Making a List, Checking It Twice...

It's a good idea for beginning RVers to make up a checklist to follow when packing for a trip, preparing the vehicle, or when setting up and breaking up camp. Some veterans laminate the list, then check off the items in grease pencil or erasable felt pen so it can be wiped clean to use again.

What Kind of Wardrobe Is Right?

Like most RVers, we have a wardrobe always stowed in our motor home that can cover any situation we may encounter on the road, from an impromptu dinner in a fine restaurant to an outfit for cold-weather camping or white-water rafting. Since wardrobe and drawer space is fairly limited except on the largest motor homes and fifth-wheels, you'll want to confine your carry-along wardrobe to a few carefully selected basics, adding seasonal or special apparel when the journey requires it.

We concentrate on basic clothing that is machine washable, stretchable with elastic waists, and a comfortable fit, in styles and colors that will harmonize with the other items in the closet. For cold-weather camping, even in parts of the California desert in winter, a set of silk long underwear is invaluable under sweatshirts and pants. A loose cotton gauze or linen shirt and a pair of shorts are always on hand for unusually hot weather, like the heat wave we encountered in New England last summer.

A spare pair of hiking or jogging shoes is handy, along with a comfortable pair of slippers for the evenings after outside chores are finished. We each take one pair of slightly worn but acceptable dress-up shoes, along with one business or evening outfit, in case of an important appointment en route. Anyone planning to use the public showers in the campground should also take a pair of shower shoes. Several changes of underwear, socks, and pajamas, along with a bathrobe, are folded and tucked into nightstand drawers beside the bed. We even carry spare bottles of prescription medication and a full supply of toiletries so we can slip away on the spur of the moment yet still have everything we need. (If you do this, check regularly to make sure your medications haven't expired.) Knit clothes that can be folded and stacked rather than put on a hanger take up less room and don't need ironing. We often take travel- or sample-size toiletries, stowing them at home in a special RV box that's ready to be taken along on the next trip.

On our initial 6-week journey, we took far too many clothes, forgetting that a lot of campgrounds have laundromats and that items of clothing can be worn more than once. The other thing to remember is that in a campground, nobody pays much attention to what anyone wears anyway.

Stocking the Larder

Because we use our RV all year, we keep it stocked with nonperishables that are always ready to go and need only be supplemented with fresh food, ice, and water before we set off for a weekend. But since even canned goods should not be stored for a long period of time, we mark the date of purchase on top of each can with an indelible marker and use them in order of age.

Particularly in warm weather, we avoid leaving open cardboard packages of crackers, flour, or cornmeal in the RV. We store small amounts of dried beans, rice, and grains in screw-top jars or resealable plastic bags, along with coffee beans and sugar. Open bottles of olive oil, mustard, or mayonnaise are brought back home at the end of each outing, to be replaced by another small, unopened container on the next trip. All wines are returned home at the end of every trip, but liquors can usually be stored in the vehicle between trips.

A cook's kitchen on the road may have fresh herbs and a food processor. Because we both enjoy cooking for ourselves, we include among our permanent equipment a food processor, spice rack, and pots of fresh herbs (which go back home between journeys).

A large, French enameled cast-iron soup pot, which doubles as a spaghetti pot, is the biggest item in our cookware collection. It is accompanied by several smaller, nonstick-enameled cast-iron skillets and pans, a small whistling teakettle, an earthenware teapot that travels in an old-fashioned, padded tea cozy, and several microwavable measuring cups and dishes. We've recently added a pressure cooker, which cuts down cooking time, thereby saving propane. In hot summer weather, or to keep cooking odors outside, when we have a hookup at the campground, we plug a single electric burner hot plate into the outlet by the counter of the outdoor entertainment center if we're cooking something like Southern fried chicken or a long-simmering stew, again saving on the propane consumption.

For eating, we have a set of sturdy French bistro plates, soup bowls, and wine glasses, plus two oversized ceramic mugs that fit nicely into the beverage-carrier on the cockpit dash. New dishtowels double as place mats and/or napkins, then become dishtowels after a few washings. We try to avoid using disposable paper products, preferring to recycle. A large wooden cutting board, padded with a rubberized mat on the bottom, doubles as a cooktop cover when we're traveling; it keeps the burners from rattling and has a slide-out drawer that stores four sharp knives safely. We store in overhead cabinets or drawers under the cooktop a food processor, electric can opener, utensils that include tongs, funnel, and a long-handled cooking fork, and measuring cups. On nonskid matting the same color as our countertop, we put a spice rack, a jar of coarse salt, paper towels on a wooden spindle, and vacuum-topped canisters to keep dry items like cereals, chips, and snacks crisp.

Optional appliances we've taken with us include a toaster oven (indispensable if you don't have a regular oven, handy if you dislike bending to light the regular oven), sorbet maker (you need a freezer that can be set extra low), and bread maker (as easy to use on the road as at home).

An Ode To Bubble Wrap

Mel Brooks, in the classic comic routine "The 2000-Year-Old Man," lauded plastic wrap as the greatest invention of the past 2 millenniums, but we'd say bubble wrap is a close second in the wonderful world of RV cupboards.

It's not realistic to expect to stack dishes and glasses in an RV cupboard without some protection to keep them from chipping or breaking if you hit a rough stretch of highway. The cylinder-shaped bubble wrap containers that come around bottles in airport duty-free shops make great sleeves for mugs and glasses, while the flat sheets that come in packing boxes are easy to slide between plates or pots and pans to protect them. You can also buy plastic foam sleeves for glasses and pan and plate protectors in camping supply stores such as the Camping World chain.

Alternately nesting baskets and metal bowls keeps down the clatter from the cupboards as well. And lining the bottoms of drawers and cupboards with waffle-patterned rubber matting, available by the yard at RV dealers and camping stores, makes a nonskid surface for dishes.

We store fragile items like tulip-shaped champagne glasses in their original boxes and use other boxes or shaped Styrofoam packing protectors that come around appliances to wedge them firmly in the cupboard. Whenever possible, we use real dishes and utensils and cloth napkins instead of disposable paper and plastic products. If we're having guests for dinner, we like to surprise them with a dinner party comparable to one we'd have at home, including china, crystal, linens, and candles, when they were probably expecting paper plates and hot dogs on a stick.

Don't Drink the Water

When there's no bottled water available in the fishing villages of Fiji or the mountainside inns of the Himalayas, we brush our teeth with whiskey. We veto street food vendors in Madras, Mazatlán, or Manhattan, and always skip summer shellfish salads, rare hamburgers, and anything with custard in it. As veteran world travelers, we're cautious -- some of our friends say overly cautious -- but with a schedule that requires us to be on the road 60% of the time, we can't risk getting sick, even for a day.

So we decided long ago that whenever we're on the road, we'd stick with bottled water for drinking and cooking, and always use bags of commercial ice, using the campground water supply and the surplus stored in our tank only for washing and flushing. While most of the city water in North America is probably safe to drink, a constantly changing mineral content when you're making 1-night stands can throw your system off. Pick up 2 or 3 gallons at a time at a supermarket, convenience store, or campground store, put one in the galley and the others below in outside storage, and store a 7-pound plastic bag of ice cubes in the freezer.

People who have a restricted sodium intake would also be wise to use sodium-free bottled water, available in most supermarkets, since the sodium content of water varies widely from one campground area to the next.

A solution for RVers who don't want to buy ice and water is to use a water filter -- either one that's permanently installed in the kitchen sink or one you hook up to the hose system when filling the tank initially. Even more thorough is a water purifier that not only removes sediment from the water the way a filter does, but also takes out bacteria and delivers clean, good-tasting drinking water. When we bought our new Itasca Sunflyer, one of the options we ordered was a water filter and icemaker for the sink and refrigerator. If you don't have an RV with these extras, you can simply do as we used to, stay with bagged ice and bottled water for daily use.

We also saw, at the Los Angeles RV Show, a Rexhall motor home that was equipped with an optional water exchange, with which you could separate your own fresh water source for drinking and cooking and use the campground plug-in source for washing and flushing only.

It's wise to use biodegradable toilet paper and holding-tank chemicals, both available from camping stores and many campground stores. Follow the RV instruction booklet or the directions on the chemical container.

When you're driving every day, you rarely need to use your water heater, since the engine keeps the water hot. If you have an electric water heater, you may want to operate it only when necessary or during the night, since it draws a lot of power you may need for the air conditioner, TV, or microwave.

Trimming Costs: Eight Money-Saving Tips for the Road

Remember that you are driving a vehicle that has a propane tank that, while it simplifies your daily life by allowing heating and refrigeration to take place when your RV is not hooked up to shore power, also complicates things by being flammable. Modern RVs also have propane gas-leak detectors to warn you with a sound signal if there is a propane leak. If you hear the signal, get out of the RV, turn off the propane valve at the tank (reached from an outside door), and leave the RV open to let the gas escape. Some experts recommend that it is safest to drive with the propane tank turned off. Many long highway bridges and tunnels require that the tank be turned off before entering.

Occasionally your gas-leak detector will signal when you're cooking garlic in an open pan, because the odor is similar to the odor added to propane to make it easy to detect a leak. If this happens, turn off the burner, remove the pan of garlic, open the windows and roof vents, turn off the detector, turn the burner back on, and finish cooking the dish, then reactivate the detector.

Always check the gas leak detector and smoke detectors installed in your RV to make sure the batteries are fresh.

Carbon monoxide detectors are also mandatory in RVs. You want to inspect your unit regularly to make sure the floor, sidewalls, doors, and windows have no holes or openings that would allow the gas to come into the vehicle while you're driving; if you find any, seal them up with silicone adhesive or have repairs made before driving again.

Never run your generator while you're sleeping, and always open one of the roof vents when the generator is operating. And don't stay long when you're parking in a roadside rest area in the vicinity of a tractor-trailer running its motor to keep the refrigeration operating.

When packing an RV, or adding more items to an already-outfitted motor home, be aware of the vehicle's load limit and the necessity to balance the weight equally. You can check the weight at a public scale, sometimes found at big truck stop complexes. Get a reading for each wheel and, for a trailer, the tongue weight, which is the weight the trailer coupler puts on the tow hitch. Check that against the net carrying capacity listed on the weight information label installed somewhere inside the RV.

Should You Carry a Cellular Phone in Your RV?

We always do, but it provides almost as much frustration as assistance. The places we like to drive and camp are frequently, if not always, in a borderline or "no service" area, even though we have (and are willing to pay a sizable sum for) a Follow Me Roaming system that theoretically can forward our calls to almost anywhere in the United States and Canada. Our editors have been able to reach us in the wilds of British Columbia or when we're driving down an interstate in west Texas, but can't seem to get through to us when we're on a 2-day outing in a national park in San Diego or Santa Barbara, only a hoot and a holler from our Los Angeles base.

We find cell phones most helpful for dialing ahead for a campground reservation or for returning business calls we've picked up from our answering machine when the campground or highway pay phones are too noisy. And we are certainly happy to have one in case of an emergency, which we have had to deal with on occasion.

The technology leaves something to be desired, with voices fading in and out when you're in a fringe reception area. The cost is almost prohibitive because you pay for connecting to the roamer system as well as the elapsed time for any calls. Some pricing plans include long distance and roaming charges throughout the United States for a flat fee for a certain number of minutes, but these plans are costly unless you plan to make a lot of calls. If you are reluctant to invest in a cell phone, most private campgrounds and many public campgrounds have a pay phone on the premises.

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