Still in the dark with much of this, but by now it was dinnertime.  Lunch had been a tin of tuna with vegetables & dressing, eaten right out of the can, and dinner was a survivalist, freeze-dried, just-add-water-to-bag spaghetti dinner.  Feeling very Bear Gryllis.

More settling in, walking the dog, then off to bed.  At 1:00 am, I woke absolutely freezing, because I hadn’t figured out the furnace (the whole furnace vs heat pump, gas vs electricity question is still a mystery) before going to bed.  So piled towels, throw rugs, and my coat on top of the duvet and went back to sleep.  Started up the furnace first thing the next morning, and the RV was warm in no time.

Was Day One a success?  Hard to say. 

Okay, so now what?  The site I was parked at didn’t have many neighbours, so at least no one was settling down in their lawn chair with a beer to watch the newbie screw everything up (that is the number one pastime of RVers – watching someone back their rig into a spot for the first time).  I muddled through, and was doing fine until I walked around the rig with my head down and cracked my forehead on the extended mirror.  Big goose-egg.

But inside, I really didn’t know what was what so I sat down with 22 user manuals that came with the rig.  And read them.  Two problems: in many cases, because the user manual came with the appliance/tool/system, the manual didn’t actually identify what type of item it was referencing.  For example, there was a Yamaha booklet.  But a Yamaha what?  Entertainment system? Battery charger? Furnace ignition?  Still don’t know.  I know they told me I could ask all the questions I wanted via text, but I thought I should at least try to figure things out with the manuals.  I sorted and labelled them in 4 separate pouches: Appliances, Car & Entertainment, Things I Don’t Understand, and Extra Bits.  (The last pile being extra wires attached to user manuals, French- or Spanish-only booklets, etc…)

Well.  Hunh.  Quite the morning.  The drive up here was great. Signed some papers, then set off for a tour of my rig from the service team at Heidi’s.  Very nice lady named Michelle did our walk through, which turned out not to be quite what I’d expected. I think she was what you might call an RV generalist: travelling & living in her RV several months of the year.  But not necessarily an expert on my Sunseeker.  Any of the more technical questions I asked, she had to go to a mechanic working nearby to answer.  So she seemed to focus more on: ‘here’s where you switch your water heater from electric to gas’; ‘here’s the switch for the awning’; etc . . . And yes, I did need to know all that (slide outs in particular have their own set of rules), but I also needed to know: when do I switch from electric to gas?; when I leave the dog alone in the rig in a parking lot while I go shopping, how does the generator impact the A/C?; where is my solar monitor and how do I interpret it? (And those are just the tip of the iceberg.) To be fair to Michelle, it may not have helped that my chauffeur would interject occasionally, or that I usually need new concepts explained at least twice (I’m fairly intelligent, just not always intuitive).

So I bid farewell to my friend, said thank you to Michelle, drove off the lot, checked in at the park next door, drove to my site, and parked. 

And realised I haven’t a fecking clue how half of this stuff works.

Sigh.

It’s time!  I have a friend driving me up to Heidi’s with my two-day’s worth of supplies; we leave at 9:30. I really appreciate her doing this, although I sense it’s really because she is as excited as I am to see the RV.  I have packed:

• 2 pots, 1 pan, 2 plates, 1 bowl, 1 set of picnic cutlery, 2 glasses, and two mugs
• Basic kitchen supplies & cleaning supplies
• Tea, S&P, sugar, ramen, 1 serving of survivalist freeze-dried spaghetti (a gift)
• 1 sheet, 1 pillow, 1 duvet, 1 set of towels
• Everything I bought at IKEA, small set of tools, an old lawn chair
• Scout’s overnight bag (yes, my dog has an overnight bag; she’s not a ruffian, you know)
• My overnight suitcase

I brought the last item out only minutes before we were to leave – Scout already suspects something is up, and the sight of suitcases makes her sad.

I worked out a whole plan for my first week, one that would allow me to test out a whole bunch of different things on my first trip.  I’m intentionally going solo on this one, so I can focus on learning the basics.  So the itinerary is as follows:

Two days at Heidi’s campground near Barrie.  I’m only packing the bare minimum for these two days, as I will (a) be practicing my driving by going to the local Canadian Tire, Home Hardware, Dollarama, and Metro to load up on supplies; and (b) stopping off at my house on day three to pack bulkier items that I can do without on days one and two.

On the way south from Barrie to my place I will stop off at IKEA Vaughan to do some more shopping – I am a bit nervous about that, but I’m hoping that on a mid-week morning, and by parking in a spot on the perimeter of the lot, it shouldn’t be too bad.

Then two days at a conservation area just outside St Mary’s, to show off my rig to my sister’s family.

Then four days of boondocking in southwestern Ontario (more on that to come).

Then one night at the campground just outside town, 15 minutes from my house, for reasons which will become clear in time.

It’s a plan.

This has been the weirdest spring in ages.  One day we’re in the mid-20s, next day there’s a frost warning in effect.  I had planned on breaking out my summer wardrobe for this trip up to Barrie, but those of you in southern Ontario know the rule: 2° drop as you cross Hwy 7, another 2° drop as you cross Hwy 9.  And Milton is forecasting low teens this week.  Cosy sweaters and sturdy jeans it is.

I leave in six days on my first adventure.  My contractor, who started working the first week of February, is still here.  Still to be done: re-install my bathroom vanity & shelves; install office bookshelves; paint my back door frame; and hang an 8’ x 5’ wall hanging in the stairwell.  I’ve given him until 4pm Sunday to finish.

Update: Saturday at 6:45pm he was almost done.  I’m not satisfied with the wall hanging (not his fault), but I can’t.  I just can’t.  I can’t do this anymore; I want him to leave.  I will deal with the wall hanging another day, I just need this whole renovation to be done.  So after a bit of a Duncan good-bye (as the Scottish Reids call a prolonged farewell), I shoved him oot the door. 

Great – 36 hours until I’m off!

My RV is 25’ long.  My driveway is not.  (Although, by February, it seems longer as I shovel the drifts).  It seems that I can park in the street up to 25 days each year, which will be handy for the occasional I-want-an-early-start trips, but doesn’t really address the big questions: Where do I keep my rig between trips? and where do I over-winter my rig?

I sent out a blast email to about 30 people I know, not asking if I could park in their driveways, but rather, did they know anyone with a long driveway, or who owns a business with its own parking lot.  This was a long shot, and I really had no idea what I was going to do if no one answered, but I figured, just write to anyone you know in the GTA or even as far afield as London.

Well, much to my surprise, I had two replies within 20 minutes.  (Interestingly, they were the only two replies – I had half expected people to at least write and say, ‘sorry, can’t help, but a new RV sounds fun!’. But maybe they thought it was a scam email?  After all it did rather come out of the blue. But I digress.)  Two wonderful ladies from my women’s group each came in with a different offer (I will refer to them as Bee-lady and Gardener respectively, for privacy’s sake): Bee-lady has a patch of unused land tucked away on her property 8 minutes from my house, which will be perfect for between-trips over the summer; and Gardener has a massive covered barn about 25 minutes from my place when I can over-winter the rig. How wonderful this club is; I really do owe MB a lot for recommending CFUW when I retired.  And of course, I will be paying both of these ladies rent for their property.

What a load off my mind.

I don’t want to say I hustled my nephew out the door on his last morning at my place (internship ended last week), as he had been a delightful house guest.  So as a courtesy, I waited 15 whole minutes after he left before I started piling RV stuff in the guest bedroom.  I should have taken a photo – the room looks like a cross between the Marketplace at IKEA, and the Outdoor Department at Canadian Tire. 

Everyone is giving me ideas of what to buy, and my incredibly generous friends who spent the last two years in their own RV touring North America have been giving me tons of their old equipment.  But I don’t want to do too much shopping up front for two reasons: 1) solo travelling means I am going to have a lot of free time on my hands, so why not use that time to shop; and 2) picking things and learning what’s needed will be half the fun!  (Edit 31 May 2025: ‘fun’? Hunh.)

So apart from one indulgent trip to IKEA with a friend (that’s my Strandskata laundry basket, which is going to dictate the colour scheme in the motorhome), I am just making lists to fulfil once we’re underway.

It’s been a month since I bought my RV, and you’d think I’d have spent that time packing and shopping in readiness for D-Day, but a lot else has been going on.  I decided last fall to have some renovations done around my house and hired the Eldon of contractors (think Murphy Brown).  He took 13 months to finish my sister’s house last year (original timeline: 3 months), and will have taken four months to finish what I would have thought would take 3 weeks at my place.  Don’t get me wrong: I knew going in that I was paying for quality workmanship, not decent time management. And, it’s looking pretty good so far.  But it means he’s commandeered my basement, my living room, my bedroom, and my garage – his is a peripatetic approach to task management: why finish one room at a time, when one can keep things interesting by doing several different tasks each day?  The only room unscathed is my guest bedroom.  But I can’t use that as a muster point for all things RVing – my nephew is staying with me for a four-month internship on Bay Street.  It’s bad enough for the poor guy that each Sunday, when he arrives at my house, another small portion of his bedroom floor, or the closet, or his dresser, has been taken over by my laundry, or stacks of books, or rolled up carpet.  I can’t also start piling ground tarps, and lawn chairs, and flashlights on top of his bed.

So, instead of packing, I make lists.  As with my previous adventure, I am using Trello and One Note to track To Dos, Questions, To Pack, To Buy, etc.. lists.  And I swear, I have bookmarked at least 30 different YouTube videos on RVing.  But those are their own topic.