier if you use CargoBuckle Retractable Ratchet Tie-downs!

These clever retractable straps transformed our whole attitude towards bringing our fun little RZR along on our adventures!

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Basic RV Tool Kit – Essential Tools & Supplies for Rvers

RVers preparing to go RVing full-time have asked us, “What are the essential tools and supplies we’ll need for the RV life?” That’s a big question, but when we began gathering items for our online Gear Store last week, we realized it was a perfect time for us to provide an answer and outline a good solid basic RV tool kit.

Mark just completed two sizeable repair projects in the last few weeks too: replacing the landing legs on our fifth wheel toy hauler and replacing the start motor plus relocating the start relay (so it’s easier to access) in our Polaris RZR side-by-side. Since he had just pulled out all of the tools necessary for these jobs, the whole issue of “essential” vs. “not-so-important” tools was fresh in his mind.

RV Tool Kit - Essential tools for RVers and RV living

What are the “must have” tools when you run off to a life of adventure in an RV?

I asked him to do a pretend shopping spree and assemble an RV tool kit on Amazon while I took Buddy for a walk. When I returned, he’d put together a terrific basic RV tool kit. He’d also discovered a few cool tools he didn’t have yet, and they were all sitting in our Amazon shopping cart!

Well, the Master Mechanic in any RV or boat can never have too many tools, right?!

Mark keeps most of his tools in the basement of our fifth wheel. He also has two additional mini tool kits. One mini tool kit lives in the truck and has duplicates of all the most basic tools he might need for a breakdown on the road or a tire change. The other mini tool kit lives in our Polaris RZR side-by-side in case it has a breakdown or needs a tire change.

You can find all of the tools discussed here in the “RV Tool Kit” curation in our Gear Store or click the blue boldface titles or the images below.

HANDHELD TOOLS for an RV TOOL KIT

RV Tool Kit - Handheld Tools

Handheld Tools

Handheld tools are the heart of the tool kit. Craftsman is a great brand that comes with a lifetime warranty. So, a lot of the tools listed here are Craftsman. If a Craftsman tool breaks, you can just take it to a hardware store that carries Craftsman and they’ll replace it free of charge.

Mechanic’s Tool Set – A good place to start is to get a robust mechanic’s tool kit that has a wide variety of tools: hammer, screwdrivers, sockets, drill bits, pliers, etc. Mark keeps his in the truck so he doesn’t have to go digging for a tool in the basement when something comes up as we drive.

Socket Set – This particular set includes both SAE and metric sizes as well as 1/4 and 3/8 inch drives.

Wrench Set – A robust set like this one includes wrenches of every size in both metric and SAE. Some sets skip certain sizes, so verify that you’ll be getting all the sizes you need. This set can also be rolled up in its fabric case so it’s easy to carry and store.

Adjustable Wrenches – A big one and a small one will do the trick.

Screwdriver Set – Be sure to include both Phillips head and flat head screwdrivers. Want more variety? here is a bigger set.

Screwdriver #2 Square Head – Many RVs are built with things that require a #2 square head screwdriver. We use ours all the time!

Basic Pliers Set – This set includes channel locks and needle nose along with regular pliers. This bigger set has more variety.

Hand Saw – You might need to cut some lumber (we have!)

Hack Saw – You might need to cut some metal pipe (we have!)

Folding Saw – Sometimes we use this saw to cut back overhanging branches at our campsite.

Telescoping Inspection Mirror – With some projects it’s super difficult to see into the deep recesses of where you’re working. A telescoping mirror makes it possible to see the backs of things and around corners.

Telescoping Magnet Tool – If you drop that vital nut down into an impossible to reach spot, you can retrieve it with this nifty tool.

Measuring Tape – Handy if you need to measure something.

Level – Handy if you want something to be level or square.

Kneeling Pad – When you’re working on something low, it really helps to have a kneeling pad to cushion your knees. Mark uses his all the time!

CORDLESS POWER TOOLS for an RV TOOL KIT

RV Tool Kit - Cordless Tools

Cordless Tools

Several companies make a suite of cordless power tools that all use the same battery pack. If possible, stick to one brand to avoid storing a variety of battery packs and chargers (although we’ve ended up with a mix ourselves!).

Ryobi, Rigid, DeWalt, Milwaukee and Makita all make sets of tools based on their battery packs and are good reliable brands. However, each brand offers a different suite of tools. The products linked to here are all Ryobi which we like a lot. We keep two battery packs on hand so we can be using one while the other is charging…or use both at the same time!

Cordless Drill – We not only use ours for standard drilling purposes, but we also use it to raise and lower our landing jacks. We did this on our full-timing fifth wheel and now on our toy hauler. Both trailers came with manual landing jacks. To set up our drill for this purpose we put a 1/4 to 3/8 socket adapter in the chuck and attach an 8 inch extension and a 3/4 inch deep socket with 3/8 drive.

Drill Bit Set – There are bigger kits, but this is a good basic selection.

Cordless Screwdriver – This little gem is fabulous and saves your wrists if you have a lot of screwing and unscrewing to do.

Cordless Screwdriver Hex Bits – These are super handy to use in the cordless screwdriver if you have a lot of bolts to tighten.

Cordless Tire Inflator Air Compressor – This tire inflator can inflate all kinds of tires (Schrader valve) and basketballs too! We use it to inflate the air bags on our Reese Goose Box.

Cordless Dust Blower – After driving our side-by-side, we use this to blow the dust off ourselves. It can inflate air mattresses too.

Work Light – A super bright light that can be hung right over your work area makes it much easier to see what you’re doing.

Hand Vacuum – RV floor space and storage space is so limited that we prefer to use a hand vac instead of a stand-up vacuum.

Flashlight – You can never have too many flashlights. This one is a good all around bright light in a modest size that Mark uses every day.

TOOLS & SUPPLIES FOR RV ELECTRICAL WORK

RV Tool Kit - Tools for Electrical Repairs

For Electrical Work

Multimeter – This is critical for anything and everything electrical. If you want to test what’s going on in a specific location, a clamp-on meter can be placed around a wire and you’ll see the current at that spot.

Aligator Test Clip Leads – Vital for troubleshooting problems

Heat Shrink Butt Connector Kit – This suitcase style kit has marine grade butt connectors from 22 to 10 AWG and comes with a heat shrink tool and crimper. Mark lovs this kit!

Black Electrical Tape – Scotch is a good brand for electrical tapes. Cheaper brands are a waste of money. Get the good stuff!

Colored Electrical Tape – Same as the above but for cases where you want to color code your work.

TOOLS & SUPPLIES FOR RV PLUMBING & GAS WORK

RV Tool Kit - Plumbing Tools

For Plumbing & Gas

PVC Pipe Cutter – It’s really hard to cut PVC without one of these, and they also cut the blue and red PEX water lines with ease.

Tubing Cutter – Use this to cut copper pipe (we used it when installing our vent-free propane heater)

Teflon Tape – Blue Monster is the best brand of teflon tape. We learned about it from a plumber, and Mark has never gone back to the brands he used to use!

TOOLS FOR CHANGING A TIRE

RV Tool Kit - Tire Changing Tools

In case of a flat!

Heavy Duty Lug Wrench — To screw and unscrew the lug nuts on the wheel

Hydraulic Bottle Jack — Get one strong enough to lift your RV or your truck.

18” Breaker Bar — If the Lug Wrench can’t crack the lug nuts loose, a breaker bar and deep impact socket will do the trick. Then switch to the Lug Wrench to finish screwing or unscrewing the lug nut.

Deep Impact Socket — Works with the breaker bar. Match the size of the socket to the lug nuts on your vehicle’s wheels

1/2 inch Drive 10 inch Socket Extension — Necessary to change the inner rear wheel on a dually truck (Mark demonstrates that HERE!).

Flat Tire Repair Kit – It may be possible to patch the tire rather than use the spare.

Fix a flat – When all else fails, it doesn’t hurt to have a can on hand!

Small compressor – Get that baby pumped up!

Tire Pressure Gauge – It’s important to check the tire pressure!

TAPE & FASTENERS

RV Tool Kit - Tape and Fasteners

Tape & Fasteners

Gorilla Tape — All purpose super sticky tape that can attach virtually anything to anything

Alien Tape — Thick double-sided tape that is great for mounting things

Velcro Extreme Mounting Tape – Excellent for mounting things you’ll remove at some point (like clocks that need batteries).

WORK GLOVES

RV Tool Kit - Work Gloves

Hand Protection

Leather Gloves – Protect your hands when doing heavy lifting

RV Dump Gloves – Disposable Nitrile gloves are great protection while doing the dirty deed at the RV dump.

Cut-Resistant Work Gloves – Protect your hands when dealing with sharp metal parts and tools

Are there tools in your RV tool kit that you depend on and that we’ve missed here? Please list them in the comments below!

Check out all of these essential tools under “RV Tool Kit” in our online Gear Store HERE. Or click the image below to see our basic RV tool kit plus all the other goodies we’ve put on the shelves!

RLT Gear Store Storefront

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Christmas Traditions Past and Present – Lebkuchen!

Christmas is such a special time. it is my favorite holiday — a time of full of wonder and love on many levels. Family traditions are the cozy essence of Christmas for many people, and activities in the kitchen are especially beloved.

Merry Christmas

We’re not thinking about Christmas too much in this photo from Crested Butte, Colorado, but what fun it has been to relive an old Christmas tradition this year.

I love Christmas cooking. However, having chosen to live unusual lifestyles most of my life — living on a sailboat in Boston Harbor in the 1990s, living in our office when my former husband I and founded and ran an IT consulting firm, and then cruising around North America via RV and sailboat for 13 years, I haven’t had the kind of kitchen that was conducive to Christmas fun.

One of my favorite childhood Christmas memories, however, is of baking and eating a special kind of German Christmas cookie called Lebkuchen from a recipe that had been in my family since my ancestors lived in Germany in the early 1800s.

It is a honey-based cookie that tastes like no other, and I remember fondly dipping the cookies in milk and later in dipping them in coffee all day long on Christmas Day and for many days afterwards.

My great-grandmother, Emily Riesenberg, learned the recipe (along with many other recipes) from her immigrant mother growing up in a log cabin in Wisconsin, and she became very skilled in the kitchen.

Emily Riesenberg

My great-grandmother and her son Sidney Riesenberg (my great-uncle) in New York’s Yonkers Statesman, June 1, 1928

Although I was blessed with her name, her outstanding culinary skills didn’t make it across the generation gap to me!

She raised four children, one of whom was my great-uncle, Sidney Riesenberg, that I wrote about when we saw the mules at the Grand Canyon last June. He became a well known illustrator in New York. His older brother, Felix Riesenberg, became a well known explorer, tall ship captain and bestselling author.

When Emily had finished raising her family around the turn of the last century, she began submitting her recipes to newspapers and magazines. She was 50 at the time — in 1906 — and as she later told an interviewer with a New York newspaper, “Now it was time for my career!”

Her recipes were published in many publications, including Ladies Home Journal, and she had a weekly column in a Chicago newspaper. Her column, recipes and tips were very popular, and in 1931, at age 76, she published a cookbook called “Easy Baking” that included all her favorite baking recipes.

Renogy 200 watt solar panel

When I was a child, my mother had a cherished copy of this cookbook. It was well worn and stained from being used every year for Christmas baking. My mother would carefully open the book to the Lebkuchen recipe some time in early December and cover the open book with Saran Wrap to prevent us from making any new stains on those precious pages!

A few years ago, my sister found some copies of the cookbook and gave one to me. It had a treasured home in our RV and then in our house. However, each Christmas came and went without me trying my hand at making Lebkuchen.

Easy Baking cookbook by Emily Riesenberg

“Easy Baking” by my namesake!

This year, however, I dove in with gusto. It is an interesting recipe that calls for boiling honey and butter for 5 minutes over a “low fire.” This becomes a very frothy thing! “Soda” is added to water in another step and then the whole thing becomes an extremely sticky batter that has to remain in a covered bowl for 4 days as it “ripens”

Lebkuchen dough ripening for 4 days

The dough has to “ripen” for 4 days. It’s impossible not to peek!

I loved the mystery of all these steps as a child. As I made my way through the recipe this year, I wondered what my great-grandmother would think if she saw me in my kitchen today. It was over 50 years ago that I made these cookies with my mother. 100 years before that, my great-grandmother made these cookies with her mother in a log cabin!

The recipe calls for “citron” or candied citrus fruit peels, and I remember being fascinated by this odd, sticky food that had to be diced very finely. It is a key ingredient in these cookies. Unfortunately, there was none to be found in any of the stores within a half hour drive of our house and none at a reasonable price online either. I imagine that all the true Christmas bakers out there who plan ahead bought it all up before I even got the idea to make these cookies!

I’m sure my great-grandmother would have been quite distressed that I wouldn’t be including any citron in these cookies, but I learned my lesson to start thinking and planning ahead at Thanksgiving. Next time!

After four days of ripening, the dough is extremely dense and requires a huge amount of manipulation to get it to a point where you can roll it out. This was a job my mother always did, and as I wrestled with the dough this afternoon, I remembered watching her putting her whole body weight into getting that dough to comply. I had to do that too!

I didn’t have a rolling pin, but I was able to order one with my Instacart grocery order a few days ago. What would my great-grandmother have thought about my fast flying fingers typing on a keypad so a week’s worth of groceries plus a rolling pin would be delivered at my house the next day?!

Lebkuchen dough ready to be rolled out

The dough is a beast to deal with at first – dense and totally unpliable!

When I was little, we had a huge paper bag full of cookie cutters in all kinds of shapes. There were santas, stars, snowmen and other things. My great-uncle’s favorite cookie cutter was the pig, so we always used that one a lot so there would be plenty of cookies for him.

I don’t have any cookie cutters in my very simple kitchen, but I found that the rim of a mason jar top worked just fine. I could feel my great-grandmother shaking her head at my unpreparedness, but I knew she was smiling too because I was trying, and I had her book open with plastic wrap protecting the pages from flying flour.

Using a mason jar cap to cut Lebkuchen cookies

No cookie cutters? A Mason Jar cap rim did the job very well! I’ll get the ones below next year!

Christmas Cookie Cutters

Back in the early 1900s, ovens didn’t have thermometers, so the Lebkuchen baking instructions were to use a “very moderate” oven (as opposed to a “fast oven” or “slow oven” that were required for her other recipes). No time was given for when they’d be done either — just test them with a toothpick!

I remember my mother being perplexed about what temperature “very moderate” might be and how long to leave the cookies in the oven. And so it was for me today. Would that be 325 degrees or perhaps 350? And for how long? 10 minutes? 20 minutes? 30??

I found other Lebkuchen recipes online (what would my great-grandmother have thought of that?), and the recipes were totally different than this one. None of them let the dough ripen for 4 magical days (and oh yes, we kids often snuck lumps of uncooked dough to snack on secretly when no one was looking — and then we’d be reprimanded when the dough had shrunk by the time baking day rolled around!). The other Lebkuchen recipes online used temperatures anywhere from 300 to 400 degrees, so that didn’t help much!

When I was a little girl, the cookies always got baked somehow. I remember fondly, however, that we always had a batch or two that was quite dark or even burnt on the bottom and a few batches that were too light. Eventually, we’d get our rhythm and they’d all turn out perfectly.

Baking Lebkuchen Christmas cookies

Oh, for my great-grandmother’s skill in the kitchen!

We always made a double batch so we’d have plenty to give away. This involved sifting over 14 cups of flour! On baking day, the cookie sheets went in and out of the oven in a magical, sweet smelling dance all afternoon.

I got a soul enriching whiff of all those memories this afternoon as I listened to Christmas carols and cut little mason jar cap circles out of the dough. I’d made just a half batch of dough, and the smell and taste were right on. They turned out a little hard, however. In fact, they are very very hard! We’ll have to dip them in milk or coffee and tea for a long time!

But that’s part of the fun, and it is exactly how we always dealt with the dark and burnt ones way back when.

German Christmas Lebkuchen cookies

My humble first try. Now I have lots of notes for next year!

My great-grandmother’s recipe (and all the online Lebkuchen recipes) call for icing the cookies, but in our house they never made it that far…eager hands pulled them out of the cookie jar too fast and they disappeared into happy bellies! And so it is at our house this year.

Reese Goosebox

Here is the recipe:

Lebkuchen Recipe by Emily Riesenberg in her cookbook Easy Baking

The ingredient list for making Lebkuchen

Lebkuchen recipe by Emily Risenberg in her cookbook Easy Baking-2

Instructions. Quite different than modern recipe instructions!

For comparison, here is the recipe given by King Arthur Flour. They recommend refrigerating the dough for a day and baking at 350 for 20 to 22 minutes. A commenter suggested wrapping the dough in plastic wrap before refrigerating to keep it moist.

Also, here is the introduction to Emily Riesenberg’s cookbook — an essay by her son, Felix Riesenberg, about the importance of baking homemade bread for the health and happiness of your children!

The importance of baking bread for your children from the cookbook Easy Baking by Emily Riesenberg_

Written by her son, Felix, this little intro speaks volumes about a world of simpler and more wholesome times in America in the 1800s.

Here’s a little about my great-grandmother from the front of the cookbook:

About the author of Easy Baking Emily Riesenberg

About my great-grandmother, Emily Riesenberg

Also, here are the opening paragraphs of the first chapter: key tips every “up to date cook” needs to know about flour!

What Every Cook Should Know introduction to Easy Baking cookbook by Emily Riesenberg

What a different and special world my great-grandmother lived in!

Note added Christmas morning:

Mark and I surprised each other when we opened our gifts and saw we’d gotten each other the same thing! A neighbor who has an artisan woodworking shop invited all the neighbors to come check out his work and buy gifts, and we both snuck out with a gift for the other of a boy (or girl) with a dog. What a sweet coincidence!

Boy and girl with dog made by Rust Art

Mark and I gave each other almost identical gifts this year…with Buddy close to our hearts!

I hope you have a wonderful Christmas and that you take a moment to reminisce about your fondest traditions, even if they aren’t a part of your festivities now. We’d love to hear your stories too!

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50 RV Gift Ideas for Your Beloved RVer (or RV!)

Is there a special RVer in your life who’d appreciate a tool or an appliance or other RV gift for your life on the road — perhaps a memento of your RVing adventures together? Or do you have an RV you love that deserves a little holiday gift wrapped with a bow?

We have our own list of “must have” RV goodies, and we’ve seen some super cute RV related gifts in our travels, and this inspired me to do a little digging online to see if there might be more. Oh my, if you look hard enough there’s a treasure trove out there!

I had a blast “window shopping” — here’s a list of a few things I found.

If something appeals to you, click on the image or the link in the text above it to find out all the details.

For starters, does your beloved RV welcome you home with a cute little mat by the door? Here’s a wonderful RV welcome mat:

Home is where the RV welcome mat is-min

Yes, indeed!

And another fun one:

Just Another Day in Paradise RV Welcome Mat

Welcome home!!

If you’d rather wipe your feet on a super absorbent doormat instead of a decorative welcome mat (we have one), then maybe a little welcome sign would be a gracious way to invite your friends in:

RV Welcome Sign

A warm welcome for your RV guests.

Ya gotta hang your keys up somewhere, and what better place for the RV and car keys than on a fun set of keyhooks?

RV key hooks - The adventure begins

.

And now that you’ve got a great place to hang your keys, how about putting your most important keys on a special keyring?!

RV keyring

.

If you want to introduce yourself to your neighbors and give your RV patio a little flair, how about a personalized sign for your campsite?

Personalized RV campsite sign

A personalized sign makes introductions easy.

If you’re a bit shy about putting your name out in front of your rig, maybe just let the neighbors know where the party is with a flag that says “It’s 5:00 Somewhere”!

It's 5 o'clock somewhere garden flag-min

Let the neighbors know where the party is!

Speaking of parties, if yours tend to involve a little wine, then you might find a set of picnic wine glass and bottle holders to be just the thing. Simply shove them in the ground near your camp chairs and your wine will be safe from tipping over.

picnic stix wine glass and bottle holders-min

No spills by the campfire!

For some folks, the stems on wine glasses are a little cumbersome in the RVing life. If you want to go stemless, there are some very cute etched wine glasses made especially for those RVers who are wine drinkers with a camping problem or who are just happy campers:

stemless camping wine glass-min

Is this you — or someone you know??

Happy Camper stemless wine glass-min

Describes every RVer, for sure!

If you’re serving munchies too, then you’ll definitely want to bring out some RV cocktail napkins!

RV cocktail napkins

These will make your guests smile!

There’s nothing like waking up to the perfect cup of coffee, especially after an evening partying with friends, and IMHO the BEST way to make it is pour-over style. This is especially true if you like to boondock. It doesn’t require any electricity and delivers a delicious cup in no time.

Simply place the filter holder on the top of your coffee mug, put a paper filter inside, dump in a scoop of finely ground coffee beans and pour boiling water over the grounds. In a minute or two you have the perfect cup.

Pour over coffee filter holder

The EASIEST way to make coffee in an RV!
Especially for boondockers. No electricity needed!.

If you want to make more than one cuppa joe at a time, get a pour-over coffee carafe. They come in smaller and larger sizes. My family made coffee this way from the time I was 12, and the care we took in making, sharing and drinking it is one of my fondest childhood memories.

The pour-over carafes we suggest come in 36 ounce and 52 ounce sizes.

Pour over coffee carafe

The pour over coffee carafes made by Melitta
come in 36 ounce and 52 ounce sizes.

The reason we recommend disposable paper filters is because you don’t have to deal with the mess of wet coffee grounds. The permanent filters are great in a house where you have endless dishwashing water and no concerns about what goes down the drain. But in an RV, especially when boondocking, cleaning a permanent coffee filter is difficult. That’s also why we don’t use a French Press!

If you want to get really fancy, buy whole beans and grind them yourself so they’re as fresh as can be. We like this coffee grinder:

Coffee grinder

Mark always jokes that morning coffee in our RV is a science project!

You can’t travel in an RV without camping chairs, and of course they come in all shapes, colors and sizes. But how about a camp chair with your RV’s name printed on the back rest or with your name there?! This isn’t a bad idea if you’re headed to a big gathering of RVers in the desert in Quartzsite where lots of folks have nearly identical chairs and the chairs often stay in a ring around the campfire for days on end!

personalized camping chair-min

Personalized camping chair — Will you put your name or the rig’s name on it??

This past summer we swapped out the recliners that came with our Genesis Supreme Toy Hauler with these zero gravity chairs from Best Choice. It was a great upgrade!

Zero Gravity Chairs for an RV

We like these better than the chairs that came with our toy hauler.
We use them inside and outside!

We topped them with these cushions which are very comfortable.

Zero Gravity Chair Cushions

Soft and comfy.

RVers frequently camp in places where you can’t have a campfire. So what could be better than bringing a portable campfire with you? This little guy runs on propane and has a nice flame.

Portable RV campfire

Now you can have a campfire anywhere you take your RV!

50 States 5,000 Ideas Travel Book

No shortage of possibilities!

So far, we’ve been coming up with all kinds of great ideas for making that beloved RV a cozy home for living in and sharing with friends. But how about some travel ideas?

If your loved one needs some travel inspiration, here’s a book that offers 5,000 ideas for where to go with your RV and what to see and do once you get there!

For nature lovers, hikers, photographers and anyone dreaming of seeing America’s stunning National Parks, check out this top rated Guide to the National Parks.

Your Guide to the National Parks

Dreaming of a big RV adventure? Here’s a Guide to the National Parks!

Rand McNally Road Atlas

“Let’s hit the road!”

Are you in the special category of “Wanting to Be an RVer?” and, perhaps, the Love of Your Life is a little hesitant about this crazy new dream of yours?

One way to win him/her over might be the trick that pioneering RVer Kay Peterson used on her husband to inspire him to go RVing full-time.

One day, when she put the sandwich she made him in his lunch box, she wrapped it in a US road map!

The gift of a good quality road atlas can drop a broad hint and comes in very handy for planning your itinerary.

Once you’ve been out having fun in your RV for a while, whether you’ve been traveling for a week, a year, or more, you’ll want to keep a record of all your adventures.

I still cherish the journal I hand wrote (and hand decorated with glued-in photos) of our travels in our popup tent trailer.

Here’s a specially made camping journal with categories and prompts to remind you of all the things you’ll want to remember later:

Camping and RV journal-min

A Camping and RV Travel Journal.

Lots of people wear their hearts on their sleeve, and some go so far as to wear their passions on the fronts of their shirts! Here are a few fun t-shirts (available in men’s and women’s sizes and a rainbow of colors).

If telling the world you love the RVing lifestyle on the front of your shirt isn’t really your style, maybe curling up with some lounge pants decorated with vintage trailers would be more like it!!

Happy camper lounge pants-min

Happy camper vintage trailer lounge pants.

Although it’s nice to lounge around in t-shirts and PJ’s, it’s nice to dress up too. An adorable pair of earrings might be just the thing for your sweetie.

RV earrings

She’ll love them!
Check out these many other styles too!

Guys always love flashlights, and Mark owns quite a few. At least four of his are the Lumintop brand (they make many different types), and he says they’re better quality than his others. One of his favorites is the Lumintop SD26 pocket flashlight. It isn’t made any more, but it’s very similar to the newer Lumintop D2 pocket flashlight which is very bright, rechargeable and has four modes.

Lumintop D2 Flashlight

He’ll be all smiles when he sees this super bright Lumintop D2!

Mark was a Boy Scout, so he likes to be prepared, and his pockets are always full of survival goodies. He actually carries TWO pocket knives, if you can imagine, and he uses them both all the time! One is the tiny Gerber 2 inch folding pocket knife. It has a locking blade and he loves it because the blade is always super sharp. The other is a Victorinox Swiss Army pocket knife. He loves it because of all the tools: scissors, tweezers, toothpick and a file!

Both are tiny — about 2 inches long when folded up!

Gerber LST Pocket Knife

The locking blade on this Gerber LST pocket knife is really sharp and holds its edge.

Victorinox Pocket Swiss Army Knife

Just over 2 inches long, this tiny Swiss Army Knife is full of useful tools!

One more goodie that Mark discovered in the last two years that he asbolutely loves is the Ryobi electric screwdriver. Talk about saving your wrists when you have a lot of screws to deal with!!! I love it to and used it all the time when I was mounting shelves and various things in our new rig. The man in your life — that guy who has everything and is so hard to shop for — will totally love this!

Ryobi electric screwdriver

This little electric screwdriver is the bomb!

Getting back to those special memories that we all create on the road, one fun way to memorialize a particularly special travel moment is to frame a photo of it in a picture frame shaped like an RV. Whether your rolling home requires a motorhome picture frame or a trailer picture frame, there’s a cool one for you:

RV picture frame class C Motorhome-min

A picture frame for that memorable moment from your RV adventures.

RV travel trailer picture frame-min

The trailer version.

Okay, okay, enough of the cutesy RV decorated stuff. How about some practical things that will give your life on the road a little zing and isn’t something you’re likely to find at the local camping store?

First on our list of “must haves” in our RV lifestyle is a set of two-way radios. We use these radios to help us back up and park the trailer, to communicate when hiking in glorious remote locations, and when we get separated in Walmart too. No cell phone reception needed!

Midland 36-mile 50-channel two-way radios-min

We have had Midland 36-mile radios since we started in 2007 and wouldn’t RV without them.

For anyone with a small RV, a top quality set of nesting pots and pans is a joy. We bought a set of Magma nesting pots and pans when we moved onto our sailboat in 2010, and we still use them now in our trailer.

magma nesting cookware for RV travel-min

We bought these pots and pans for our boat and still use them every day.

magma nesting cookware for RV camping-min

The whole set fits into one pot!

Another kitchen item I really loved having with us in our toy hauler’s dollhouse sized kitchen this past summer is my tiny Cuisinart food processor. If you like chopped salads, salsa and guacamole, and your storage space is minimal, this little gadget is a must have.

Cuisinart Elemental 4-Cup Food Processor

Makes guac & salsa in a minute flat and takes up very little space.

There are so many cute things out there to dress up the RV galley. One fun way to give it some color is to hang up pretty hand towels. We saw these hand towels when we visited the La Posada Hotel gift shop in Winslow Arizona and just loved them.

RV and retro travel trailer hand towels-min

Decorative hand towels.

How about a set of RV decorated dishes, each with a unique (and inviting) camping scene?!

Camping dishes with travel trailer RV designs-min

What a great dishware set for your travels!

There’s also a very cool serving bowl (with serving spoons)!

RV bowl and serving set with travel trailer design-min

A serving bowl (and serving spoons) to go with the dishes

Okay, let’s get back to the practical stuff that isn’t decorated with adorable vintage RVs.

Nothing says “love” like power tools, and the two we use most are our cordless drill and cordless impact driver. We use the drill to raise and lower the stabilizer jacks on the back of our trailer (explained in this article), and Mark uses the impact drill every time he changes a tire on either the trailer or the truck (check out how he changes that inner rear wheel on the dually!). I’d like to say that doesn’t happen too often…but unfortunately he’s changed a lot of tires since we started RVing full-time!!

Ryobi Cordless Drill Combo Set

Cordless drill and impact driver set. Mark loves these!

Of course, the way to measure the difficulty of any RV repair job is by how many beers it takes to complete. Whether it’s a one beer job or a two beer job, it goes much better if the beer is cold right to the last drop. Mark LOVES his Yeti koozie.

Yeti beer koozie-min

For the beer drinker with a camping problem!
Cold to the last drop…

If you don’t need your stainless steel beer koozie to say “Yeti” on it, there are other brands that are much cheaper.

Yeti is known for its coolers, but we found that the much cheaper Lifetime coolers are excellent too. We keep one in the back of our Polaris RZR. Lifetime is the right name for that company too. One of the latches on our original Lifetime cooler failed after a few years, and when we contacted the company about it, they swapped out our cooler for a brand new one!

Lifetime Cooler

We love our Lifetime cooler!

One of my favorite parts of the RV lifestyle is kicking back with a leisurely morning cup of tea. My mug (a birthday gift from Mark) says “I love you,” but a pair of “Life is better in a camper” mugs would be pretty cool too!

RV coffee mugs with travel trailer-min

“Life is Better in a Camper” coffee mugs!

Retro trailers are all the rage, but there’s a coffee mug for motorhome lovers too.

RV coffee mug motorhome at night in woods-min

Motorhome camping scene on a coffee mug.

If you’ve got kids or friends over at your campsite, and you’re looking for fun things to do, a party game might fill the bill. Corn Hole and Ring Toss are portable and easy to set up.

Corn Hole Game for RV camping-min

Something fun to do at the campsite besides sit around the campfire!

Ring Toss Camping Game-min

Ring toss game.

For families that get stuck indoors on a rainy day, a fun way for the kids to get some laughs and learn a little at the same time is to play the game Mad Libs. I saw this in a gift shop and remembered loving it as a kid, and I couldn’t resist buying it for my grandkids.

If the kids haven’t learned the difference between a noun and a verb at school yet (and lord knows if the schools are even teaching that these days), this game makes it fun and easy to learn!

RV gift Mad Libs game-min

This is a fun (and funny) indoor rainy day word game.

For RVers who love birds (like me), we’ve seen some beautiful little wooden bird houses shaped like trailers.

We love to hang a hummingbird feeder from our RV, and we have a special one that mounts on our window with a suction cup mount. It’s a blast to sit inside and watch the crazy antics of these tiny birds as they duke it out with each other at the feeder. For anyone who enjoys photography, this kind of feeder is a hoot (blog posts about our humming bird experiences here and here).

Hummingbird Feeder window suction cup mount-min

We hang a hummingbird feeder on our RV window with a suction cup mount.

Window hummingbird feeder

We’ve enjoyed this feeder on our trailer so much we got one for our house too!

Speaking of photography, November and December are the best time of the year to buy a camera. The deals get sweeter and sweeter! If a fancy new camera is on your wish list, now is the time to get one. For us (and many others), Nikon is the brand to buy.

The photography world is a bit split right now between folks on the cutting edge who have new technology mirrorless cameras and those who have a big investment in older technology DSLR lenses that are sticking with DSLR cameras. The mirrorless cameras cost a premium because they are the new technology while the DSLR cameras are a true bargain right now.

At the high end, the camera that has taken the photography world by storm is the mirrorless Nikon Z8 camera. Nikon’s entry level mirrorless camera is the Nikon Z30. Their mid-range full-frame mirrorless camera is the Nikon Z5. If you have an unlimited budget, get the Nikon Z9!

In the older technology DSLR world, at the high end the Nikon D850 rivals the new mirrorless Nikon Z8 in many respects (it has the same sensor) yet it can be purchased for two-thirds or half the price. In the mid-range, the Nikon D780 is an excellent full-frame choice. The entry level Nikon D5600 is a fine camera. We use ours when we’re out on the RZR or driving the truck!

Nikon Z8 camera

November / December is the best time to buy a new camera.

And last of all, whether you’re going to celebrate Christmas in your RV living room or in the living room of a stickbuilt home, why not decorate your Christmas tree with a little RV love?! There are lots of RV Christmas ornaments available including these two:

Airstream RV Christmas ornament

Why not hang a little Airstream on your Christmas tree?!

RV Christmas tree ornament

There are lots of RV Christmas ornaments out there!

On a totally different topic, Mark just came in and suggested I add a note to remind you that now is a great time to exercise your onboard generator, if you have one, and if your rig is not going to be used for a while. He’s got ours going with two electric heaters running full blast so it’s got a good load on it…!

Also, if you are in a warmer climate, like we are, where you can avoid fully winterizing your rig but still experience temps below freezing for a few hours every night, make sure the holding tanks are empty and the fresh water tank is either empty or has lots of water in it, and open all the faucets.

For MORE RV gift ideas, see our post: 101 Great RV Gift Ideas for RVers, Campers and Outdoor Lovers!

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Lost & Found – An Unexpected Guest Visits Us in our RV!

Spring 2020 – We were walking across a huge, empty gravel parking lot in Camp Verde, Arizona, one day when we noticed something white fluttering around on the ground. It was midday and incredibly hot out, probably 95 degrees or more.

At first we thought it was a piece of tissue paper and paid little attention. As we got closer, though, we saw it was some kind of animal. When we were a few steps away, we realized it was a white parakeet!

What the heck?!

Lost & Found Parakeet - An unexpected guest in our RV

An unexpected guest came to visit!

The bird was struggling to stand and trying desperately to fly. It kept flopping away from us as best it could. But it could barely hold itself up and kept falling over.

In a different life, long ago, I used to raise budgies and I had several breeding pairs. So, I instinctively scooped up this poor bedraggled little thing in my hands to comfort it and have a better look.

It had a brown “cere” — the little nose area with nostrils that’s just above the beak, so it was a female (males have a blue cere). I looked at Mark as I held this dear but pathetic little creature to my cheek and shrugged — what do we do now??!!

A lost budgie is found and we entertain her in our RV

Our new little friend was a female.

The whole area around us was industrial, dusty, dry, and baking in the sun. There was one house a ways off. We knocked on the door but they said they weren’t missing a parakeet.

We noticed a Veterinary Supply store down the street and poked our heads in the door. They shook their heads and said there were no escaped parakeets that they knew of.

We realized we could walk all the streets of town for days and still not find the owner. People were at work, and even though our little friend was exhausted right now, she could have flown a long distance before she got here.

We decided to take her back to our trailer where it was cool and we could give her some much needed food and water. We put her in a bucket (with a top!) in the back seat of the truck. On our way home, we passed a veterinarian’s office and asked if they’d heard any reports of a missing white budgie. No, but they suggested we call Bill Harvey of Wild Birds.

We left a message with Bill and then made a stop at the Feed Store to get some bird seed. Even better, they had millet spray! This is a “finger” of dried millet seeds that are still clustered on the stalk. Budgies love it!

Once home, we put her on the table. She promptly flew up to a shelf high up on the wall. Mark found a nice twig and secured it on the edge of the shelf. She liked the looks of this new perch, so she slowly sidled out onto it, contentedly fluffed up her feathers and closed her eyes.

Ahh…rest at last!

Lost parakeet is found and cared for in an RV

She was so exhausted she started dozing as soon as she was comfortable on her new perch.

After a few minutes she put her head under her wing for a good long snooze. She was down for the count for the next 12 hours!

Tired lost & found parakeet

Goodnight!

We were pleased that although Buddy was curious about her, he was very polite. He seemed to know not to frighten her. So, he left her alone and took a nap too.

Napping puppy in an RV

Buddy likes naps too!

Wild Parrots of Telegraph Hill

The next morning we were thrilled to find that she was still alive. She hadn’t moved from her perch, but her eyes were open.

Lost parakeet still alive in the morning

She was still alive the next morning!

Mark tied the millet spray onto her perch, and boy, did her face light up! She dove right in and had a feast.

Happy parakeet with millet spray

Yum…

Parakeet eats millet spray after being lost & found

Don’t mind if I do!

Then she went over to the corner and took another nap. Her little “crop” was bulging. The “crop” is a small pouch below a bird’s neck and above their breast bone where the food they swallow is stored for later digestion. That way they can quickly bolt their food while they’re on the ground and then fly up to the safety of a tree.

Lost & found parakeet in an RV

Crop full and perched high up out of harms way — this was a very happy little bird.

A little while later she began grooming herself. She was coming around quickly!

Lost & found parakeet in an RV grooming

She began getting her feathers back in place.

Over the next two days she got stronger and stronger. She loved her little perch and the shelf Mark had attached it to. That was now her corner of the trailer.

Lost & found parakeet in an RV

Peek-a-boo!

We were all getting used to being together. But then we got a call back from Bill at Wild Bird. He hadn’t heard about an escaped budgie, but he suggested we call Roxanne at the pet store “Feathers and Friends” in the Village of Oak Creek near Sedona.

So, we called, and Roxanne said she’d be more than happy to take care of our little friend until she could find a good home for her.

The timing was perfect. Our sweet guest had gotten all her energy back and she was starting to go exploring around our trailer!

A lost & found parakeet was an unexpected guest in our RV

“Hmmmm…I wonder what’s over here?!”

When we arrived at the pet shop, Roxanne had already set up a cage for her, complete with food, water, some natural branch perches, a swing, a bell and a mirror! We put the little bird in her new cage and she settled right in.

We were sad to leave her behind, but we’ll remember our few days with our little house guest forever. As I turned to say goodbye, she didn’t even notice. She was busy playing with her bell, and she was surrounded by happy birds of all different kinds in nearby cages.

A few days later, we called to see how our feathered friend was doing. She’d already been adopted and taken to her new home!

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Winged Migration

Info about the pet store that found our friend a new home:

For bird and animal lovers

Related blog posts:

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News & Tidbits from the Roads Less Traveled

Even when we’re not out traveling, our photos and memories swirl around us all the time. We have 100 framed 8×10 glossy photos from our travels hanging on our walls at home.

Travel photos from a life of RVing and Sailing

Our memories come alive for us in our photos.
A friend once joked that a walk down our hallway is like a walk down Memory Lane!

Even better, every so often we’re able to share our experiences and the beauty of what we’ve seen with the rest of the world in formats beyond this blog! Happily, that has happened a few times in recent weeks.

Wholesale Warranties Interviews RLT!

This past week we were interviewed by Jim Hoffman, VP of Wholesale Warranties. Not far into the interview, we learned that the owner of the company, Jeff Shelton, founded Wholesale Warranties after he was unhappily stranded in broken down RV, dealing with the stress of a huge and unexpected repair bill! Oh my, that sounds familiar!

So, he started a company to broker RV warranties to help other RVers minimize the stress that comes with a disaster like that. They helped us immensely with a series of calamitous breakdowns on our fifth wheel trailer a few years back.

Jim wanted to hear what we thought of both the truck camper and the toy hauler we’ve purchased since we moved out of our full-timing fifth wheel. And he was eager to hear about our latest adventures in Colorado.

Wholesale Warranties interviews Mark & Emily of Roads Less Traveled

We had a lot of fun with this interview! Watch it here on Facebook or here on YouTube

We also described some of the mishaps and breakdowns we had this year. (It was ugly out there for a while!)

When we faced our massive truck repair bill, we sure wished we had an extended warranty for it. One of the things that was most reassuring with the trailer warranty we’d had was that we could call Wholesale Warranties and talk to a friendly person that was on our side and wanted to help us get the repair done under warranty. However, we’d assumed that a new diesel truck would make it to at least 100,000 miles before having a major malfunction, so we never considered an extended warranty for it… Sigh.

You can watch the interview here on Facebook (higher res) or here on YouTube (lower res).

Turbo Diesel Register Calendar

During our intensive research into our diesel truck problems, Mark spent a lot of time perusing the Turbo Diesel Register Forum.

While he was hanging there, he noticed they were having a photo contest, so he entered it. Lo and behold, his photo is going to appear in the 2024 Turbo Diesel Register wall calendar! It will be the month of October.

Dodge Ram diesel pickup with a fifth wheel trailer

Turbo Diesel Register Wall Calendar – Month of October – Mark Fagan

Reese Goosebox

Souvenir Wall Calendars

Quite a few of our photos have appeared on souvenir wall calendars over the years. Last year, four of our photos were selected for 2024. Then, a few weeks ago, we learned that six more of our photos will appear on decorative wall calendars in 2025!

These calendars can be found for sale at gift shops, boutique stores and even supermarkets in tourist towns. When I know more about how to obtain them online, I’ll let you know!

In the meantime, here are the pics that were chosen. We’re thrilled!

2024 Wall Calendar Photos

EmilyFagan15 Bryce Canyon

Bryce Canyon National Park in the snow
2024 Utah Mighty 5 National Parks Calendar – Month of February – Emily Fagan

MarkFagan30 for 2024 Northern Arizona

Spider Rock at Canyon de Chelly National Park Arizona
2024 Arizona Calendar Cover and Month of July – Mark Fagan

EmilyFagan10 Sedona

West Fork Trail, Sedona Arizona
2024 Sedona Calendar – Month of August – Emily Fagan

MarkFagan10 for 2024 Sedona

Bell Rock Pathway in Sedona Arizona in the snow
2024 Sedona Arizona Calendar – Month of December – Mark Fagan

2025 Wall Calendar Photos

The specific months have not been assigned to our photos yet, but they will be!

Sedona Arizona Winter Scene

Sedona Arizona Winter Scene – 2025 Sedona Arizona Calendar – Emily Fagan

Petrified Forest National Park – Arizona Calendar – Mark Fagan

Idaho Bow Bridge at Draper Wood Preserve

Bow Bridge – 2025 Idaho Calendar – Emily Fagan

Granite Dells Prescott Arizona

Granite Dells – 2025 Northern Arizona Calendar – Mark Fagan

Selway River Idaho at sunset

Selway River – 2025 Idaho Calendar – Emily Fagan

Mormon Temple in Idaho Falls

Idaho Falls Mormon Temple – 2025 Idaho Calendar – Mark Fagan

RV hose Water Bandit

Escapees Magazine Covers

We’ve been members of Escapees RV Club almost as long as we’ve been RVing. In our first winter of full-time RVing, new friends we met in the desert around Quartzsite Arizona recommended the club highly. We were skeptical at first — why join a club when you’ve just left the conventional world to go live an exotic life? But we have really enjoyed our membership over the years and highly recommend it to you too if you’re an RVer.

It is an unusual club founded by full-time RVers Kay and Joe Peterson back in 1978. It has a top notch bi-monthly magazine, an excellent online forum, a variety of RV parks with reasonable rates (and cheaper rates for dry camping…a rarity in any RV park), a mail forwarding facility that is so big it has its own Zip code, and an incredible headquarters campus in Livingston, Texas, that even includes an assisted living home base for RVers. Plus webinars, rallies, bootcamps and more.

A few months ago, and then again a month from now, our photos were featured on the cover of Escapees Magazine. These are our 43rd and 44th magazine covers (see more here). It is always a magical feeling when we see one of our photos on a cover!

Escapees Magazine Cover

A cover with Buddy in it! – March/April 2023 – Mark Fagan

RV in the Canadian Rockies

Canadian Rockies – Upcoming issue – Emily Fagan

That’s it for our extra-curricular news for now. Thanks for reading and happy trails!

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Further reading:

Our RV warranty experiences:

  • Our photography gear – This page needs to be updated, but if you want to get into photography, you can buy any of the cameras/lenses described there used for pennies on the dollar via Craigslist or MPB.

Our most recent posts:

More of our Latest Posts are in the MENU.   New to this site? Visit RVers Start Here to find where we keep all the good stuff. Also check out our COOL NEW GEAR STORE!! *** CLICK HERE *** to see it!