PRACTICE MAKES PERFECT, RIGHT??

The truck is ours, the Fifth-wheel is ours and it's parked quite nicely in a camping ground about thirty minutes from home. What's next on the agenda? Well, staying in it of course. Gathering up all the necessities of life, trucking on out (excuse the bad pun) to the site and living there overnight, for a few days, or even for a week. Time is on our side, so let's go RVing.

Me, a book and Freddy.

Crockery, cutlery and pots and pans have been whisked out of our kitchen and foods for the barbeque have been purchased. The linen closet has been similarly raided and stripped of a couple sets of sheets, some towels, toiletries and the extra hair dryer. All were packed in the truck and off we went, out for our first overnighter in our new home away from home. It was pretty exciting making up the bed, pressing all the buttons to make sure everything in the RV still worked, setting up the lawn chairs under the awning. Pretty peaceful too sitting there in the autumn sun reading my book, dogs curled up at my feet. Every RV site we plan to visit is 'dog friendly'. You can tell because there's a little icon of a dog on their website. How happy are we that most of them have that little icon? They all also require that no dogs be loose on the property; makes a lot of sense, but it means our dogs will have to be tethered, something they aren't used to. Not only are we practicing living in the confines of an RV, so are our dogs. They don't really care where they are as long as we are there but being tied up? We'd have to wait and see.

Kaede checking out new smells.

Once they realized they had quite a bit of room to wander around, sit or lie down in comfort the tethering up didn't seem to bother the dogs too much. It's not my favourite thing, tying up dogs but in the case of RV park rules it makes nothing but sense and treats have a way of making dogs happy with less than ideal situations.

Making meals in our RV turned out to be pretty darned easy. In addition to our barbeque there is a microwave (yup, this camping business is rough!!), a three burner stove top and an oven. Not a let's cook a turkey sized oven, possibly not even a let's cook a chicken sized oven; it's actually more of a two chicken breasts sized oven, but hey, who wants to be travelling and thinking of cooking turkey dinners anyway? Not me. Nope, barbequed burgers and a crisp salad was our first RV meal and it was wonderful eaten outside in the setting sun.


Our practice run was, so far going, swimmingly (as they say). The park had everything you could need or expect at this time of year in Ontario; clean washroom facilities, DVDs if you fancied and lots of great walking trails to take the pups. Best of all, thirty minutes from home if it suddenly occurs to us that we have forgotten to bring something essential to our well-being, such as curry powder or a teflon coated pan.

Our first day was done, we were battening down the hatches and getting ready for our first night of sleeping in the RV. And, wouldn't you know it - that also lived up to expectations. The queen sized bed turned out to be as comfortable as the one at home; the shower performed exactly as you would want it to and the heater kept us toasty warm. What else is there?

Erik in his jammies, morning coffee and Freddy nearby.

I am not a camper. I don't like tents, I don't like the outdoors unless there is indoors very close by, I certainly don't ever want to sleep in a sleeping bag out in the woods somewhere. I would not be very happy doing any of that and then have to get up the next morning all scrunched up and cold and miserable and flicking the remnants of dead bugs, or worse, from me. In that scenario I know for a fact there would be no morning coffee and certainly no Starbucks nearby. But, when you have a nifty little RV with electricity, a hot shower, a microwave and your hairdryer from home you can also have.......guess what??? your Keurig. Yup, my beloved individual brew Keurig and lots and lots of little pods that make me a delicious cup of extra bold, dark roast coffee. That's what I like to wake up to. And that's exactly what I did wake up to.


I do believe being a camper (well, RVer, actually) might just suit us quite well.