The Spark that Started It All
After meeting a friend who had a camper, I decided we had to have one. With relatively little research and near heart failure by my wonderful and oh-so conservative financial advisor, whose team manages what I’ll generously call my moderate portfolio, we settled on a 2019 10th Anniversary Edition Forest River R-Pod. Since we would be camping with Beau, our Great Dane/Bluetick Coonhound mix, we named it 3 Peas in a Pod.
The meat of our relationship with Optimum RV, where we bought the R-Pod, is best covered on the Blogs About Other Annoying Stuff page of this website, so as not to taint our enjoyment, and hopefully yours, of stories about ramblings in our beloved 3 Peas in a Pod.
What the heck is an R-Pod?
This version of the R-Pod is a small 20’x8′ tow-behind camper that fortunately has a slide-out (for non-RV people—I’m only a tiny step ahead of you—a slide-out is part of the RV that, well, slides out to create more room inside.) Push a button and presto, the whole tiny kitchen area, with some creaking and clunking, and dripping of the engine lubricant I applied to the rails as per expert advice, slides out.
The engine lubricant is murder-scene red. Within seconds of the first activation of the slide-out, my wife came sprinting to my side, certain that I had, in my usual display of grace and coordination, managed to grievously wound myself somehow. To be fair, she’s seen me lose a fight with a tape measure, so her concern wasn’t exactly unfounded.
RV Rookie Tip #1
No slide-out? Move on and find an RV that has at least one. It’s essential, especially when traveling with a big dog in a small camper. Without it, the two of us and 95lb Beau would be stuck motionless in the tiny entry way. Given a pronounced lack of patience on the part of the two humans, there would no doubt be lots of colorful language and possible bloodshed.
Inside the Tiny Kingdom
Getting On
Thankfully, the R-Pod stores steps underneath, without which I would need a forklift to haul myself up into it.
Getting In
Once you enter, there’s a tiny pseudo-foyer containing the control panel for lights, awning, slide-out, and audio system, and a blessed cabinet underneath for crap. This entryway moonlights as the floor of the kitchen and the stand-around-figuring-out-how-to-maneuver-around-each-other-and-the-dog space.
The Little Kitchen that Could
The tiny kitchen is a compact culinary area complete with a round sink with a round removable top that serves as a welcome addition to exactly 1.5 feet of counter space, a two-burner stove, a microwave, a mini-fridge, and several drawers and cabinets to store more crap. It may be small, but it’s scrappy. This is where coffee is brewed, meals not cooked on the grill are improvised (aka nuked), Beau’s food is prepared, dishes are washed, the garbage is stashed, and teeth are brushed in lieu of squeezing into the tiny bathroom and using its tiny sink.
It’s not glamorous but it’s ours, and it works hard for its square footage.
Dining in the Royal Bedroom
To the left of the kitchen, at the rear of the R-Pod, is a tiny dinette with a bench seat surrounding a table that theoretically locks in place when raised. That’s part of the Optimum RV story. That dinette table drops (unfortunately without assistance) to make a queen-size bed if you arrange the dinette bench cushions on top. I doubt any queen would want to sleep on it, but we don’t know any queens so no worries. Although I was named after Queen Juliana of the Netherlands. And I did see Queen Elizabeth through her glass-top limo once when I was a child living in Montreal. However, it’s doubtful that she took note of me, and even more doubtful that she would accept an invitation to sleep on a dinette table in a tiny camper. In addition, sadly she has passed away. At the risk of aging myself, after singing God Save Our Gracious Queen every morning in study hall during those school years when Canada had yet to gain independence from the UK, I still cannot bring myself to sing God Save our Gracious King. Not to mention, I don’t find him particularly gracious. But enough of that. I must learn to control my urge to segue into long-winded, opinionated stories that derail every topic.
Rubberboy in the Bathroom
Across from the kitchen is a tiny bathroom with sink, toilet, and shower. I’m considering reaching out to world famous contortionist Daniel Browning Smith, aka Rubberman, who holds the Guinness World Record for the World’s Most Flexible Man. Perhaps he’d be willing to teach me how to shower in there without demolishing the sink and toilet with my elbow or ass.
RV Rookie Tip #2
Everything that should not get wet, e.g. toilet paper and towels, must be removed prior to taking a shower in a tiny plastic cubicle, because everything gets wet.
Let It All Hang Out
Past the tiny bathroom is the one and only tiny closet, where we hang our jackets—and Beau’s—for those cool-weather camping trips.
Don’t call me a liar about the size of the R-Pod. This is Beau wearing his trusty Carhart jacket, standing in our much larger foyer at home. Now imagine him and the two of us in the foyer of our R-Pod. Never mind—you can’t possibly imagine it.
The closet also houses my GoPro in its overstuffed case, my laptop, iPad, and whatever else we can cram in. As a result, the door must be muscled closed, without regard for the well-being of the items within.
Sleeping Slivers and Beau’s Platform Bed
Take half a step and you find yourself in the tiny bedroom that houses two tiny beds that can’t be called twins as they’re considerably narrower. I’ll call them twinettes.
Yes, other than us, everything is TINY except Beau and my luggage.
Between the twinettes, at their head, is a nightstand. My impressively resourceful wife built a frame between the twinettes, extending from the nightstand to the foot of the twinettes, on which we placed a dog bed for Beau. There is no way he can share the twinettes with us without causing grave bodily injury, and he would call DGF (Department of Dogs and Families) if we even suggested he sleep on a dog bed on the floor. This platform bed was a fantastic idea, except that it forces us to implement a sliding/crawling procedure to arrive at the foot of the twinettes to get out of bed.
RV Rookie Tip #3
A word of advice for those considering a similar arrangement: do not use a slippery sleeping bag as a blanket.
You Too Can Avoid RV Fires 🔥
Thank the good lord, the R-Pod has a great HVAC system. It’s toasty when it’s cold and cool and dry when it’s steamy. A slight concern is that the heating vents are directly under the foot of the twinettes where blankets invariably pile up, potentially resulting in an unexpected and unpleasant indoor campfire. Fortunately, the R-Pod came with a tiny fire extinguisher.
Windows, Sound, TV, and the Voyeurism Perk
There are windows all around, offering gorgeous views of nature—and excellent angles into the interiors of other people’s much fancier RVs, if we don’t manage to snag a secluded spot.
And it has a really decent Bluetooth speaker system that works both inside and outside—ideal for relaxing to music, audio books, and podcasts, and drowning out my wife’s cursing during hose hookup or a random other RVer yelling, “Hi!” I really do try to be friendly. It’s not my fault that sometimes I fail spectacularly. It’s a family trait I inherited from my father, who used to piss off my mother by setting his alarm to alert company that it was his bedtime. And from my maternal grandmother, who was adept at creating family drama by sitting in our living room with her back to the rest of us. So if you catch me grumbling because a stranger yells, “Hi!”, blame the family tree. Guess some things are just bred in the bone. But once again, I digress.
The R-Pod came with a “smart” TV cleverly mounted on a swivel arm, so you can watch from the dinette or from bed. Cool. However, to avoid a concussion, we must remember to swivel it back against the wall before passing by along the mini-hallway that is just wide enough for a person or a TV—not both.
Not so cool was that this TV was most decidedly not smart. More fun courtesy of Optimum RV. After our first trip, during which we were relegated to watching two fuzzy black-and-white channels via the rooftop TV antenna, we hightailed it to Best Buy and upgraded to a real smart Fire TV. Problem solved—almost. How to actually stream our favorite services? Oh, right, that requires an internet connection.
Connecting to the World from the Middle of Nowhere
It took far less research to choose the R-Pod than to figure out an internet solution that would work in off-the-beaten-path wooded areas, for personal use and for the possibility of a remote work assignment. Although I love our non-peoply life in the forest and on camping trips, I am not an off-the-grid person. I eventually landed on Mobile Must Have’s dual-modem router with two SIM cards that automatically switch to the strongest available tower, boosted by a roof-mounted cellular antenna. Brilliant. And expensive.
Drilling into the roof ourselves was out of the question, so we shelled out another chunk of change to have it professionally installed by a very nice RV tech… who casually mentioned he’d never installed a system like this before. Oh-oh.
The first time I powered on the router, I was fully prepared for a catastrophic failure, ripping of hair, and unacceptable, ear-splitting language. But hallelujah—it all worked. Perfectly. It provided faster, more stable speeds than our home internet for work, for aimlessly scrolling on our iPhones and iPads, and for streaming on the new smart TV. Victory! (I believe I whine extensively about our antiquated home DSL service on the Blogs About Other Annoying Stuff page.)
Lessons From a One-Armed Awning
The R-Pod has an awning that can be extended and retracted via a toggle switch. LED lights on its perimeter can also be turned on and off. When extended, it was held up by two aluminum telescoping arms that hook into brackets on the side of the R-Pod.
RV Rookie Tip #4
When it rains, retract the awning or use a pole or something to dump the heavy water off it.
One half of the awning is now held up by one arm. The other half droops dejectedly. The injured second arm is lying by the side of the house, held together with zip ties, waiting for its replacement. The only available replacement arm comes from Belgium, and the only company that carries it cannot provide a shipping cost until I place the order. Another long story that also belongs on the Blogs About Other Annoying Stuff page.
What To Do With All the Crap (non-wastewater)
Minimalist vs. Maximalist—RV packing showdown:
The R-Pod has many clever storage areas tucked underneath that are also accessible from the dinette, if we move all our crap from the dinette bench to the storage places underneath. My wife’s things may fit. Mine? Not so much. Let’s just say we have different camping philosophies. She brings essentials. I bring “just in case” items, like a leaky tent in case the RV springs a leak, extra clothes in case I fall into a muddy lake, and 3 backup flashlights despite also bringing a large bag of assorted batteries in every size known to humankind.
For example, for one week of camping, my minimalist wife brings:
- One pair of jeans
- Two shirts
- One sweatshirt
- A limited supply of underwear (“I can wash them,” she wisely says)
- One cap
- A pair of flip-flops
- No socks (yes, I know you don’t need socks with flip-flops)
- A toothbrush
- One charging cable (I can swap it between my iPhone and iPad, she says)
- One charging block
- One knife
- One flashlight
- One hiking stick
I bring (the tent idea bit the dust):
- Six pairs of pants
- Ten shirts
- Enough underwear for permanent relocation to a foreign country
- Two caps (Why? One has that flap that covers your neck)
- Hiking boots (after all, we’re hiking, and they’re Vasque’s!)
- Barefoot sneakers (highly recommended)
- A dozen pairs of socks
- A couple of warm hats
- Several jackets and sweaters
- My GoPro with a thousand accessories (so what if I use only three—you never know)
- My DSLR camera, several batteries, and a charger (why bring both? because I own both)
- Two sets of hiking sticks (they’re all so pretty)
- Electric toothbrush with charger
- Toothpaste for both of us
- Three knives (well, you need a straight edge, serrated edge, and a little one for your keychain)
- Three flashlights (really bright with strobe, somewhat bright, and a little one to hold in my mouth)
- Tweezers for tick removal
- Shampoo and conditioner
- Lotions and sunscreen
- Every possible type of charging cable known to humankind
- A variety of charging blocks (oh come on, the cables have different USB ends!)
- Three external chargers
- My iPad Pro
- My MacBook Pro
- A headset
- A pop-up background (I pack the last 4 items in case I take a remote job to defray the heart-stopping cost of the Mobile Must Have data plan)
My entire earthly and spiritual existence can be summed up in one phrase: “Just in case.”
Thus, the underneath storage areas are great for storing RV stuff but are insufficient for all my crap, and there’s not much storage inside. Thus the messy, overcrowded dinette benches. Mercifully, the truck has a full-size bed.
My wife has an impressive knack for organizing an array of totes in that big truck bed to manage spillover crap.
RV Rookie Tip #5
Don’t bring a whole bunch of crap you’ll never use. Figure out what you can live without for a week. Your home will be a lonely, empty shell if you cram everything you own into your RV.
What To Do With All the Real Crap (wastewater)
The dirty truth about dumping tanks, and why we’re on hose set #3:
Dumping the gray water (waste water from the sink and shower) and black water (yes, that waste water) is one of the most dreaded rites of passage for new RVers. It’s not fun, it’s not intuitive, and it definitely doesn’t smell like the nature we love when camping.
When we started out, we bought the recommended hoses and fittings and thought, how hard can it be? Attach the hose, pull the lever, done. Spoiler alert: it’s not that simple.
We’re now on our third set of hoses and fittings, experimenting with every possible configuration to avoid the ultimate RV horror: soaking ourselves and everything within a 5-foot radius in foul-smelling black water.
Our first trip to the dump station, to be honest several trips to the dump station, felt like a bad sitcom. Leaks, splashes, panic, cursing, and, of course, a line of veteran RVers offering long, “helpful” lectures while waiting with varying degrees of patience behind us to dump their waste. It was humbling, messy, and oddly bonding.
RV Rookie tip #6
- Invest in quality hoses and fittings. Cheap ones will betray you at the worst moment. •
- Wear gloves. Trust me. •
- Always double-check your connections. Then check again. •
- Open the black tank valve first, then the grey tank. The grey water helps rinse out any remaining… remnants. •
- Take your time, even if there’s a line. Better to do it right than rush and cause you and everyone nearby to wear it home.
So if you’re standing at the dump station, hose in hand, wondering what you’ve gotten yourself into—just know we’ve been there. And you will get better at it. Eventually.
RV Essentials and Cool Stuff
Some of the storage areas house the sewage hoses and fittings, water hose, water filter so we’re not poisoned by the campground water, surge protector for obvious reasons, power cable, camp chairs, and a small folding table. One of the storage areas has a slide-out grill. Cool! Not sure why my wife felt it necessary to purchase another grill, especially since campsites typically have a fire pit with a raised grill, but after 27 years, I no longer attempt to decipher her thought processes, and I can hardly complain as I’m the culprit who brings a year’s worth of crap on a one-week trip.
Our R-Pod came with some of its original decals, for example the cool Forest River Owners Group (FROG) 10th Anniversary decal.
Note the cameo appearance by the bracket the awning arms hooks into. There are two of them, one for each arm, but one has been temporarily laid off pending the results of my argument about the company’s ridiculous policy of calculating shipping cost only after placing the order for the replacement arm.
We added some decals to make our 3 Peas in a Pod our own. Some reflect our love of mountains and forests. We do live in a forest, but as my wife often grumbles, the only mountains are the landfills.
The back of the R-Pod:
The entry door of the R-Pod: “Welcome” is a noticeable uptick in the social skills of two people who don’t usually do “social.
One of the storage doors: we were thrilled to find deals that feature a camper shaped like our R-Pod. Small victory, big excitement. It’s fun to see our sweet 3 Peas in a Pod represented.
Another storage door. A FROG, our nod to the Forest River Owners Group, perched on a mushroom, picking away at a banjo, brings our love of Bluegrass to our tiny home away from home. He’s more than just a decal—he’s part of the soul of 3 Peas in a Pod.
Small Footprint, Big Bark, Wheels Beneath Us, and the Woods Less Traveled
The R-Pod was a great excuse to upgrade the wheels beneath us from a Ford Ranger to a Ford F150, with the full-size bed and 4-wheel drive my wife has been dreaming of.
After our first trip to the Georgia mountains, she said the Ranger made her feel claustrophobic—the back seat was way too small for big Beau, and since the back windows didn’t open, he kept alternating between laying his large, slobbering snout on the center console and trying to hang it out her window. We also weren’t fans of the rear-hinged suicide doors through which we struggled to squeeze Beau into the cramped back seat.
Now we have the muscle to match the adventure, and she finally has the truck she’s been yearning for.
Yep, she’s a Happy Camper!
We also upgraded the R-Pod tires to ones with a higher speed rating. Admittedly, we tend to be heavy on the gas and light on patience.
But enough verbal rambling. In upcoming posts, I’ll share some stories of our actual RV ramblings, iPhone pictures and videos, and maybe even some GoPro footage, if my wife lets me bring the GoPro along on a hike—a big ask considering that it takes me an hour to figure out which mounting system to use and then actually attach the thing to myself. But in fairness, I admit I’m using some poetic license—she’s actually remarkably patient with my eccentricities. Out of character? Maybe. But much appreciated.
I have yet to use the DSLR, but who knows? In RV life, and life in general, there’s useless crap and essential crap. Despite my wife’s skepticism, my truly excellent Canon Ti 7 DSLR might just graduate to essential one fine photographic day. I’ll keep bringing it along—just in case.
Final Thoughts—Finally
So that’s our R-Pod—tiny, loyal, and full of surprises. It’s our little home on wheels, just right for two humans, one oversized dog, too much crap, and all the wonder Mother Earth has to offer.
Spoiler alert: those “cool”, overpriced camp chairs were not our friends. In fact, they had murderous intent. The full betrayal will be revealed in a future post.
Welcome to RV Ramblings. We do have a spare queen-size bed, so maybe one day you can join us on a trip. That should be fun—you, us, and Beau in our tiny 3 Peas in a Pod.