Our Maiden Voyage

April 10-13 2017: Bull Run Regional Park, Centreville, VA. 

Our maiden voyage has one main objective: Test out the rig and get it ready for out big National Parks Adventure. Two things are important: check out all systems to discover if anything does not function properly, and get our cabinets and storage areas organized for easy access and efficient functionality. And one other thing – clean up after the bug-ridding activities to get the film of insecticide off all surfaces. 

So, we chose a long-time favorite local campground, one of the best in the Northern Virginia area called Bull Run Regional Park. This well maintained, clean, quiet and professionally operated campground offers pull-through and back-in sites with some full hookup sites. It is near the Manassas National Battlefield Park and has connecting trails to several other parks in the region. We highly recommend this campground to anyone travelling to the Northern Virginia area – it’s accessible to DC, several museums, and lots of good restaurants. Make reservations because it fills up early during the best camping season. This week, I’d guess the campground is at about 60% occupancy. 

Our campsite this time was spacious with lovely light lavender flowers that opened to full splendor during the day and closed for the evening and night. Our weather was perfect with temperatures in 70’s and 80’s each day. There was a short sprinkle on Wednesday morning, but only enough to make things a little damp. The rest of the day was sunny and in the 70s. 

Our systems check was highly successful. Nothing major wrong with one or two things needing some tweaking for better performance. Within the first half-hour, we did have one issue with a slide out that would not function; but we did something at the controller to reset its logic and it seems to be fine now. Was it a fluke? Bad luck? It would be nice to know what was wrong and how we fixed it. Hopefully, we won’t have that problem again – but in the meantime, it bears some research to see how that controller works and where the reset button is located. 

We’ve had two full days of learning how to use our “new” RV and feel we are ready to go into full service our next trip out. Before that, we plan on taking it to a service center for a thorough check out of all RV and chassis systems to ensure readiness for the big trip. We are also planning on having a tankless hot water heater installed to give us a continuous supply of hot water and more efficiently use our propane.

We also had an opportunity to meet a very nice couple from Oklahoma who had traveled to the area to visit their son in Alexandria. K and V invited us to join them on Wednesday evening for a glass of wine and conversation. We shared RV experiences and adventures and talked about future plans for trips to see Alaska.  On departing on Thursday morning, we exchanged information with thoughts we might join up for a future trip.

We are list-makers and this trip has resulted in lists of things to buy and things to do to further get ready for the next outing.