The beginning

The kids are grown and moved out and our youngest daughter is now married.  I am a nurse and my husband is going back to college. He was a truck driver in his previous career.  This is the time for us to enjoy life and start seeing America.  We bought our first 5th wheel about 18 months ago.  We had bad luck with it and traded up to a newer larger one.  One week ago we moved into our 5th wheel. 

Our first trip since moving in was to go visit my sister in Arkansas.  We left out and spent our first night in a beautiful state park.  Dardenelle state park near Russellville, AR.  We only stayed overnight but will return again. The park was clean, had an awesome welcome center with aquariums.

The next day we went up to my sisters, who lives in the middle of nowhere.  They have full hookups for us, electric, water, and sewer.  Everything went well, then, it snowed and temperatures dropped below freezing.  The water line was frozen, the sewer line was frozen and our fresh water tank was empty. We do have a four season coach so the underbelly lines stayed usable since we had our heaters on.  A few days later we were ready to leave and could not make it up the hill out of their driveway.  A set of borrowed snow chains solved the problem.  Snow chains are now on the list of what we need to purchase.

At this point the research started, how to live full time in an rv in cold weather.  We found information on wrapping the fresh water line with heat tape and plugging in and putting insulation over the top.  Sounded like a alot of work but we were going to do it.  Then we walked into an RV store just to look around and found a heated water hose.  It is all done for you!!!  It was not cheap, about $100 for 25 foot, but we felt well worth it.  We bought the hose and hooked it up, so far working great!  The hose is Pirit PWL-02-25 water line 25-foot heated water hose. I looked it up on amazon.com and found it there for $84.39

To deal with the sewer, we leave the holding tanks closed and when the temperature reaches above freezing during the day we empty out to keep the sewer line from freezing.  Always dump the black water first then the gray water to flush the line.

We made it back to Tulsa and moved into a park overlooking the Arkansas river.  Our view is a little obscured, did not get the site we wanted. This park is still new and being built.  We are dealing with mud for now but hope it will get better soon.

We did laundry today.  The first time I have been at a laundry mat in several years.  I miss my own washer and dryer.  We have the space in the RV, just have not purchased them yet.  One more item to add to the list.