How do you stay connected to the Internet in your RV? Are cell plans reliable, should you use campground wifi and is it even safe? And is Starlink a good thing or a bad thing?

In episode 204 of the StressLess Camping RV podcast we discuss how we stay connected while traveling in our RV and what it takes to have Internet depending on how much you need. We also have honest reviews of cell phone boosters and even a trick to get better signal more often.

Other places to hear the podcast

Mentioned on this episode

Preview campgrounds before you go - we have an Interview with Mark Koep from Campground Views

ABC Upfitters article on potentially getting a tax credit on your solar uplift: https://abcmktginc.com/new-solar-tax-credit

Our companion story for this podcast about how we get Internet for our RV on the road.

Peggy’s article about road snacks: easy carb-friendly treats while traveling

This week’s RV gadget review: Lippert LP tank monitors

Join our weekly email family for more tips, tricks, articles, hints and hacks.

If you’re confused about solar, battery power or just want to upgrade your RV we have found the solutions from ABC Upfitters are both reliable and exceptional.

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Automated transcription of StressLess Camping RV podcast episode 204

Welcome to the weekly podcast, all about turning the great American RV adventure into Stressless camping. Each week we explore tips, tricks, ideas, and destinations, and talk to the happiest campers in the RV world. Pull up a seat at the campfire as we enjoy some stress less camping.

Welcome to the Campfire.

I'm Tony.

I'm Peggy.

And we are two RV industry veterans who travel part-time in

A small trailer,

Look at us, share big adventures and help you with great tips, tricks and discounts. I'm laughing at myself.

Tip number one, learn how to use your own microphone <laugh>.

So I said last week,

<laugh>, we might sound a little better this week because we, we both had kind of a weird hollow to our voices, <laugh>.

Cause we were talking into the wrong side of the microphones. <laugh> <laugh>, our basic microphone skills one oh one use the correct side <laugh>.

Now they aren't new, so we've only used them a few times and

It's not horribly evident, which is the talking into side. It

Is now.

Yeah, it's the side with the light on it.

<laugh> Tony spent about half an hour today testing and testing and closing doors and hanging curtains. And

Oh, by the way, speaking of all that, we are still in our sticks and bricks. We are looking out at campgrounds and yeah, one of the tools that we really like is campground views,

Right? And they just put an email out this week that said they are now up to 1,100 virtual tours of campground camp sites, right? So they have campgrounds and then they actually kind of like that Google car, they drive around and take a picture of every site in the campground. So you can look and see is this the tree coverage I want? Is this the length I want? Is this the width I want? Yeah, my fit. You know, all those things that you always, you can look at a paper map, like a cartoon drawing and know that there's a site.

There

We're our own cartoon drawing <laugh>.

But it's really super cool to be able to actually look at pictures of the site and feel it for yourself and know what you're really getting yourself into.

By the way, I think it's extremely funny about the wrong side of the mic thing for a variety of reasons, including I've had actual like classes on microphone usage. So anyway, but one of the reasons you might want to use campground views is to see the tree coverage exactly like Peggy said. Yeah. And one of the reasons for that is to see if there's a lot of tree coverage. So your starlink may not work and we're gonna get into that.

Or if your,

Your solar panels might not work if, if you've got too many trees. So you're saying, so what I just plug in, well, a lot of the campground views, parks, and a lot of the places that we go are like state parks and they don't always have hookups. So we are always on the lookout for places that our solar panels will actually do us good. Because with our ABC Upfitters power package, we've got a thousand watts of solar panels up on the roof. And if we don't get any sun, that's not gonna help us.

No, absolutely not. However, another neat thing about the system that we have in our travel trailer, in our Rockwood mini light is that we can use portable solar panels and do bring them with us. True. And so flexibility is the word of the day for solar systems. And if you're kind of solar curious or if you're interested in getting a solar system that actually works, give ABC Upfitters a call. They truly do a good job. And we had a friend ask us this week, they said, so that ABC upfitters, are they the real deal or are they just an advertiser?

And I can tell you, we won't accept advertisers or partners in this if we don't either really love what they're doing and think they're exceptional

Or at least really trust what they're doing. Right? There's some things that we don't necessarily use, but we've done our research, we've done our homework, and we make sure that we're not just touting anybody who will pay us, right?

And our system that we do regularly use was designed by a, B, C Upfitters, their engineered solar and lithium solutions utilizing master vault systems. And it has just performed brilliantly. And I see a fair number of people in the various forms that we troll where they're having all kinds of challenges. Maybe their system isn't working the way it's supposed to work or it's just not working, or they're trying to figure out bits and pieces to work together and blah.

I'm somebody who likes to go to someone who knows what they're doing and talking about and just get things done the first time.

One of Tony's slogans is Buy the Best and Cry only once. <laugh>

And I learned that years and years ago and it, it still rings true today. Last week we talked about that there may be a solar tax credit available if you upgrade the solar on your rv. True. And there is, we know for a fact there is a discount if you are going to join us at the Frog Rally in August in Indiana, ABC Upfitters is having a sale on their installations and now's a good time to talk to them because as I said, they are engineered solutions.

They're not just pieces that they throw together. And so that'll give them the time to make sure the system meets what you want. It can be a very simple system, it can be a very elaborate system and they really listen to you when you talk to them about what you want your system to do. So go talk to ABC Outfitters when it comes to their solutions. It just works. So we hope they're able to serve you as well as they do us.

Last week you might recall that I was out of the office and Tony interviewed our guest by himself. So I thought as turnabout I would interview this week's guest myself.

Yeah, this week's guest is a ding dong.

This week's guest is Tony Bartell from Stressless Campaign. Oh no,

Not that guy. <laugh>. Can't we get any good guests?

Well maybe someday. <laugh> <laugh>. This week we wanted to talk about how we stay connected when we're on the road. There are all sorts of methods and ways and options and we are just going to, I, I'm just gonna ask Tony some questions cuz otherwise he's just gonna talk completely and I could just leave the room and it won't matter. Yeah. So I have to have some role in this discussion, <laugh>. Yeah,

And and just so you know, this information changes frequently and it is a question we get quite a bit. How do you guys stay connected on the road,

Right? So we'll make a note that this is May of 2023 and if you're listening at some other time, some distant future and things have changed dramatically, just know that when this came out, this was what was true for us. Yep. So Tony, welcome. Thank you for joining us today. I've

Been wanting to be on this podcast for 204 episodes.

<laugh>, we know that you are a RV veteran because you used to sell RVs, but we also know that you are a prolific writer and you like to be at your computer writing all the time. And what's the point in writing if you can't share it with people? Yep. So for that reason, being on the internet is important to you for watching TikTok being on the internet. <laugh> important to you, I'm addicted, <laugh>, but we have a podcast, that podcast comes out every week.

So we have to make sure that we have a way to release that podcast every week. And that means internet access. So short of, you know, driving to a Starbucks or a McDonald parking lot and sitting in their parking lot using their wifi, we want to make sure that we always have access ourselves so that we can be on the road wherever we are whenever we are and we can get this information out to you.

Well, and the proof of that was last week where only half the podcast uploaded and we got a number of people in the the Stressless Camping podcast Facebook group saying, uh, it ended at 23 minutes, what happened? And so I had to re-upload

It. Maybe you should explain why that happened, because

Our internet pooped out in the middle of

The upload <laugh>. So we do have internet in our sticks and bricks. It's actually not even the best internet out there because it is cell phone based. Yeah. We are far enough out from the rest of civilization that there's no cable internet that reaches us, you know, no hardwired anything. So we do have some problems with the internet, so even when we're home, we have to behave as if we're out on the road.

Well, I mean we're gonna get into why we're not using starlink all the time, but we have an ongoing internet system here at our house because I want to be able to monitor climate control systems and cameras and lights and all, just all of that stuff, right? So I wanted a cheap internet system

That's not mobile that it's gonna stay here even when we're gone.

So this is always here. So I can always see the cameras and all that nonsense. I like to watch the birds that are at the house, whether I'm here or away,

<laugh>. So Tony, how, what, what do people need in terms of internet?

Okay. There's not one answer to that question. And a lot of it depends on what you want to accomplish. There's a lot of people who go camping so they don't look at the internet, right? There's a lot of people who are like, when I'm camping I don't wanna see email or phone or any of that nonsense. True. And so for them their needs are minimal or non. Now here's one of the things that, uh, someone explained to me. They said when I go camping I purposely avoid looking at internet stuff, but I want to remain somewhat connected because if there is a work emergency I can deal with it.

But other than that I don't really want to be on the internet and that's fully valid. And that's absolutely, yeah. I've had that argument with campgrounds where they're like, well, people need to get away.

Well, but some people, the whole family can get away and one member of the family may have to remain connected either with a really robust connection or just the ability to check emails or that sort of thing, right? So it depends on what you wanna do with the internet, right? If it's just checking a few emails or you know, if you're looking at social media or things like that, non-critical stuff, that's a very different answer than if, for example, we have a friend who's a traveling nurse and she uses the internet to see patients literally.

Right? So, you know, it depends on what you're doing,

Right? Okay. So for those people who mostly wanna get away, but just wanna make sure there's a little bit of emergency access, they can just use the wifi that a campground provides, right?

Maybe. So campground, wifi, every campground you ever go to will likely say, Hey, we have great wifi. And then you get there and it's terrible, right? And like so many internet services campground wifi very likely slows down the more people are using it. So let's say, you know, you might get up and I've done this, get up at five in the morning to upload something or check an email and the campground wifi is terrific.

And then later that evening as everybody comes back from hiking or whatever they're out there doing and now they wanna check their email or go on social media or stream

A

Movie, stream a movie, it doesn't work. And a lot of these services, and this is true of cell phone internet, it's true of starlink, it's true of almost every kind of internet except for the really high end stuff where the more people using it, the more it slows down because too many people using the same infrastructure mm-hmm <affirmative>. So that's the same as campground wifi. I never expect campground wifi to be good. And here's another thing, most ways that you access campground wifi are not secure, right?

So let's say you find a good wifi signal and you're like, ooh, you know, the neighbor has the greatest fire pit you've ever seen. So you want to go on Amazon and get one for yourself. Well now you're transmitting your password to Amazon, you're transmitting your credit card number over a community wifi system and it's really easy for people with bad intentions to get that information cuz it's just flying out through the air. Right?

Right. And we have actually had this happen and I know of a lot of cases also where it's happened where people did get their credit card number hacked or

It's happened to me.

Yep. So I am not a fan of campground wifi at all. And for the most part it's a lot of promise and no deliver. So even if your needs are simple or minimal, I still think for the most part, campground wifi is a, is the worst solution if it's even functional at all.

Right? Because some of them are in such places kind of like we are here where there's just not good service to be had. Yeah. And if that's, you know, if you're going to get away from it all, you're probably getting away from it all. Right? That's

A, that's a really valid point. A lot of campgrounds are in places that are more rural or more distant from population centers, which is part of why we go there. Right. And it's tough for them to get any good connectivity and then, you know, you split that up among 50 or a hundred people and now it's nothing. It's a door stop. So there you go.

Okay. So now I know that there are a lot of people who just, they have a cell phone, so they've obviously got some kind of service on their cell phone and they use their cell phone either to check that email or to tether to their laptop so that they can use their cell phone coverage.

Right? If all you need to do is check the occasional email or go on social media or any of that sort of thing, the internet that is built into your cell phone might be all you need. And many cell phones provide what's called hotspot. So let's say you wanna check your email or go on social media or something like that on your computer or your tablet, depending on the plan, on your cell phone, you can use that as what's called a hotspot so that you can then access the internet that way.

And that has good things, you already have it, right? Right. But the bad thing is most of those hotspot plans are limited. And again, if you are in a rural area, you may have lousy cell phone coverage. Yeah. And for us, again, internet is a little more important than for everybody. Right. There are people who can get by with nothing and there are people whose business is based on the internet that would be us <laugh>. So the way we have done cell phone internet, and we do have it, we have one at and t cell phone, one Verizon cell phone and one T-mobile hotspot.

And so we have a specific T-mobile hotspot that we use when other options aren't great.

Like when our at and t and Verizon are both kind of weak, then we can turn on that T-mobile hotspot and it's a, it's still like a cell coverage but it's not a phone, it's just a a router box. And that gives us then three cellular options. Right.

And the nice thing about that solution is we have greater likelihood of finding a good cell provider wherever we are. And let's say if you and your spouse have cell phone, which is probably likely, then you could each get a different plan. So Peggy has at and t and I have Verizon and that way we have a higher likelihood of finding coverage out on the road. Now

I just thought of something uhoh, I feel like maybe in the, maybe this is an old fashioned thought, does it not matter if everyone in the family's on the same plan? Well,

Frequently there are discounts, but if connectivity is important, that means that

Overrules the discount,

We overrule the the discount. Yeah. It depends. I mean I think we are doing okay with the cost of our monthly coverage, but it's more than if we had one plan where everybody was on it. Sure. So one of the things, again, with all of these cell phone plans, they all almost universally have a cap as to how much data you can use. Even though they say unlimited data, <laugh>, they're typically not. And if you look at how lately how it's been defined, they say unlimited data, but you may be throttled after whatever number they provide.

Right. And so that means that you still have coverage, but it's really sluggish. Yeah.

It's like aol, dialup, <laugh> if if even that good Now our hotspot, the way I worked that I got a prepaid plan and the reason I did that is ours happens to be $50 and it's 50 gigs. And like right now we're not, it's not even on, it's sitting in my backpack turned off.

So when we don't need it, it doesn't need to be turned on. And using even the minimal amount of data, it's not using any data at all.

Correct. It's not consuming any data at all. But in months where I have used all 50 gigabytes, you can just go on the website cuz you get a warning when it's getting low. Right. Go on the website and buy another 50 gigs. So overall it's a backup plan, but that is how I've been able to do it and it works pretty well for us. Most of the time <laugh>. And again, you know, you can go to places where there's no cell coverage. Right Now, I will say to the end of cell phone, we have used a cell phone booster antenna and what we did is we put the receiver on the top of a flagpole and I, I have an article where I show how I finagled a flagpole from camco <laugh> to be a cell phone booster.

And it was okay. Yeah, it worked sometimes, but I would not say it was a super great solution. Again, if you're really needing internet and you choose to use a cell phone provider as your solution, it might make sense to do something like this. The cell phone booster that we used had both of what they call a trucker's antenna and that's what I mounted on the flagpole, but we also had a little magnetic antenna that we used in the truck.

I'm finding more and more that cell coverage is pretty dogg on good. Yeah. Universally and

Even without that booster. Yeah.

And the booster didn't do such a great job. So it's on eBay right now,

<laugh>. And something to really remember about that booster is it's a booster, it's not a signal grabber. So if there's not cell coverage to be had, there's nothing to boost.

That's correct. Yeah. Another thing, we also had a service that was cell phone based that we paid 180 bucks a month for or something like that. And Jason from RV Miles has done a really good job of exposing a person who has done a very poor job of over promising and while he is done a great job of over promising and underdelivering from what Jason has said, there's a lot of people and you go to these RV conventions and they say, oh well this is truly unlimited coverage.

And then sometimes it may be for a period of time, but then it stops because a lot of these people are doing shady stuff to get the coverage Correct. And so, uh, I'm, I'm not a big fan of these quote unquote unlimited cell phone plants. Now there were truly unlimited cell phone plans in the past, but the cell phone companies are like, oh my.

They realized, yeah, these are fearers are using a ton of internet <laugh>. We said hold my beer and watch this. And they said nevermind and watch it

On the internet. So most of those truly unlimited plants went away <laugh>. So if you're thinking of getting a device and it comes with unlimited coverage, not your cell phone, but you know, one of these, like you go to an RV convention and they're like, oh, there's the greatest things in slice bread. Ah, my below filters goes just

Do a little more research. Yeah, we did have one for a while that

Yeah. And it turned out to be terrible

Honestly, where we,

And it was very expensive,

The place that we had the worst problem, we were actually at an event and we seeked out the provider and they said, oh yeah, well no, it doesn't really work here. But they were at the, but they were there selling it as a device to get signal everywhere.

That was their promise. They

Except here where we're selling it. Yeah.

And I'm like, well you're a shady jerk, so whatever.

Anyway. Yeah. Okay. So I think, uh, I feel like, let's see, hardwired cell phone. I feel like there's, oh I right starlink?

Yes.

Do we have any good things to say about Starling?

We do. We have starlink and it has been, to say the least game changing. Okay. So what it is, is it's satellite internet. And some of you who may have had satellite internet in the past would say, oh my word that is horrible. And it had been, and until Elon Musk and his folks in Hawthorne, California fired off a bunch of satellites, and these are what are called low earth orbit satellites, they don't fly very high from the standpoint of a satellite to the point where you may actually see little constellations of them if the lighting is right and the conditions are right.

I mean, not like they're gonna give you a unintended haircut, but they're, they're not many thousands of feet in the air anyway. Starlink uses a proprietary antenna to work with these low earth orbit satellites. And when it works well, it is fantastic.

Fantastic. So the advantage of starlink is when it's hot, it's hot, it gives tremendous speeds, it gives fantastic coverage. It can be very low latency. In other words, when you type in something like Stressless camping, boom, you get the results as opposed to waiting starlink can be absolutely game changing. And we have traveled all over the south, as you may know, after we got starlink and just love it. And it almost always worked really, really well.

And if it didn't work really, really well, it worked okay but there were some times when it didn't work <laugh>, which is why we still have our three cell phone plans. The advantage of starlink is it's really, really fast when it works. Setting up starlink is you go on their website, you order the starlink, which is 500, 600 bucks, so it's pricey and then it shows up and you plug it all in together and download the free app.

And literally moments later you're online. It's, it's really a simple well thought through system. Another advantage of having a starlink account is, let's say you are in a place where there's no cell coverage and your cell phone has what they call wifi calling enabled. In other words, your cell phone is able to use wifi to actually work as a phone. You can actually use the starlink connectivity to accomplish that. So if there is some sort of an emergency and you have starlink and this wifi calling enabled, you can make a phone call.

So like I say, when it works well, it is fast, it's low latency, it, it's like magic. It has been truly game changing for us.

So is there something that makes it not work? Well,

Trees, <laugh>,

<laugh>.

So being satellite, internet tree coverage can really mess it up or completely disabled altogether.

So it has to be able, your antenna essentially has to be able to see those satellites that are floating around in the sky. Correct. And since they're low, it's a little bit harder to see them. Right? Well

If there's trees or other obstructions, like let's say you're in a canyon or if you're in a city where there's tall buildings, it's worthless. It can be worthless. So obstructions to the night sky really do turn it into a brick <laugh>. And that's an expensive brick because our plan is 150 bucks a month and then we paid, what did we pay? Five or 600 bucks for the dish. So it ain't cheap.

Didn't our plan change though? Is that what we still pay? Well

It is now. When we started it was 1 25, then 1 35, then one 50. And that's another downside of starlink. Elon Musk's companies tend to make these incredible, groundbreaking, outstanding solutions and then they don't support them and they changed their mind a lot since we've had our starlink, which was in February I

Think. Yeah, it's not, it's just been this year

There have been three or four changes to the plans. The good thing about starlink is it's month to month, right. You can, as we have right now, we are in our sticks and bricks and I turned off our starlink account while we're here. So I save the 150 bucks a month. The bad news about that is starlink can change their mind and up the cost of the plan or change the way the plans are configured or it's kind of weird.

It's like dealing with a 12 year old with a bad attitude <laugh> and that's Elon Musk, right? I mean he's a great guy and he does some terrific things, but he's also a bit eccentric and it shows in the way his businesses are run to that end. If you have an issue with starlink, it does set up very easily. It seems to work all the time. But if you have a technical support issue, good luck. I haven't had a tech support issue, so I can't speak to this firsthand, but from the places I've looked, people who have have waited sometimes weeks and sometimes months to even get a reply, there's no phone number to call.

Their tech support is lousy.

Hmm. Now is it true that, again, maybe I'm remembering wrong, but when Starling first came out, it was kind of only for home use, it wasn't for traveling use, so it wasn't really helpful to RVers but it's gotten a lot more travel friendly, right?

Yeah. I mean initially you had to have an address and the company had to serve your address and they have limitations as to how many accounts they'll have in a given area because like a lot of things, there's a limit to how many customers any given area can servee. And once it's full, it's full. Then they came out with the, I forgot what they call it, like I think they called it like the RVR package or something like that. And that was not tied to a physical address and you could take it and move it around, but you couldn't move it around and use it at the same time.

So in other words, if you're in your RV or boat and you want to connect while you're going somewhere, they were like, uh, no you're not doing that.

So basically you could just change addresses a lot of times.

Correct. Right. You once you got where you're going, you put out your starlink dish and turned it on and it found the satellites and you're good. Now they have mobile plans, they have ocean plans, they have low data use plans, high data use plans and it just keeps changing. So that's, I don't like that about starlink, but by gosh when it works, ooh it works. And that's most of the time we even had some places where there was some tree coverage and we put the dish out beyond the trees and it was, it was good enough.

Okay, so tell me, how'd you put it out beyond the trees? Like it's not something you attached to your rv.

Like with everything in life there are options. If you go tomorrow or today an order, a Starling package, the base package comes with a port, what they call a portable dish, it's called dishy cuz they give everything funny names. So there's that dish which is a square dish on a like a little stand looks like a desk lamp stand and then a 50 foot cable and the indoor router. So you get all that stuff and you can put the dish outside and the cable's long enough that the way we do it now is we run it through a slide seal and we put the dish out at the place where we feel it'll get the best coverage.

There are some options to mount the dish permanently to a boat or an RV and oh, I wouldn't, I wouldn't do that just because what if you're parked under trees and now you know the dish is not gonna see this sky. So I like the portability factor.

The same reason that you said earlier that we carry portable solar panels. Correct?

Right,

Exactly. We might want the shade to be in the shade, but then we don't have solar panels. So for the same reason we might wanna be in the trees just for the prettiness of the trees, but then we've gotta get outta the trees to see the sun and see the satellites. Right.

That is absolutely correct. The disadvantage of it is when it's just sitting on the ground, it's what, like two feet tall or whatever and I've heard of people running over them.

Yikes.

We also put a traffic cone by it. But what we have been doing more frequently is we take that same CAMCO flagpole, we put the starlink dish on top of that, the camco flagpole mounts under the design is under a tire. But what we've found is we put it under the tongue jack of our travel trailer and put the flagpole up and then the starlink dish at the top. And I'll put a link, there's a guy on Etsy who has made a 3D printed starlink mount for the top of camco and Harbor Freight flagpoles.

So that's how we do it. We, we mount that dish way up in the air at the top of a flagpole when it's possible to be not under trees and it really works exceptionally well and we've been through some windy conditions and it, it has held up really, really well. Yeah,

So it sounds like a really good system and you've mentioned a few disadvantages. Are there any others that we should know about?

At the moment, starlink only works on 120 volt household outlet current. So if you're boondocking as we like to do, well we're fortunate we have our ABC Outfitters power package, but if you don't have access to 120 volt household power, it's not gonna work. I have seen where people have modified that system and that's possible, but if you don't wanna modify it, you could use a portable power station or solar generator to operate the Starling system.

So that's another option. But just know that it does take household power and it can

Be kind of power hungry. Yeah, yeah,

Because it has a heater in the satellite dish. Oh. And when that thing's on, it does consume a lot of power, but on their app you can turn off that heater as well.

And that probably cuts back a lot on the power usage. Right, okay.

And it, and then we also have it set so that overnight it will shut off itself to conserve power.

Oh yeah. Make sure you're not trying to upload this week's episode. Oh yeah. When it shuts off in the middle of the night, <laugh> guilty.

Yeah. Those kind of things. So that's our coverage of how to get connected. There are a lot of options and if it's truly important to you, there's a couple Chris and Cherie who run the mobile internet resource center and there is no better resource than theirs and they have both free and paid plans and this really does change quite a bit frequently. Definitely. You know, another resource, this may be all you need and of course being a nerd that I am <laugh> and of course being a geek, that I am <laugh>.

If you're over at our Stresses camping podcast Facebook group and want to talk more about connectivity on the road, believe me, I have no issues doing so cause I love

This stuff. Yeah. Well Tony, thank you so much for being our guest today. We hope that you have a great week. Uh, do you want me to ask you the surprise questions? <laugh>?

No.

<laugh>.

No. Hey, this weekend by the way is Memorial Day and so of course we recognize all the people who have served this country and fallen. That's the whole reason for this, right? It's, it's not that's right because trucks are on sale or any of that makes sense. <laugh>, however stuff

Is on sales sale sales for sure. You might wanna check out our deals and discounts page. Especially I know that harvest hosts and techno RV are having special sales just for this memorial weekend. There's gonna be a section in our weekly newsletter that we email out every Thursday and it's going to point out the partners that are having special deals. So especially this weekend, you'll find a few, hopefully every weekend someone will have a sale. Right. <laugh>.

Yeah. That's gonna be another reason to be part of our email newsletter. And we only send it once a week. We're gonna put any last minute deals discounts that we come across from our collection of people that we enjoy working with.

And sometimes every once in a while, it doesn't happen too often, but sometimes we record early enough in the week that something big happens that we didn't talk about <laugh>. And so sometimes that email has information that by the time you hear it next week it's gonna be 10 days old. So yeah. And it, you wanna get that email and read that

The email's getting longer and longer, but we really want it to be another tool to serve you. So if you are not subscribed to our weekly email, do know again we really value that subscription. It's completely free and we're doing our best to continue to make that a great resource for

You. Yes. So as a little bit of a maintenance tip this week, I wonder if you know that your carbon monoxide detector actually expires?

Yeah. This is something to know.

I see a lot of questions when I'm on Facebook and stuff and people say they're, well first of all, a lot of people say they're CO2 or they're carbon dioxide detector <laugh>. That's not what it is. It doesn't test carbon dioxide that's everywhere. This test carbon monoxide, which is bad. It's a component of burning propane. So a lot of times it's if you have a propane leak you'll, your detector will go off but <laugh> it

Also, your dog has gas.

Yeah. It also goes off for really weird reasons if you spray aerosol sprays like hairspray or something like that. If your dog has gas, if you <laugh>,

We used to have a dog, so the carbon monoxide detector was in the foot of the dinette and she liked to sleep in that like space between the two seats of the dinette. And she also had gas and it would set off the carbon monoxide detector. And at some point she had gotten older and couldn't hear anymore.

It didn't bother her, didn't bother her. So, but the two kind of main reasons that it's in there in the first place is to detect carbon monoxide and also to let you know if your house batteries are dying, if your detector's going off and there's no air related reason for it to go off, you might wanna check and make sure that your batteries are doing well.

So do check the date on the carbon monoxide detector. Don't disable it.

Please don't disable it. But they really do only have about a five year lifespan. So depending on your rv, if it's starting to give you a little bit of trouble and you can't figure out another reason why, it's probably just time to get a new one.

Yep. And they're not expensive and you know, being alive. Heck we, we appreciate that.

Yeah, that's a lot better. This past week I wrote about road snacks because I don't know, I probably have the munchies or something. <laugh> and <laugh>.

Yeah.

You know our in the truck road snacks box gets bigger and bigger on every trip. Yeah. Well the last trip, to be fair, we didn't have our RV with us. So all of our snacks had to be in one box. In the truck

We have this fairly large Dometic refrigerator. Well

That's cooler. That's, yeah, that's separate even from the regular snacks. We have the Dometic cooler and honestly what I prefer is like our little small ice chest. But again, in this case we had food because we were doing potlucks and so we had to take the big refrigerator. So we had a bunch of stuff in it. It barely fits in the back seat, but that way we could keep it plugged in. That's one thing about those 12 volt coolers is they need some kind of a power source all the time. Yeah. Anyway, so we have our box of road snacks and we have our cooler of road snacks.

<laugh> <laugh>. Also, if you noticed last week I made a recipe for tuna poppers. Well I wrote, I made a blog post page. I forgot to attach the recipe. So the recipe for tuna poppers, I mean if you couldn't figure it out, is now a link on the tuna popper page. <laugh> tuna popper page. We had two Popp

Una poppers for lunch today.

We did. Then they are also listed in our list of snacks that we carry. I kind of have a dry goods list and a ice chest list. <laugh>,

Hey, snacks are good,

Snacks are important.

Speaking of propane, kind of sorta, I was surprised to learn that we had never written an article about our lipper propane tank monitors. And

That's crazy cuz we've had 'em for like two years,

Something like that. <laugh>. And they're, I mean they're such a great resource for us. They're, I don't know, like the top of a mayonnaise jar type of size of thing. They're a little round black magnetic thing you put on the bottom of your propane tank and it tells you within 1% of how much propane there is in there. Is

It essentially a scale? I

Don't think so because it's does some sonic, I don't know how it works. Oh, okay. It's magic is how it, it works. It's magic. Magic. It can't be a scale because included in the little lipid, uh, tank monitor and these come from lipid. Lippard has a bunch of neat technology that they have now mm-hmm. <affirmative> that and some that they're coming out with. So included in these are little feet that raise the propane tank. Right,

Right.

So that this little magnetic goodie that you put underneath

Doesn't get smashed. Right. Yeah.

We didn't like those feet and we lost one.

We lost one. We liked them fine till one was missing. Yeah.

Well they'd scratch up that metal plate for sure. So Peggy found these rubbery plastic donuts that go under the propane tank and that's more better.

And they actually slide snugly onto that lip. Yeah. On the bottom of your propane tank so that it, it helps 'em. They don't bounce around so much, it lifts 'em up that little bit that that monitor needs to be lifted. And they're probably quieter. Yeah. And they don't scratch it up because if you scratch metal to metal, then you're gonna be paint free and rusty. Yeah.

These little propane tank monitors use the Lipper one control app, which is free. And they just tell you how much propane is in the tank. They work with 20 and 30 pound tanks. They're so simple to install because it's a magnet on the bottom of your tank. That's how we determine how much propane we have. And it, they just work. I love stuff that just does the job. So there's a full article with links to where you can buy the Lipper propane tank monitors and that little donut that Peggy found, um, on our home on the web@stresslesscamping.com.

You know what else is on stressless camping.com is this week's RV of the week.

I found a unicorn. This is a single axle, 23 foot overall travel trailer with no slide that has a bedroom that's separate, that's completely separate. So it has a walkaround bed now it's a shorty queen, but it's still a around bed. And then there's a bathroom in the middle of the trailer and then a dinette up at the front. And of course a kitchen and fridge and all that for this size of this trailer.

They have just done a fantastic job with the layout. Now this comes from Wildwood and one of the things I really like about Wildwood products is they're really clever about storage. They use totes in a lot of places. So there are totes under the bed, which is kind of neat. Then there, the bed is at the back by the way. And there's storage under the bed as well, which can be accessed from the outside.

Another neat thing, it's just a really well laid out travel trailer. It's a single axle trailer, relatively light and compact and I'm, I'm just really impressed with this thing. It's pretty inexpensive at about $31,000 msrp and I saw it over on Bishop's website. They had a huge discount on this. The downside is it's a little bit low in ceiling height.

It's six six and you might say, well I'm, I'm only six foot or whatever. But it, they feel a little smaller when they have lower ceilings. Mm-hmm <affirmative>.

But the use of space in this trailer is exceptional. Now the downside is it uses that small cheap vent fan. I don't like those things. And then it also has no provision for an oven whatsoever, which would be okay if they included a convection microwave. But they do not, or nor do they make one available. So this is something I would say would be a great rig if you're looking for a smaller, lighter rig that has a lot of functionality built in.

Unicorn Indeed. Last week's question of the week was fun. It was a poll actually, which we don't do that often, but we asked, well if you read it directly off what the website, how I spelled it, it says, where are you on the full-time sale <laugh>? And of course I meant scale <laugh>.

I think last week we had a bunch of groups. We were off our, I think we're off our game a

Little bit, little off our game. But what I was trying to find out and no one called me out on it. So hopefully it wasn't too, uh, confusing of a question. I wanted to know, are you a full-timer? Is that a reality for you? Is it a dream for you or does it sound like an absolute nightmare? Yeah,

There are people who said it,

Some people don't want to full-time and that's totally legit. So 93 people voted yay. Seven of you are full-timers, which is super cool. The majority 66 people are dreamers. They either are dreamers or they take multi-month trips and have a home base. I guess that's a part-timer. So I didn't really ask about part timing. And that's what we are, we come home for a couple months, we go out for a couple months and is that really dreaming of full-time?

I guess not. So let me back up. So 24 people are actually dreaming and wanting to be full-timers. 44 people are like us. Take some long trips, stay home for a while. Yeah,

Well we have to come back home and visit our junk.

Yeah. <laugh>. And for 13 people, oddly enough, 13 say it sounds like a nightmare. They are just not, it doesn't appeal to them at all to be a full-timer. Which is, you know, I'm, I think it would be fun. But then again, when we go out for our few months and then we come home for a few months, I really, really, really love coming back home. So maybe I wouldn't love never having a home to come to. Yeah,

I do. I do like having a home base, at least for our way of living. And one of those reasons is, you know when during the pandemic before we got our, you know what, together there were a lot of campgrounds that were forced to close, which really left a lot of full-timers kind of stuck.

Yes.

And that's another reason we're happy to have a piece of dirt to go to.

But it's another reason we're also good at boondocking.

<laugh>. Right. Absolutely. But then remember we're paying taxes and all that stuff on this too, so. Sure.

Yeah. Well thank you all for answering. It was really fun and there were some comments, but the one comment that I remember for sure is Cheryl, they were full-timers for quite some time and now they have, I guess it's a home base, it's their, their winter base. So they full-time for six or eight, nine months out of the year and then they hunker down and stay in their winter base.

Yeah. So to each their own. And we love all of you,

We do this week since it is memorial weekend and that's kind of the traditional start of summer, I was wondering what is your tradition to kick off summer? Do you have something specific that you do? Is this when you start planning your trips or is this, you know, what do you do? How do you tell yourself it's summer <laugh>?

And you can answer that question in our fun and friendly stresses, camping podcast, Facebook group, it truly has remained cordial and polite. So if you're looking to get answers on Facebook and hang out with a bunch other like-minded people, that's a good place to go.

Absolutely. Another good place to go is to our website and sign up for our newsletter, which is totally and absolutely and positively free. Oh yeah. We send one newsletter a week. We asked you guys last week and you all said no, I don't want to. No, we don't want to. We did have a pro recommend that we send two or three a week and based on the feedback that we got, we're probably not going to be doing that.

Correct. Yeah.

Because we don't wanna make y'all mad. Yeah.

And plus we're lazy,

So, so yeah, we, we have to think of things to write that many times. Our newsletters is getting long and so I do encourage you to scroll all the way through it all the way to the bottom. Cuz sometimes we hid the good stuff way at the bottom. So to make sure you get there and just kidding.

Yeah, it's getting, it is getting longer, but it is free and we only send it once a week. And of course, as we've always said, we don't share your information with anybody. We respect you too much for that.

Absolutely. While

You're on the website, know that the notes, links and information that we talk about on this podcast can be found in the show notes.

And this week is episode number 2 0 4,

Which is found on the podcast page at Stressless Camping. And you know what else is there?

Deals and discounts Absolutely.

For the best things you'll need on your Stressless camping adventure,

Including some sales this weekend.

Yeah, that's for sure. And we have partnered with Lippert now, so we're working to get some of their deals and discounts on the website too. And I probably will by this weekend.

Excellent. And then after you've done all those things on the website, you know, you can still bounce off and go to our social places like Facebook and Instagram and all that stuff.

TikTok, Twitter, YouTube. Don't forget YouTube. We upload a video a week

Now. That's right. We are finally being consistent with our YouTube uploads.

Yeah. We have a zippy tip that goes up there every week.

So there's links right there on the website. You can slide off into all those other places. And one of the places that we would love for you to go is to your favorite podcast catcher and maybe take a moment and give us a review.

Yeah. It really helps them realize that people are actually listening to the podcast. Right. And that we are able to serve you well. So if you can go and write a review of the Stressless Camping podcast, we

Surely do appreciate it and

We appreciate it and it means a lot to us.

And if you have already written a review or you just flat out refuse meaning <laugh>, but you still see something you like either on our Facebook page or on our website, please share it. You can share it link on Facebook or you can, I don't know, email it to your friends or call 'em and read the website name. I mean, I guess that's not the best way, but Well,

But it works.

Whatever. That's what works for you. And you're gonna share, you share your way.

Yeah. You be you <laugh>. Well, thank you again for your time this week. We hope this internet information is helpful to you. We sure appreciate you and most of all

Happy camping.

We hope you learned a lot and had some fun and got some tips for your next Stressless camping adventure. We're honored by your reviews on Apple Podcasts, which helps others find us too. Don't forget to subscribe so you won't miss out on the adventure. And we look forward to your joining us next week. Until then, happy camping.

Do you want me to ask you the surprise questions? <laugh>?

No. <laugh>, no.