Just came back from dry run with borrowed pop-up. What a learning experience! (long)

[Shelle&Dave]

We are borrowing my Dad's pop-up for our trip to WDW in September. Since my Dad has never used it (he bought it used 3 years ago and it's been just sitting in the yard!) and we have never used a pop-up before we thought it would be a good idea to camp overnight at a local campground to see if there will be any problems.

Boy did we learn a lot! We had a pull through site. We didn't even pay attention to the way the site was laid out, we just pulled into the most level spot and started setting up. We didn't notice until after we had everything set up that only half of the site was gravel, the other half was grass (probably for tent campers, duh ). So the problem was we had the camper facing away from the road and the door was over the grass. Of course it was raining, so the ground outside the door was soon a big squishy pool of mud. Lesson learned. Next time take a look at the layout of the site and make sure the camper is facing the right direction. Also, bring a rug for the door. We ended up using the floor mats from the Jeep to keep some of the mud out of the camper.

It also took DFiance a few minutes to figure out how to get water running in the sink. I was under the assumption he had read the directions. He couldn't figure out why the water wouldn't come up to the faucet since he had the hose hooked to the outside of the camper. Once he figured out the vacuum/tank thing it all seemed like common sense and we had a laugh about it.

We also ended up using a lamp that we brought inside instead of the camper lights because they wouldn't work. We noticed the voltage switch panel as we were packing up. Apparently we had it set to run off the battery only. Looks like that's dead huh? I'll remember that for next time.

The one thing that drove me nuts was how unorganized everything was. We were only going for one night so when we packed we just threw everything into plastic bags. Within a couple of hours everything was all over the place. It seemed like every surface was covered with bags of chips, cell phones, car keys, toothbrushes, etc. What a mess! I definately need to come up with some type of organizational system for the camper before September. If that happened on an overnight trip what kind of mess will we have when we camp for a week?

All in all, I'm very glad we did a test run. We also took a walk around the campground to take a look at how other people had their sites set up. I also want to add a thankyou. If I hadn't read helpful tips on this board before we went I'm sure we would have had many more problems than we did. I learn so much from you guys. Thanks!

 

[parmtoo]

Sounds like our first time, rain and mud...........It's not a true camping trip without the mud. Next time you go, hopfully you will have a longer, dryer experience. Hope you had a great time!

 

[tim5055]

Originally posted by Shelle&Dave
All in all, I'm very glad we did a test run.

I would sugggest finding a campground close to home. Make another "test run" for a weekend and work out all of the issues.

If you are going to keep camping in the pop up, check out my website (below) for lots of pop up information. Check out the links page for several pop up web boards.

Good luck with your camping.

 

[bigdisneydaddy]

Along with the mud story, make sure you forget to close the roof vent and then leave for the afternoon when the forcast is for afternoon showers, that seemed to be a rite of passage for family camping !