We made it through our first winter in the RV!

    After making it through our first winter, I have to say that it was a lot easier than we both expected. Don't get me wrong, it was VERY challenging at times, but working as a team we did it!! Our RV was more equipped for the winter than we gave it credit for. The biggest issues we had were more with the campground we were staying at, The Wilds (not impressed to say the least), and one or two weeks where the temperatures were well below 0, which just required extra care on our part.
    Lets first talk about the Wilds. The RV park itself had lots of space and each lot had plenty of grassy area, which was great for the dogs and to have privacy. They did have a bar and grill on site, and lots of outdoor games, but that would have been nice during the summer months. The RV park being so open just invited the intense winds to ravish the entire area on a daily basis. There was no coverage whatsoever do help reduce the intensity of the wind. When I say it was windy, let me just make this clear...it was 40+ mph winds that you could feel the RV shake even with extra stabilizers that we added to the bottom of the RV.
    As the temperature started to drop we did what was asked of all the RV residents at the Wilds, which was make sure that the water spout was covered in heat tape. We had noticed that other lots actually had a tube over their faucet, but we thought maybe that was something extra they were required to put on. The first day that the temperature dropped to the teens our water froze. The panic that occurred when we woke up to that was no fun. We rushed to Home Depot, bought all sorts of things to make sure we could defrost the lines, and after getting home and further assessing the situation we realized that everything on our end was working great, but their faucet outside had frozen. We laughed it off, and used a blow dryer at the faucet and the water was flowing again. We were hoping that after putting more insulation on their faucet that this would not happen again, but wishful thinking did not work for us in this situation. This not only happened once or twice more it happened so often that we ended up leaving our faucet in the kitchen on so that way if there was continued water flow, their faucet wouldn't freeze. However, some nights we forgot and having to deal with this in the middle of the night during a work week, when Rich works long hours, did not make us happy campers at all.
     One day I noticed that their faucet outside was leaking, and over night the temperature dropped to 25 below with wind chill that it created a very nice sculpture around the entire thing, and for the best part, the water froze again. Since Rich was at work and I needed water all day, I went outside with a hammer and started hammering at the ice. We had already complained about the leak, but the owner/maintenance guy never got back to us, so when I saw him that morning I walked over to him and asked for him to come over. Not only did this guy complain it was so cold out that his hands were hurting (ARE YOU KIDDING ME?!!! I'm busting my butt out there with a hammer and didn't complain once, and this guy who is from the area and it's HIS faucet that is broken, is complaining), but he informs me that we were supposed to have that insulated tube over the faucet the whole time, and that without that his faucet wouldn't be able to work properly. I couldn't believe he put us in a lot and didn't check to make sure it had everything we needed.
    Either way, he gets the tube and insulation, while I'm still trying to remove the ice from the faucet. I tell him about the leak and that its going to continue to squirt water every where, but he informed me he would fix it on a warmer day. Before I had the chance to finish removing all of the ice that had now covered our sewer pipe support and our electric cable, he jams this tube on everything over and over trying to get it to fit and busts a piece of the sewer support right in front of me and doesn't even care. At this point I had to take a few deep breaths before I did something I would have regretted it later. Needless to say, he came back when it was warmer and "fixed" the faucet and on another cold day it froze again.
      So besides having to constantly be on alert to make sure THEIR faucet didn't freeze, our RV was amazing during the winter!!! One thing that we had to stay on top of was the propane tanks, which isn't that big of a deal since we have two plus the grill tank just in case. During the winter months it seemed like no one ever stepped out of their RV, so it felt like we had the outdoors all to ourselves. Even on the coldest days, we went on many walks and stayed busy! The electric heaters were an amazing addition to the furnace, and we were very cozy inside. Even though it may sound like we had an intense time this winter, we truly enjoyed it and hope to just do better research on the campgrounds we go to. The new RV park that we are at is a bit further from Rich's job, but it is awesome! I will post more about it when we leave the area:)

    Hope everyone had a warm and happy RV winter!