Raven’s RV
The ongoing education and adventures of two rank newbie RVers

Oct 31, 2007

Camping World

I’ve been gone from the Bay Area for only just a little over a week, and already I am very accustomed to the light traffic around Lodi. It was therefore even more of a system shock to return to the bad drivers and sheer excess of traffic that is part and parcel of the region.

I don’t miss it in the slightest.

We called in at the post office for a couple of week’s worth of mail (the mailbox was stuffed). Then we hopped back on the freeway, missing the worst of the commute and getting down to Camping World somewhere around three or four.

We had never been there before. It looked small on the outside, with special pull-through parking for RVs and a separate service area. Inside, it was a bit more like the TARDIS. As we’d never been there before it was a law that we must view each and every aisle in great detail. There were thousands of products, some ridiculous (like the silly little RV-sized cookie sheets) and some highly technical. RV dishwashers are so small as to be almost useless. (RV sinks are so small as to be almost useless, and I wish mine weren’t divided.)

$505 worth of stuff later I’m not sure who had the bigger eyes, us or the teller who checked us out and wished us luck in our new adventure. We now had what we needed to repair the obnoxious sewer leak and maintain in general a non-leaking and hygienic sewer hookup, level the rig when parked, inflate tires and protect them from UV light, heat our water with electricity (supplied free as part of a camp site) rather than with expensive propane, fix half a dozen small broken things, view our poop flowing from the black water tank, and advertise Camping World while drinking one’s soda. It was a bit like Christmas, actually.

We were going to spend the night in the parking lot. We’d asked if it were allowed, and the sales associate said that no, it was not, but that everyone did it anyway. I asked where people didn’t stay when they didn’t park there overnight, and the verdict seemed to be that they didn’t tuck themselves away at the back of the parking lot somewhere, so we didn’t. Not.

However, after we’d unpackaged everything and put a cover on the spare tire, we decided that we just didn’t like it there. The other rigs all seemed to be empty and it felt distinctly creepy. So we decided to just go up to Santa Clara and take it from there. In the end I was glad because after dark it was pretty darn cold and I didn’t fancy doing yet another 30 mile ride after the write-in.

Camping World shopping cart