Highlights from the 2023 FROG International RV rally in Goshen, Indiana
On this week’s RV and travel podcast we bring you highlights of our daily wrap sessions with Mike Sokol from the 2023 FROG International rally in Goshen, Indiana. With RV companies, component manufacturers, workshops and sessions we bring you the daily recap of what happened and some of the useful tips and tricks we learned from the FROG rally.
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Automated Translation of StressLess Camping RV podcast episode 217
Speaker 1
<silence>
Mark Ferrell
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 Stressless camping.
Peggy Barthel
Welcome to the Campfire.
Tony Barthel
I'm Tony. I'm Peggy. And we're two RV industry veterans who travel part-time
Peggy Barthel
In a small trailer
Tony Barthel
Looking to share big adventures, which we are on right now.
Peggy Barthel
Yes, indeed.
Tony Barthel
And help you with great tips, tricks and discounts.
Peggy Barthel
We are in Michigan and we will be in Michigan for a couple of weeks. We are traveling with our friend Bill and his dog Zappo. So we are having a grand adventure except right now 'cause we working. But as soon as we're done here, we're gonna go out and have some more grand adventures. Yeah. <laugh>, we have been, as you know, at the Frog Rally in Goshen, Indiana. And for three nights Tony and Mike did a live feed. And then on the fourth night, Tony and I and Sean from Lippert Industries did a live feed.
Peggy Barthel
And what we thought we would do is share some of the highlights of that. Well, none, I'm not gonna say the highlights. <laugh>. I'm gonna say where are their
Tony Barthel
Highlights. <laugh>,
Peggy Barthel
There were lots of highlights. Actually. It was kind of fun listening to all three hours in a row and pulling out only about the next 30 minutes that we're gonna have you here. The intention for me was to get the parts where they talked about what was going on at the Frog rally. Well, I gotta tell you, these guys go off on tangents like they're a couple of tangerines or something. I don't know. <laugh>. I have so many tags in those three hours. Like, oh look, they started a topic.
Peggy Barthel
Oh look, they started talking about something else. Oh look, they got distracted by a train. Oh, they went back to that topic. Yay. <laugh>.
Tony Barthel
Yeah. It's, especially Mike and I, it honestly, these six o'clock wraps were very much like our telephone calls to one another. Yes. Where it's like a hundred different topics, but not in a sequence. But
Peggy Barthel
They're all in first in between each other sequence.
Tony Barthel
And so I have to applaud Peggy <laugh>. She did the absolute like amazing job of, for days while we were traveling. She had the laptop <laugh> and she's like listening, cutting, editing and all of that stuff. What's coming up next, which is highlights from the six o'clock wrap that Mike and I did at The Frog Rally. She didn't even do the Lippert thing yet. That will be its own podcast. 'cause I, I thought that was, that one was almost too professional for Right.
Tony Barthel
Any, anything I do
Peggy Barthel
<laugh> It wasn't nearly so wonky. So also though, just know that while you're listening to this, there will be a little bit of high and a little bit of low because you know, they were outside and they were looking at each other. So, you know, when we and trains, when we sit here, we just put our faces in the mic and leave them there. So we get a pretty well modulated sound. Not so much when everybody's outside and waving at friends and inviting extra people to come talk <laugh>. It was super fun. Don't get me, I'm not saying anything wrong with it, it just makes for not the most polished editing and I apologize for that.
Peggy Barthel
But it might give you a little taste of what we lived through <laugh>. And we
Tony Barthel
Will, we will actually put links to those videos 'cause they're still up on the old tubes of you. Yes, yes. We'll put links to those videos in the show notes. And that's at stresses camping.com/podcast/oh 2 1 7 0 2 1 7. That's what this episode number is, is 2 1 7. Well,
Peggy Barthel
Let's give it a listen.
Tony Barthel
All right, here we go.
Speaker 5
We're from the lovely Tiki Lounge. Yeah. We're in the Tiki lounge here at, we had originally intended to be out in front of my camper. It's raining quite a bit out there, but the Tiki bar or Tiki Lounge. The Tiki Lounge is in at the Frog Rally in Goshen, Indiana. The idea here is be behind six o'clock wrap. We can kind of do like a wrap up session at the end of the day. Things that we found, things that are interesting, things to, that we could talk about.
Speaker 5
So the Frog rally, if you're wondering, is the Forest River owners group. And it is put on by Forest River. I was told as sort of a thank you to owners of Forest River products. So Mike and I, well we made a goofy situation. Let's just say that we planned the six o'clock wrap Right. During the free dinner <laugh>
Speaker 6
That
Speaker 5
They have here. Dinner. We know anything. We're still gonna do the six o'clock wrap. We might have to change times. The six o'clock wrap at seven <laugh>. Yeah. But I think we can do it tomorrow. 'cause it just with food trucks, right? Trucks.
Speaker 6
Food trucks.
Speaker 5
Six. Yeah. Six o'clock. We don't say what, we don't say what time zone it is in because that's rain. That's a giant downturn.
Speaker 6
Oh wow. We were touring the RVs. Yes. And we came across a fifth wheel that Rockwood is now producing. Did you happen to see that?
Speaker 5
I did.
Speaker 6
Pretty interesting with this new power package, the master bolt. And it even had two, yeah. 260 amp hour. Yeah. Lifting batteries. Yeah. And I have, I thought that was pretty interesting.
Speaker 5
Well, I hope you can still hear me. It is boring. Wait a minute. Peggy has food containers. Everybody. She's got food <laugh>. We don't know what she Oh. Oh man. She is wrenched.
Speaker 6
It's the first time that I said yes to a cart ride. <laugh>.
Speaker 5
<laugh>. Right.
Speaker 6
What'd
Speaker 5
You bring us?
Speaker 6
Uh, I brought a little bit of meat, um, broccoli salad and I brought lemon bars. 'cause they're clo Yeah,
Speaker 5
Apparently they were, they went overboard with dessert because they were pushing cannolis last night. Yeah. Last night they were trying to get lemon.
Speaker 6
I thought we were having cannolis for breakfast today. 'cause I thought they would keep serving them until they would be gone.
Speaker 5
And the rain has started up again. So the tiki bar is an amazing thing because it is not officially sanctioned in that Frog puts it on.
Speaker 6
They just set it up.
Speaker 5
They just do it. They bring the lights and they bring the all my
Speaker 6
Grandma for She does all the lights and all the decorating.
Speaker 5
Yeah. They do the l e d palm trees. Yeah. Yeah. And they, they had, they've had music. There are cornhole. You see behind us is Tina and the popcorn machine. You
Speaker 6
Got a movie screen hung up. Oh yeah. There's a movie screen. There's gonna be a movie night.
Speaker 5
They do a heck of a job. And what it essentially is, is a place to come and meet the other RVs. Right. And it's in a pavilion. So it's out of the range. Yeah. But that's the most important part, which is why we're here. So this event is heavily subsidized by Forest River and you get four nights of dinners, five breakfasts, I think. Mm-hmm.
Speaker 6
<affirmative> six,
Speaker 5
Five or six breakfasts. There's camping. Many of us have full hookups. Some don't seminars every day there. So it's from Monday through Thursday. There are seminars all day. And it's a lot of the heavy hitters. Like for example, we have a Dexter Turex axles on our trailer. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>, well Dexter's here showing you how to maintain them and take 'em apart and clean them and, and all of that Lippers here. Dometic here, which is left. I saw the more ride people here, more rides here.
Speaker 5
Right here. I've got the more ride air suspension on my little trailer, which is just the coolest thing because you can run this thing up and down almost foot. So you can bring it up. If you wanna forward a stream, you take it all the way down to, because I've got a door in the back, I roll around a lot of gear. The train sound effects is about to happen again. Usually
Speaker 6
We can hear it pretty good over here.
Speaker 5
There are some people who are literally backed up Right. To the train track. Anyway. So there's all these workshops you can really learn a lot. Mike is doing three, Peggy and I are doing three. There are vendors. So you can buy all kind of like last year we got our fridge here from Dometic. Right. So there's those kind of vendors. I think a b Caff Outfitters are actually doing some installs. Right. A BBC app Outfitters are doing some installs. There
Speaker 6
Are also ice cream socials to three Oh
Speaker 5
Ice cream. So it's all Forest River bands. Right. Uh, there are bands, right. Forest River has a lot of their manufacturers reps here. And I think some of the reason a lot of people come, you can get factory authorized service right here at the fairgrounds. So while our rig is really well made, we have a lipper thin shade on the door that I just said that. And so they replaced that. So they
Speaker 6
Replaced that
Speaker 5
And we had one of those pop-up power things on the counter and it just broke. And they replaced that Peggy, Peggy broke it. I'm not gonna say anything.
Speaker 6
I I think it came without a spring and Oh,
Speaker 5
So it broke. Oh, it wasn't
Speaker 6
Your fault when I tried to lift it.
Speaker 5
It wasn't your fault. Okay.
Speaker 6
I legitimately probably broke it. But then manufacturing. But then the spring didn't work after I, so
Speaker 5
Yeah. No, I think that's true. I think it just was. So anyway, we got those things fixed and I've seen,
Speaker 6
So if you're within two years right. In your three, three years. A lot of people though, like the people who put up the tiki bar came in the beginning to have that service done for the first, in the first two or three years of their rig. And now they just come back 'cause they've made all the friends and this is now just a social thing.
Speaker 5
Yeah. Yeah. I mean they're just the nicest. And that's the thing, the people here are so nice. Remember who you're dealing with here, ladies and gentlemen. So the first day we show up here and I see Bill and I see all these people I haven't seen since last year. I'm all excited. And then Bill's like, Hey, let's go to the brewery. So Oh yeah, let's go to the brewery. Well, somebody left their truck on overnight. <laugh>. Oops.
Speaker 6
<laugh>.
Speaker 5
So
Speaker 6
Not running,
Speaker 5
Not running. He just in accessory mode so I could open the windows. So
Speaker 6
I did not get donuts the next morning because you couldn't start the truck and go to the donut shop. <laugh>.
Speaker 5
I have one of those little jump jumpstarter goodies and I couldn't jumpstart the truck, which is surprising. But then I had the hood up on the truck as as you would do. And the guy from two door down comes over and he's like, oh, you need a jump. Absolutely. So he comes and he tries to jump the start the truck, which shows you how cool everyone is. Like they see the hood up and they're not like, eh, they're like, oh, I have a jumpstarter too. This is where all the action is. This is where you get repairs. This is where you get upgrades.
Speaker 5
Randy Wolf says, I wanna join the Power Package 22 Oh fives group. There's a group I That's a pretty exclusive group. It is. It's, that's true. So this rally is heavily subsidized by Forest River and we're in by Frog Bob and Run by Frog Bob man, he is great beer. We tried to get him on, but it's dinner time. Yeah.
Speaker 6
He was like,
Speaker 5
And not, not having to do with the food, but he's the master of ceremonies. Hey, we're all Rockwood people on this side of the camera.
Speaker 6
That's right.
Speaker 5
What does that mean? It means that, I don't know. It means that we all have, bro. That's right. It would, I was gonna have, I was gonna drink a beer, but somebody put stuff on top of the fridge.
Speaker 6
I put lemon bars on top of the fridge.
Speaker 5
Wine and water. We have a very legitimate question from Randy. Have you experienced any problems with the power package? I would say it is seamless. It's just, yep. That's the thing. So Master Volt manufactures all the components. So they make the battery, they make the inverter, they make the charge controller, they make all the bits. And so if there is something that would happen, and I don't, none of us have had Right.
Speaker 5
Years, we've had no issues. But if, let's say something happens, it's one provider that would be, takes responsibility for the entire system. And if you do buy it through Rockwood, I think they put the warranty of five years or 10 years. I don't know. It was something crazy. Yep. It's it's a long warranty. So to answer the question, no, we have had zero issues and we have been camping a lot.
Speaker 5
We picked this system up in December. For those of you don't know, we had the prototype and then totaled it. But that was not related to the power package that was related to someone who wasn't sure where the brake, I've got one of the prototypes and it's been perfect. Yeah. Been one of the very first ones. The very first one that they built. So it's a really good system. And something I have said, it just works. Right. All these, there's a lot of fiddly solar and lithium systems out there.
Speaker 5
And this is not one of 'em, it just one provider. All the parts, Ben and his crew and Stacy and Scott and all the people at a B C Upfitters have been just terrific. They never don't have an answer. And so I've been just thrilled with this system. We are a lot from the Frog rally.
Speaker 5
Yes. On this beautiful Tuesday night. And the sun just came up. The sun did last night. Boy. It rained like a son of a gun. Tony Bartell was stressed as camping with my good friend Mike Sol from Marv Electricity and the No Shock Show. We're gonna be talking about some of the stuff we saw today at the show. Some of the things we're thinking about at the show, uh, entertaining a few people that may come by. We've added an extra microphone for the peanut gallery. Yeah. Put a peanut gallery microphone back here. Yeah. Yesterday the peanut show up. We didn't know Ben. Bring up, uh, one of the sitter downers.
Speaker 5
And we have a mic for the peanut gallery here and why I want him on this side so people can batteries. Oh. And well bring a battery. We'll we'll show off batteries. You want me to bring a battery?
Speaker 5
Go get a battery. Yeah. Yeah. We, we wanna talk about what people are interested in and how this all works. Yeah. Cool. Pardon? Assist. You need, uh, a lift assist? I got pretty good lifting. Oh man. He's been, he's been working lifting batteries. Look at that Master bolt battery. Well, it's a, it's obviously not full. Not full, but it's it's full enough. Yeah. Right. So what did you see today at the Frog rally?
Speaker 5
The Frog rally is a collection of owners of Forest River RVs and there are RVs here to see new ones. And you'll be reading those reviews on RV travel and stress of camping. There are workshops and seminars. Mike taught one today. Yes. So you would probably consider your own RV electricity seminar a highlight. I guess I had a lot of people there and they asked a lot of questions. So, and then they kept me for another half an hour afterwards.
Speaker 5
It was the highlight for me for today. Yeah. Everybody keeps asking questions and I just keep making stuff up. I like it. We taught our favorite apps today. I talked about portable generators and inverters and lithium batteries and charging considerations and all that other stuff. So I learned stuff. I mean, everybody looks at stuff. I learned stuff. Yeah. That wasn't a highlight for me is going to the Dexter. But you packed bearings? I learned something. I did, but I learned something really, really, really interesting. So I Oh, you did? Yes you did.
Speaker 5
So I, so I've been watching, I've been, you know, I've got my regular RV electricity stuff, you know, I've got my daily blog and I've got my, you know, all the various things I work on. And, uh, a couple months ago people started sending me stuff about their, their GM vehicles or trucks.
Speaker 5
The towing controller stuff was shutting down. Yeah. And they couldn't figure out why. So I talked to this guy from Dexter. He goes, you're your electrical guy. Maybe you'll find this interesting. I go pray, tell, pray, tell Bill Snyder very knowledgeable. And he said, what they discovered was with the latest software in these trucks, what they do is they pinging the battery in the trailer to make sure it has enough voltage. Mm-hmm. Because that is your breakaway battery. Right, right, right. And they were planning on seeing a voltage of a lead acid battery.
Speaker 5
They did not plan for lithium voltages. Oh. And the second thing they didn't plan for, he says all they, they said, they figured out that everybody's got solar panels on the top and that raises the voltage even higher. So when the truck would ping the trailer, it said the voltage is screwy.
Speaker 5
I'm just connecting the whole trailer controller. Hmm. And he said, the reason why this appeared, I said, the ra it appeared random depending if the sun was shining. And I said, there you go. Isn't that amazing? That's crazy. I'm gonna go study more on that. But he said, they just discovered is he was one of the guys that just kind of just randomly was measuring stuff. And he went, wait a minute. So what I got, what did you see your Dexter also, I saw them tear down an axle. And I am a better, a more knowledgeable person about greasing axle bearings.
Speaker 5
Now it's very important to grease them about every 10 to 12,000 miles. And this, they took the whole thing apart. That's the ideal. Where you go in and, and rere your axle bearings and such on your towable rv. And I know some people are like, well wait, I, I never grease the axle bearings on my car or truck.
Speaker 5
Yeah. Trailers are different. Trailers are different. And you know, so I learned most vehicles, I think they use a lot of seal bearings, do they not in the back and everything. So I learned how to do that today and that's so neat to get the hands on. And then I went to Lippert slide out seminar. So you have a Lippert slide on your unit? I do. I have a through the frame slide and I have been to Lipper's RV Owner School. Right. So I went to the slide out workshop today. Right. And I learned that some advice that I had been giving on given on Facebook, well here's a shocker was wrong.
Speaker 5
I will write an article on Stressless camping about these lipper through the frame slide outs and the lubrication thereof. There is very little lubrication required, but you can lubricate them and doing so properly means that it's not gonna fall out.
Speaker 5
And I have seen slide rooms fall out. Well, I haven't seen them as somebody who managed warranties. I have filed that claim and have been denied because it is OE operator error. One of the most incredible things about this and other large RV rallies are just the exceptional people. Everybody is so kind and so welcoming and we all have something in common. Right. It's the fact that we need to repair.
Speaker 5
I mean that we've traveled by RV and it's, it's a common thing. So you can get together and tell travel stories and tips and Oh, you have a small trailer, I have a big motor home, whatever. And the people are just so very gracious and kind. The manufacturers are here answering legit questions. Um, it they have real engineers here. Yeah. Yeah. Real, real, real opinion. You need can ask real questions, but I think is amazing.
Speaker 5
It is. I grill 'em on everything. Yeah. I was impressed with the SlideRoom guys today. They are just And you guys gave a seminar yesterday. Yep. And answered the questions were answered honestly. And it's just, if you have an opportunity to go to a larger rally like F M C A, we've been to a number of those. Or Escapees or Frog do so. Yeah, frog is great. Do yourself a favor because you meet people. So the initial attraction to come here is if your RV is three model years old or newer Forest River will they have a bunch of factory reps and they're here to repair anything that you might have.
Speaker 5
Right. So for example, we got our freshwater fill filled and that's the initial attraction that brings a lot of new people to the Frog rally. But there are some people, like the people who set up this tiki lounge who have been here every year.
Speaker 5
They've had it 10 years. 10 years. Because if you make these great friends and these wonderful people and it's like, I gotta see them again next year. Something I learned today that I think is actually pretty important from Dexter Axel again, was that when you get a new trailer or you replace the wheels on an existing towable rv. Right. So let's say you go and, and you upgrade from your may pop tires to a good set of tires like your endurance, for example.
Speaker 5
The idea is you're supposed to, after 10 miles, check the torque, recheck torque on a lugs. Yep. And then 25 miles and then a hundred miles. And the Dexter guy said he did that. They were torque properly when he left from the, you know, the tire shop. Right. And then in 10 miles, half of the uh, lug nuts on his trailer were loose.
Speaker 5
Yeah. So it <crosstalk> 25 pounds. They were loose again, you gotta set, everything's gotta seed in properly is the trick. Yeah. So the the thing is, you know, you look at, let, let's say you have a pickup truck and it weighs two tons. So each wheel is carrying a thousand pounds. But let's say you have a travel trailer, each wheel may carry 1,250 pounds. 5,000 pound trailer. Right. Right. So it's actually carrying more weight. And you're looking at those turning as two axle trailers or three the tires go like this as they're turning.
Speaker 5
So there's a tremendous amount of torque and stress in there. Oh wait, here comes my adult supervisor. I was just gonna do the live long and prosper thing. I'm drinking <laugh>. There she is. I know, I know you're drinking honey. <laugh> <laugh>. Wait, what? She says what, what? So this, this is, this is, what do they call it? No, no alcohol. Yeah. It's just non-alcoholic beer.
Speaker 5
<laugh>. No duals. Yeah. That's it. No dual. Somebody's gotta be the adult here. When I saw Mickey and Michael stop my neighbors. So, so, uh, thank you so much Roger Ford and your group. Great. Seeing you here and everybody. So thank you. Have a good night. Happy camping and no shock zone. Oh, later bath. Build the beer. Don't move your mic. Little over to the side so we can see your sweet face.
Speaker 5
Oh, you don't want me to look like Wilson from home improvement? No. It'll work just as fine. Over to the side. Yeah, just a little. There we go. How's that? That's more better. More better, more better blues. Yeah. Today was another fun day. I spent an inordinate amount of time right in this trailer behind me. 'cause I realized last night when we were here at the six o'clock wrap, there was beer being enjoyed.
Speaker 5
There was a lot of beer, a lot, a lot of high test beer. Not regular beer. Yeah. One of those high test beer. Yeah. It was industrial strength. And as a result, uh, some of the work that I had promised to people, <laugh> did not get delivered. I I know. I'm kinda like the little devil here. Well, I'm wearing red. Go ahead. Drink. Drink the beer. Drink drink. Drinking. I'm not difficult to convince in the beer department a sad, sad reality. Yeah. We're we're up to LaCroix. Yeah. We only have fizzy water. Fizzy water tonight we're on sabbatical.
Speaker 5
Yeah. You gotta know your limits. You gotta know when to hold them. That's right. It is really a lovely day out here. It's a little hot. Oh yeah. All of sudden yesterday it was just pouring rain. I mean pouring rain. It's, today is one of those days that the Chamber of Commerce is very proud of the weather forecasting.
Speaker 5
Oh, the train sound effect is about to roll by. Ladies and gentlemen, here comes the 6 0 3 orange blossom special. Woo woo. A really, really interesting thing. Oh. And he also showed me a really cool way to measure to see if your electric brakes are working. Oh, that looks good. Which is fabulous. And this involves a clamp meter down underneath the trailer. Uh, and I'm gonna do a whole video on this, but basically what it works out to is you set your gain to max 10, you push, uh, and you get someone in the truck to squeeze the little lever over.
Speaker 5
This is, you know, for the built-in ones. And then what you're doing is you're underneath the trailer with a clamp DC meter and you're looking at the current going into each wheel for the, for the brakes. And they should all be about three amps.
Speaker 5
And if they're not three amps, something is wrong with Yeah. There's no amps or there's no amps. Or if it's a lot more than that, it's because something is shorted out. And I went, you know, that's just brilliant thinking easy. It's just so easy. Which is why I recommend an AC c d C clamp meter. Not an ac d c rock band. Well that's good too. You could be listening to ac d c. You listen to ac d dc Oh, the other thing that we saw really cool today, they had a bunch of military helicopters. These guys who were he down ropes into the lake back here apparently and getting picked up.
Speaker 5
So apparently there was some kind of a search and rescue training thing. There was a military, a green helicopter. Right. Hovering. There's a lake just on the other side of the train tracks there.
Speaker 5
And they were hovering over the lake and they were dangling people down. I believe they were doing water rescue. Yeah. Water rescue training. Yeah. We saw some dude dangling from the helicopter because I, I'm looking, what the heck? And he was dangling. They were taking off and they were pulling on up in Yeah. While this was going on. I went, what? And the world is going on. It was entertaining. And it was pretty much all day. Yeah, it was all day. I think they probably stopped by now, but Yeah, it was, it was all day. Well they had to go home so they could catch the, they could watch the podcast.
Speaker 5
Exactly right. I I talked to the colonel something. Somebody's bringing us something. Oh, it's Steve Comstock macaroon spreadsheet. Oh, look at that. Oh look at macaroon. Alright. Okay. I have a macaroon every night.
Speaker 5
The caterer here has this bounty of desserts. And every night, if you're diabetic, this is a bad place to be. Oh yeah. Well, Indiana in general, so tonight Steve Comstock, who does amazing wildlife photography by the way, brought some of the dessert. So I'm gonna pick one of these here. I haven't gadget, what's your gadget? A lot of people who have towables do not really have a provision to change the tires on them. And that is a big safety item.
Speaker 5
And so this is from a company called Air Gear and we have their water hose and it is the best dug on water hose I have ever used in an rv. But this is the air gear tire changing kit. Let's see what's in here, shall we? We have the, it's a breaker bar. Yeah, it's a breaker bar. We have a tire pressure gauge.
Speaker 5
We have the various sock for the various common sizes of lug nuts. Lug nuts. See what happens when I don't drink any You're not drinking beer man. Your brain doesn't know. It's not firing on all cylinders. Oh it's awful. So there's all these things. But wait, there's more. There is the how to use the chi tire changing kit instruction manual. And remember all of this is in this fancy little bag. Am I seeing a vest in there too? Oh you're, yeah.
Speaker 5
Getting ahead of it. Stay here. I'll hold onto this. Oh wow. There's also, I'm on the side of the road. I want you to see me vest. Yeah. Oh look at this. Yeah. This got a, A torque wrench. Quality torque wrench. Torque wrench is really, really important for this. Really super important, yeah. 150 foot pounds. All the store at 10 pounds. Yes.
Speaker 5
And you should know how much your trailer, how your lug nuts need. And some of them are indicated typical on the Yeah, there's a label right here that shows how many foot pounds. Now here's a cool thing. You want one for free? I am giving away one. This is like late night TV isn't it <laugh>? It is. I'm giving away one of these to someone body, uh, what was it, prop Ron Propel. Yeah, Ron Propel the pocket fishermen.
Speaker 5
Anyway, I'm giving away one of these to somebody who signs up for the Stressless camping email newsletter anytime during August or September. I have one of these to give away.
Peggy Barthel
So you notice that our gadget report was embedded right in there. It was something that Tony talked about while they were doing the live feed. But we saw a lot of RVs last week. Tony, do you have another one to highlight for us?
Tony Barthel
I do. Our first camper, Peggy and I was a uh, old and I mean old Jayco pop-up, but it served us well. I mean nothing inside Workeded. I had to fix the pop-up mechanism 'cause that didn't work. We bought it and a two by four held up two of the four struts. But that was all good. And boy, you know, camping isn't as much about the gear as it is about the adventure, right. I mean it's where you go and what you see and what you experience. That's what makes this whole lifestyle so wonderful.
Tony Barthel
Anyway, we, we did all kinds of great adventures in that. Well the RV of the week is not our ancient Jaco <laugh>
Peggy Barthel
Amazing. Yeah, right. Imagine that.
Tony Barthel
But Rockwood is bringing back their line of pop-up trailers and they're called the Freedom Series and they have a variety of new pop-up tent trailers that they've brought back or are bringing back. We, we saw some that are forthcoming models. But the one that I'm sharing with you this week is the 1940 F, which has two beds, one at each end. Uh, it's got a full kitchen, it's got an outside griddle.
Tony Barthel
It's got a water heater outside shower. It's got sleeping for six I think maybe even seven. And it's the modern evolution of that very first tent trailer that we had. And just the difference in how these things are done now is pretty substantial. Particularly the the canvas, which is a far better canvas material and has a five year guarantee. Something else this has a high performance vent fan in. It didn't even, I don't know, it may have had event fan <laugh> might have.
Tony Barthel
If it did, it didn't work 'cause nothing in there did in the Rockwood you get a nice high performance vent fan and the mattresses are heated on both ends. One of them is a true queen, one of them is a shorty queen, but they are heated mattresses. There's a full water system, propane system. Now this does not have a bathroom but there is an outside shower. So a while back Peggy reviewed the Sylvan Sport Privy Bivy tent, which is specifically for like enclosing a shower or a potty, right.
Tony Barthel
You could use that and then bring the, we have a CAMCO portable toilet. So that's how I would pull that off. And just a simple thing. But the nice thing about these popups is they, you know, you can back 'em into a garage. You can to 'em with smaller vehicles 'cause they're light but also they sit completely behind the envelope of wind created by your vehicle.
Tony Barthel
So they don't really hurt your fuel mileage as much as a traditional travel trailer either. You know, if you're looking for uh, an affordable way to go camping. These new Rockwood Freedom series trailers are a really good choice 'cause they're still a Rockwood still have Rockwood build quality. They offer a lot of features that you might not expect to find in these. And even the door, like our <laugh>, our old Jayco, the door was so floppy and this, it was just solid.
Tony Barthel
Yeah. So a lot of just, they've really thought through a lot of things as you would expect in 25 years of progress or whatever. So, and
Peggy Barthel
You would hope they've made some good progress.
Tony Barthel
Yeah. And also again, I think Rockwood is a very high quality brand and now there are some very affordable options to get into Rockwood or Flagstaff. Same trailer difference sticker. Right.
Peggy Barthel
Also you might've noticed in there Tony talked about learning about taking care of your lug nuts. And so in lieu of a maintenance reminder, I'm just gonna kind of refer you back to that they, you know, Mike and Tony talked about a lot of things that they <laugh> learned, which was great. Yeah. And so it was a good sort of a maintenance reminder episode as well. So I guess then that leads us right into the question of the week.
Tony Barthel
Absolutely. And Peggy asked what roadside assistance do you use?
Peggy Barthel
So we got a good variety. Most of them I knew about or had heard of. I feel like maybe there was some place, something that I had heard. Well anyway, I'm gonna look at the comments right now and <laugh>, we'll <laugh>, we'll see what I, I'm talking about Sandy uses State Farm and had good luck. Michael said based on Stressless camping podcast, he heard last year he joined F M C A to have that roadside assistance. Thank you Michael for doing that. Kathy has Escapees now we're Escapees and yeah we are.
Peggy Barthel
I think I mentioned when we asked the question that we had used our F M C A roadside assistance at Frog and then realized we also had Frog roadside assistance,
Tony Barthel
<laugh> and apparently Escapees
Peggy Barthel
And apparently we also have Escapees. So Wow.
Tony Barthel
We could, we
Peggy Barthel
Could, we should be very well covered <laugh>.
Tony Barthel
Yeah. We could tow our stuff all over the place.
Peggy Barthel
Of course, you know, there's usually a limited number of services in any given place and every single one, every single one of those entities is gonna call those service places, right?
Tony Barthel
Yeah. Theyre not, they are
Peggy Barthel
Contracts. They're not, it's not an F M C A employee gearing up in Michigan to come save you in Arizona 'cause that would not be efficient at all. No. Bill said if he has an issue with his truck, he uses his insurance company and for the trailer he calls F M C, he would call F M C A. And he too didn't realize while we were at the Frog rally that there was <laugh> frog. So it's a good thing we learned this. This is something important that we learned there.
Tony Barthel
Well, something I'm gonna say while Peggy looks at the answers, some of the roadside assistance programs out, they're all contracts, right? So these big companies arrange with local providers to offer roadside assistance. Some of the companies, if you have a towable, let's say a fifth wheel or a travel trailer, they may not bring that with you. So let's say your tow vehicle breaks down, they may just leave that towable on the side of the road. That something that did happen to a friend of ours and they
Peggy Barthel
Were there for three days. Yeah.
Tony Barthel
Oh that too. I forgot about it. Yeah, no, uh, remember the vintage trailer? Somebody just flat stole
Peggy Barthel
Oh's, right?
Tony Barthel
Yeah. Off the side of the road. Well,
Peggy Barthel
Funny you should pop in there because the next comment is from Pam and she said her sister's rig broke down and AAA towed the truck and good Sam towed the trailer.
Tony Barthel
Interesting.
Peggy Barthel
You might hear a little bit of rain coming on. I think we're gonna have a little bit of rainy moment. I actually love this sound. I kind of hope it filters through 'cause I don't know, there's just something about that pinging pong balls dropping on the roof of the trailer that
Tony Barthel
I love <laugh>. That makes one of us. By the way,
Peggy Barthel
Dale has AAA RV and Kate has AAA premiere. Michael of course just calls Ghostbusters. Of course Michael could probably fix anything himself. So Oh yeah, <laugh> Cheryl uses Coach Net and Joe uses Coach Net. Jane uses State Farm, John uses F M C A and Progressive Tom uses Good Sam. Well actually a lot of these, when I say uses what, what I mean to say is they all have these things. We are fortunate a lot of us not to ever have to use them <laugh>.
Peggy Barthel
And of course that's the goal, right? You don't ever want to have to call, but it's good to know that you're covered hopefully when you do have a problem. Yeah,
Tony Barthel
I'm gonna say many hundreds of years ago I worked at AAA and I will tell you that we've heard, and again this could be completely unsubstantiated, well the what we've heard, but I've been told that AAA is working to get out of the roadside assistance business. And so I would, if that is your provider, I would
Peggy Barthel
Check into it, start
Tony Barthel
Looking at others. Yeah, that, that's all I'm seeing. Yeah.
Peggy Barthel
Larry has his roadside coverage through his main car insurance and again said luckily I've never had to use it. So great answers. Like I said, it was pretty much the names that I expected. I guess I didn't really find one, I didn't recognize I was wrong about that. Imagine <laugh> wrong. So thank you all for answering. And this week
Tony Barthel
We've been talking to our buddy Matt Foxcroft from Matt's RV reviews and we are going to test his holding tank treatment. But our question is, what is your favorite method of dealing with RV holding tanks? So
Peggy Barthel
We've tried a lot of different brands, Tony said method and that yes, I know there are methods, but also if you have a favorite brand that you've stuck with all the time or if you have like really if you've tried something and you just don't feel like it cut the mustard.
Tony Barthel
Oh geez. Yeah,
Peggy Barthel
That's a bad term. Yeah. <laugh>, if you don't feel like it really did the job that it was supposed to do, let us know about that as well because we kind of just go with the newest thing that we learned about so far. We haven't had any horrible experiences, so we just are curious if there's one that's the far superior version. Yeah.
Tony Barthel
Which RV holding tank treatment leaves you flushed with Joy, excitement, <laugh>. Oh, oh dear.
Peggy Barthel
Okay, well you,
Tony Barthel
Anyway with that a lot of you were just like through your phone out the window. Anyway, that's uh, our question of the week, which you can answer at our Fun and Friendly Stresses camping podcast Facebook group that is linked on our website. If you are looking and we keep it fun and friendly, we, we remove the unkind posts and things like that. 'cause it's just not camping. You're just supposed to, you know, it's a virtual campground,
Peggy Barthel
Right? Absolutely.
Tony Barthel
Again, we do a once a week email newsletter, and if you sign up anytime in August or September, you are eligible to win the Air Gear RV Tire Changing kit. Nice. And boy, that's, that's well worth having. Yes. I wrote an article about it. So that's there@stresslesscamping.com. All you have to do to sign up is either under the hamburger menu or at the very bottom of any of the pages. There's a signup form on the hamburger menu. It says Contact us and there is a signup. And of course, please know we fully respect your privacy and would never share your information with anybody.
Peggy Barthel
Absolutely not. What we do is share with you anything that we found out there in the world about stories and videos or podcasts and just things to help you get the most out of your RV experience. Yep.
Tony Barthel
Also on our website are our discounts and deals for the best things you'll need on your Stressless Camping Adventure. And if you've got a great deal for us, let us know. We've been getting a lot of emails lately.
Peggy Barthel
We have been. So hopefully we'll have an even bigger deals and discounts page. And of course we are at all the social places. So when you're done looking at all the web pages that you wanna see, you can jump off to me, Facebook and Twitter and Instagram and
Tony Barthel
TikTok. Well that's x Now it's no longer Twitter. Oh
Peggy Barthel
That's that's right. Sorry.
Tony Barthel
But we are also on threads, so Wow. On
Peggy Barthel
Threads.
Tony Barthel
We're, we're like All right. We're high tech
Peggy Barthel
Anywhere you wanna be. Yeah. And of course if you don't wanna miss a future episode of the Stressless Camping podcast, it's free. It's free to subscribe on any podcast catcher. And we are saving you a seat around our virtual campfire. Almost our real campfire. 'cause it's kind of chilly out there. I don't think I would mind. It's <laugh> coming
Tony Barthel
From the dry Southwest where fewer people have campfires here in Michigan where it's kind of rainy and damp. Everybody has campfires. Yeah. We are always very appreciative of anyone who reviews the Stresses Camping podcast on your favorite podcast app, particularly Apple Podcasts. It tells them people are listening and, and like the podcast and that makes them more likely to share it and speak. Speaking of sharing,
Peggy Barthel
Maybe you've already written a review and you can't do that again, if you find something on the website that you like or even something that we post on Facebook that you like, would you please share it? That would be so helpful. It's really easy and if you don't really know how to do it, you haven't done it before, there's actually a page that we will make a link to and it tells you how to, you know, copy and paste into Facebook basically <laugh> so that things that you see on our website you can share with your Facebook friends.
Tony Barthel
Yep. So, well that's it. We are gonna go back to Michigan and step out into the rain. And with that, we appreciate your being here once again this week and most of all,
Peggy Barthel
Happy camp, happy camping.
Mark Ferrell
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 join in us next week. Until then, happy camping
Tony Barthel
Back slash podcast back slash 0 2 1 7 forward
Peggy Barthel
Slash
Tony Barthel
Oh. You're right.
