Tony & Peggy Barthel - StressLess Campers

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We’re Tony & Peggy Barthel and we’re working to help you be a StressLess Camper.

Camping’s in Tents - two RVers go back to tent camping

Camping’s in Tents - two RVers go back to tent camping

StressLess Camping Podcast
Podcast, Podcast Episode 266

What happens when two RVers go tent camping? Is is a huge success or an unmitigated disaster? Join us this week on the StressLess Camping RV podcast where we go back to our root and have an in tents camping experience. We’ll share the hits and misses and whether we’re going to do it again. Hint: we are!

Plus we detail all the camping gadgets that helped make this adventure - there were a lot of them. Ultimately we even chased down the Union Pacific Big Boy locomotive - the largest operating steam engine in the world.

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Automated transcript of StressLess Camping RV podcast episode 266

Peggy Barthel

This week on the Stressless Camping RV Podcast.

Tony Barthel

RV?

Peggy Barthel

Oh, yeah. This week on the Stressless Camping camping podcast. The tent camping.

Tony Barthel

We are tent camping. It's truly in tent.

Peggy Barthel

It is, and we're winging this a lot. Not not just a little bit, but a lot because we thought, wouldn't it be awesome in this couple of hours that we have in our tent to actually record in our tent. So that's what we're doing this week.

Tony Barthel

So we're basically this week, we're talking about RVers tent camping.

Peggy Barthel

Yeah.

Tony Barthel

What were the successes? What were the failures? Join us, won't you, at our home on the web where you'll also find deals, discounts, RV show calendar, and so much more. I'm Peggy. I'm Tony.

Peggy Barthel

And we're 2, uh, campers who camp part time in a tent or RV.

Tony Barthel

Yeah. Well, we're just camping, doggone it.

Peggy Barthel

Sharing with you the adventures that we go on.

Tony Barthel

Yeah. That's true. And hopefully, helping you along the way and all of that. But anyway, we're coming to you from a tent.

Peggy Barthel

That's right.

Tony Barthel

We tent camped this week because if you don't know, our RV got damaged at a campground. It's all fixed up. It's all back in business now. But in the meantime, it's in Indiana, and we're in Wyoming. And the reason that we are in Wyoming is we are here to see the world's largest operating steam locomotive, the Big Boy.

Peggy Barthel

Yeah.

Tony Barthel

And we came here, and we're like, well, we're gonna either rent a hotel room, or we're going to all this gear. We've been wanting to do more over landing.

Peggy Barthel

Right.

Tony Barthel

And all this gear that we've been accumulating and the truck and all of the stuff that we've been working on, we put to the test this weekend. So we wanted to share with you what we liked about it and what we would change about it.

Peggy Barthel

And how RVers can go tent camping. Of course, as Tony said, this is more than 5 years of accumulating things that make this possible. And and I I wanna start out by saying the tent. We're saying tent camping. Obviously, it's a screen.

Peggy Barthel

Yeah. So that's one of the things we'll definitely talk about. Yes. We're in a screen tent.

Tony Barthel

Well, I don't think this is specifically a sleeping in tent because they call it

Peggy Barthel

It's a picnic gazebo. Yeah.

Tony Barthel

That's what and it's designed to go around the picnic table. It's that large. It's a 6 size. It's like if you've heard of a clam

Peggy Barthel

Yeah.

Tony Barthel

It's bat it's that. It's a like a clam sort of tent.

Peggy Barthel

So it's about a 10 foot. Might as well just talk about it. 6 sided screen. And what we did when we bought this was we bought the pop on walls. We don't have it on this window because we wanted to see the lake, but we have it on the fore to protect us from the breeze.

Tony Barthel

We have this really, really beautiful campsite here, and it's right on lake I have no idea.

Peggy Barthel

So it's Crystal Reservoir, and this is part of the Curt Gowdy State Park between Cheyenne and Laramie, Wyoming. K. So it's a beautiful park. There are, like, 10 different campgrounds within the park, and this is the Crystal Lake Campground. I looked at campground views, and I looked at like every site to make sure that we'd have the privacy we felt like we needed with when we're tent camping.

Tony Barthel

Right. And so anyway, we set up this thing. So we'll start with, uh, always let's start at the bottom.

Peggy Barthel

Start at the bottom.

Tony Barthel

We have our air gear sand free mat.

Peggy Barthel

Right.

Tony Barthel

And when Peggy said, oh, well, this tent does not have a floor, which I actually like. We have this Air Gear sand free mat. And what it is is it's I don't know, a mesh thing. We usually put it outside our trailer under the awning because it does, like, kinda keep the dirt out. And I thought, well, why do we want that?

Tony Barthel

Boy, am I glad? There's a few things you'll hear me say. Boy, am I glad Peggy thought to bring those. Because in the middle of the night, getting up, if you have to go do

Peggy Barthel

something There's no floor.

Tony Barthel

Right. There's rocks and stuff, and it made it bare footed okay. And it's just it's much nicer. So we took this sand free mat, and, oh, I should have brought some

Peggy Barthel

Some sand?

Tony Barthel

No. No. It's sand free. So everything you know, typically, what you do is you take tent stakes.

Peggy Barthel

Right.

Tony Barthel

And it's blowing pretty good. It has been blowing pretty good since we got here.

Peggy Barthel

And, of course, this gazebo came with tent stakes.

Tony Barthel

Right. Tent stakes are horrible to me.

Peggy Barthel

They're hard to get in. They're harder to get out.

Tony Barthel

Right. Getting out might even be more difficult. Difficult.

Peggy Barthel

And so what we discovered a few years ago is that using our Ryobi drill that we always have with us, screwing lag bolts into the ground and screwing lag bolts out of the ground is way, way easy. Yeah.

Tony Barthel

It's just in there. Lag bolts are like a buck each at the hardware store for fairly large lag bolts. They're just giant bolts.

Peggy Barthel

Like big giant screws. Yeah. With a hex head.

Tony Barthel

Yeah. And you just screw them right into the ground. And this tent, even when the wind was pretty good last night

Peggy Barthel

It didn't move.

Tony Barthel

Nothing. Mhmm. So and it's so easy to get them in and out. So

Peggy Barthel

So we started, anyway, with the sand mat, and we lag bolted that down to the ground. Then we popped up the gazebo, and we lag bolted that to the ground. Yep. Now I will say that as a tent camper, I have always been a really lazy tent camper, and I always figured that by the time I got my bed, my clothes, my nightstand, my food, my toilet if I was carrying 1. By the time I got everything in my tent, that tent wasn't moving.

Peggy Barthel

And so I have always been very lazy about staking down. But, plus, I also didn't know about lag bolts. And I didn't used to stake down my tent, but, of course, there's no floor to hold everything down. So this would have just not it would have

Tony Barthel

been It would have been in the lake, and it would have been like,

Peggy Barthel

what the heck? Lag bolts are a lifesaver.

Tony Barthel

Yeah. And and so easy. So since you mentioned the Ryobi drill, Ryobi has a lot of stuff that we brought with us is Ryobi stuff. We have a compressor that we always bring and typically the reason we brought the compressor when we were in the RV is for tires. We always check the tires and if any tire needs a little zippity doo da, we can give it some air.

Tony Barthel

But it also has the ability to blow up toys like floaties and camper shells. Basketballs. Basketballs and air mattresses.

Peggy Barthel

And air mattresses.

Tony Barthel

So we had these cots that we bought 15 years ago. Yeah. Long

Peggy Barthel

time. Probably in 2014 or 15 because we I don't know if we've talked that much about this, but we wanted to be RVers, and we had a we happen to already own a 10 foot box trailer. So we used that as our hard tent, basically. Yeah. And we bought cots and air mattresses back then.

Peggy Barthel

Now I have to say also that a lot of people are like, tent camping, are you crazy? And they're probably picturing, like, those 2 man tents that you have to crawl in and out of, lay on the ground. No. We are not doing that. No.

Peggy Barthel

We could almost

Tony Barthel

have a barn dance in

Peggy Barthel

this tent. Yeah. We could have slept 6 in here with cots. Anyways, so then we have our cots and they fold up into a nice sized packet to carry around,

Tony Barthel

and they're not that bad. They're really strong. I mean, we, you know, we set them up, and there's like a foot lever to lock it in place. Those things weren't budging, but they're light, so they're pretty good. Then we put an air mattress on top, and we just bought these air mattress.

Peggy Barthel

Right. Now I did say we bought air mattresses 15 years ago, and we did. But I I remember one had failed, and the other one, I think when we moved, we downsized a little bit. And so we have new Intex air mattresses, twin size. Now they are wider than the than the cot.

Peggy Barthel

So you feel a little bit like you don't wanna roll over on the mattress and run out of cot.

Tony Barthel

That would be funny, but, anyway, it didn't happen. And they held their air all night long. Yeah. And, I mean, let's face it. I am no shrinking violet here.

Peggy Barthel

And he is a wild sleeper.

Tony Barthel

Oh, yeah. I am, like, tossing and turning and all of that.

Peggy Barthel

We don't share sheets on our own bed because he always is stealing the sheets and the blankets. So then in terms of sheets and blankets, I took 2 queen-size sheets and folded each one in half, and we unzippered our super bag, our RB super bag. It's a king-size, so if you unzip it, it's 2 twin size sleeping bags, basically. So we each got our own sleeping bag, and that worked really well on our each of our cots. We use a lot of those black and yellow totes that you can get from

Tony Barthel

your places. Gosh, we do. We really do.

Peggy Barthel

We do. We do. We do. And we keep the compressor in one. We keep the drill and some lanterns in 1.

Peggy Barthel

And so we stacked those between the beds and had a nightstand.

Tony Barthel

Yep. In the tent, we had the first of, believe it or not, 3 Powers. Uh, power stations that we brought. And this was the Bouge RV Juice. Juiceco.

Tony Barthel

And we used that to charge our phones and our watches overnight.

Peggy Barthel

So that was part of our nightstands.

Tony Barthel

Yeah, that was part of the nightstand, and a Ryobi lantern. So this Ryobi thing is a recurring

Peggy Barthel

Yeah. You're gonna hear that word a lot. The other thing that I brought that is not Ryobi, but it is recharge we use rechargeable batteries in a night light that is motion censored. I put it close to the bed so when we do get up to use the bathroom or something in the night, the night light comes on so we can find our way in and out of the tent.

Tony Barthel

Peggy always has these battery powered motion sensing night lights in our house. They're in our camper. I'm so glad she has those because, like, get up in the tent, you're not familiar with the surroundings. And the zipper, it can open the whole door, but we don't because we don't want to fiddle with it in the middle of the night. Yeah.

Peggy Barthel

It zips from the bottom. That is one thing that's different from a tent. You know, usually on a tent, you can either zip from the bottom or the top. This one, because it doesn't have a floor, it only you have to put it together like a jacket at the very bottom, and it's hard to get down there. So we try to leave it connected at the bottom all the time and step over that connected part.

Tony Barthel

So anyway, the night light was such a nice thing. The booj go portable power. It's a little portable set power station, but for nightstand 1. It even has a 110 outlet. So had we brought a Starlink or a computer, we could plug that in.

Peggy Barthel

Be able to plug them in.

Tony Barthel

We have a bunch of Ryobi lights. I like this Ryobi stuff because it all uses the same battery. So the drill, the compressor, the 2 night lights, I don't remember what else we brought. I'll work on off the same battery.

Peggy Barthel

The blower. We have the blower. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Peggy Barthel

In case we needed a clean dust.

Tony Barthel

Yeah. We brought, uh, like, a little leaf blower, but tiny.

Peggy Barthel

Yeah. We also by the way, we didn't write this down, but we have some rechargeable Lucy lights.

Tony Barthel

Yeah.

Peggy Barthel

Solar rechargeable. I think they're also rechargeable, but I made sure that we left them out in the sun before we left, and one hung in what we're going to now apparently even though it's a little bit out of order.

Tony Barthel

Well, it's the next tent.

Peggy Barthel

Yeah. We had 2 tents. We were in tents.

Tony Barthel

It was intense all night.

Peggy Barthel

We have a

Tony Barthel

I love that joke.

Peggy Barthel

We have a SilvanSport Privy Bivy. It's basically a shower tent, really.

Tony Barthel

Right. That's I think it's intention, but we used it for our Camco portable toilet.

Peggy Barthel

It's about 6 feet wide, and it's probably 7 or 8 feet tall. It's nice and tall. Because if you use it as a shower, you need room for that shower head to hang. And there's

Tony Barthel

a provision to hang 1.

Peggy Barthel

Yeah. We put that right next to the door so that we could get in and out easily. So I put one of those Lucy lights. I just hung that inside the privy bivy. Although, there was about a half moon last night, and when I got up

Tony Barthel

there was a half moon on the door too.

Peggy Barthel

Well, there's a crescent moon actually printed on the door, which is funny. But when I got up, the night light came on so I could get across the tent, but there was enough light outside that I didn't really need it.

Tony Barthel

Yeah. I

Peggy Barthel

didn't really need the Lucy light, but just in case it was

Tony Barthel

there. Yeah. You could you could put a shower. Now the funny thing, this Lippert portable picnic gazebo took us 5 minutes, 10 minutes to say. It's so easy to set up.

Tony Barthel

Yeah. It's like, and it's up. Right? I mean, it takes no time. But well, it's been a long time since we've set up that

Peggy Barthel

I think we've set that thing up twice. Yeah. And it's been 2 years since we used it.

Tony Barthel

The Silencer us like, the whole setup of the camp was an hour.

Peggy Barthel

That was probably half of it. Half of

Tony Barthel

it was that privy bit.

Peggy Barthel

But now we remember. And if we use it again soon, we won't and it wasn't we didn't do it wrong necessarily. We just needed to make some adjustments

Tony Barthel

as we wanted to. Do here? What do we do there? Yeah. But yeah.

Tony Barthel

I mean, it now that we know, it'll it'll be a lot faster. And we also are thinking of getting if we do more of this, one of those portable showers

Peggy Barthel

Yeah.

Tony Barthel

That you can do and you can use it in that tent. And that tent has the little privy bivy has plenty of space for taking a shower and the provision it's got. There's even a window on the front and back. Right. So if you wanna put on a show or you're singing is that good, you could, uh, Yeah.

Peggy Barthel

Maybe no.

Tony Barthel

Maybe not.

Peggy Barthel

Okay. Let's talk about the next thing you have on the list is the Dometic hydration water jug.

Tony Barthel

So let's talk about making coffee in the morning.

Peggy Barthel

Making coffee in the morning.

Tony Barthel

So the hydration jug is like a half a jerry can, but it's got an electric spigot on the top of it.

Peggy Barthel

Battery operated, So you don't have to plug it in. Not really.

Tony Barthel

The spigot is rechargeable itself. So when we're driving around, we have a cooler in the back seat of the truck that's either powered by the power port cigarette lighter on the dash or a portable power station, which is what's happening right now. So there's a 12 volt cooler, and then that water jug is in the back seat, and the spigot sits on top of the cooler magnetically. There's a metal sticker that comes with it. But we also have it now outside, so this morning when we made coffee

Peggy Barthel

You just turn on the pump, it pumps water into your cup or your teapot or whatever. We happen to use a teapot, but we measure using the cup that we brew into. That way we know we're not gonna run out of water before the coffee's done, but also we're not boiling water that we don't need to boil.

Tony Barthel

So then, speaking of boiling water, one of the things I didn't used to like about camping when I was a young lad was the stupid Coleman stove. Because it like it's it's windy here because we're right on a lake. When it was breezy, it would blow the fire out or it would be like moving the fire or, uh Yeah. And so we brought a portable induction cooktop, and we powered that. We are powering it with the Jackery 1500.

Peggy Barthel

Right. That's the second of our 2 power systems. Yeah.

Tony Barthel

So the Jackery is powering this thing. It's doing just fine. It's the next day as we're recording this, and we're down to 84% on the Jackery

Peggy Barthel

Something like that.

Tony Barthel

From cooking last night and making coffee this morning.

Peggy Barthel

Making coffee twice, and I warmed up my breakfast. Yeah. Because Tony, for some reason, likes his egg bites cold. But Yeah.

Tony Barthel

Well, we'll get to the food.

Peggy Barthel

We'll get to food in a moment. But that water, that thing is really handy. As Tony said, it sits in the back seat. So I drink water constantly. And so I always have stop?

Peggy Barthel

Yeah. So I have to stop constantly, but I always have a source of water, and I just turn around and grab the pump and pump water into my cup, and I have water to drink all the time. Yeah.

Tony Barthel

So that thing is pretty neat. And then it's, you know, it's your water, and it's only for drinking water. So Yeah. Yeah. We mentioned there's a 12 volt cooler, and so we have we even have milk and yogurt with us.

Peggy Barthel

Yeah. So let's talk about food. So when we go on a long trip with the RV, basically, I clean out the house fridge. I empty everything out, put it in the RV camper in the RV fridge, and we turn off the house fridge. Because it does this weird thing where if the power goes off the freezer doesn't come back on properly.

Tony Barthel

We like our RV fridge. We do not like our home fridge, but the home fridge came with the house. So we're just kinda hoping that it someday Yeah.

Peggy Barthel

Someday it'll die. I want to get a new one. Yeah. But anyway, we did not bring every single thing out of the house fridge this time because we were only gonna be gone for a few days. We actually made a menu.

Peggy Barthel

I mean, we're only camping for 1 night. Right? It's easy to make a menu.

Tony Barthel

Right.

Peggy Barthel

You gotta have chili dog wraps.

Tony Barthel

Yeah. So chili dog wraps are it's basically chili hot dog in a tortilla with mustard, pickle, and cheese. Yeah. And the nice thing is it's a no plate meal technically because you you hold in a tortilla.

Peggy Barthel

Yeah.

Tony Barthel

Although we still we got paper plates, which is against Peggy's religion, but

Peggy Barthel

Well, so we actually had some paper plates from a Halloween party. So we didn't have to get paper plates. We already had paper plates.

Tony Barthel

With Halloween napkins?

Peggy Barthel

With Halloween napkins. And so I normally am like, no. We'll just wash those dishes. But in this situation, because we have we don't have any hookups here in this campsite. So we

Tony Barthel

had to bring water here.

Peggy Barthel

We had to bring whatever water we wanted, including the water to use the camco toilet. I didn't want to have to wash dishes. So as long as I'm not eating like a meal of some kind, I can eat off a paper plate. So just having it as a drop gap or for any chili that fell out of the By

Tony Barthel

the way, that didn't work so well for me. I dropped chili all over my pants.

Peggy Barthel

So, anyway So we have And

Tony Barthel

that reminds me, speaking of water. So we have the we have the Dometic. But for extra water a while back we got those

Peggy Barthel

The Wolverine Tuff bags.

Tony Barthel

And so we have couple of those filled with water.

Peggy Barthel

So we had water with those. So that's our water. We pre planned our menu, so we only brought the food that we thought we would actually eat instead of just bringing everything, and that has worked out well. Our bodega cooler has 2 separate controls. So you can make one of the things a freezer.

Peggy Barthel

One side Yeah.

Tony Barthel

There's a freezer and one

Peggy Barthel

side a refrigerator. But then in this case, we didn't need any frozen stuff. So each compartment is a refrigerator. So we had plenty of room. We even put some of Tony's fizzy waters in there, which he will drink uncold, but sometimes on a hot day.

Tony Barthel

Well, and Cold drink

Peggy Barthel

is dangerous.

Tony Barthel

Like the first one I drank this morning. I just grabbed out of the back seat of the truck. Yeah. And it was it it was literally warm. It was not pleasant.

Tony Barthel

So I did put some in there. But, yeah. So what we ate last night was the chili dog wraps. And usually what we'll do is we'll make our own chili and bring that. Usually.

Tony Barthel

Because I've never lost a chili cook off, ladies and gentlemen.

Peggy Barthel

That's right.

Tony Barthel

Uh, but we just brought canned chili.

Peggy Barthel

I just happen to have a can of hot dog chili in the pantry. Tortillas and

Tony Barthel

Bing, bang, boom.

Peggy Barthel

Brought the mustard and pickles and cheese out of the refrigerator. So mealtime was super easy. Now, also, we've talked a lot about this. We premake egg bites.

Tony Barthel

Yes. And then cleaning up the chili bowl last night.

Peggy Barthel

Oh, yeah.

Tony Barthel

Whoever invented Dawn Powerwash, thank you.

Peggy Barthel

Yeah.

Tony Barthel

It is if you have not tried this Dawn Powerwash and you're an RV or a tent camper or just living in a house and listening to these podcasts, this stuff is fantastic. It is a spray dish thing. I've used it not just on dishes, obviously, but I've used it on shirts that I've spilled chili. And it's an incredible product.

Peggy Barthel

That's a grease. Yeah.

Tony Barthel

Yeah. And it takes very little water. You spritz this stuff on whatever you're washing, uh, wee bit of water, bing bang boom, you're done.

Peggy Barthel

But that was actually another reason for choosing chili dog wraps because I knew we could put the chili and the hot dogs in the pan. One pan, easy cleanup, and that was the case. Then this morning with the egg bites, Tony likes his egg bites cold. He'll just take one out of the refrigerator and

Tony Barthel

eat it.

Peggy Barthel

I like mine warmed up. So I took the same pan that we cleaned last night, and I warmed it back up and tossed my egg bites in there and sort of sort of baked them, sort of warmed them up, you know, with the cover on the pan.

Tony Barthel

Oh, boy. Buge.

Peggy Barthel

And then we had beef sticks that we bought from Costco.

Tony Barthel

There's these beef sticks. I'll have to share them. Man, they're good, and and I use them as road snacks and

Peggy Barthel

Yeah.

Tony Barthel

I like the ingredients because there aren't a lot of things that I'm like, what the heck does that word mean?

Peggy Barthel

Yeah. So would we eat like this all the time? Not necessarily. We try to eat when we're camping the same way we eat when we're at home, but again this was a one night. It was our first time doing this in a tent.

Peggy Barthel

We have some other family stuff going on so we're going to be out for a few days but not camping. So we just wanted to keep it as simple as possible. And chili dog wraps on a camping trip is

Tony Barthel

You got it. I mean, and that's a neat, you know, first night of camping anyway because it's so quick.

Peggy Barthel

Easy. Yeah.

Tony Barthel

And if you have your RV, you could if you already have the chili, you could nuke the chili if you happen to have a nucalondor. And Oh,

Peggy Barthel

and I don't think we said this. So our bodega ice chest cooler refrigerator, a 12 volt thingy, is being powered by our Ugreen power station. So this is our 3rd power station. Right? We've got the booj.

Peggy Barthel

We've got the jack And that's

Tony Barthel

so that camping is really inexpensive, except for the $3,000 worth of portable power station.

Peggy Barthel

Everybody can do it differently.

Tony Barthel

Right. We'd

Peggy Barthel

I the last time I went to camping, I didn't do any of these things.

Tony Barthel

You could get away with one portable power station. And, honestly, with all of the issues with power going out in a lot of the country, I would not wanna be without one of them anyway. So it's it's an investment to make for a lot of reasons, not just because you are nuts and have a bunch of them.

Peggy Barthel

Alright. I'm looking down the list because we didn't really write it in the same way we talked about it. But I think we've covered all of that, all of that. Uh, we did say that making coffee was vital in the the place that we got the water, but you didn't tell how you make the coffee.

Tony Barthel

Oh, of course. With the AeroPress. Right. I mean, we use that in our RV. It's such an easy cleanup.

Tony Barthel

And the I'm still drinking it. The coffee is just it just makes outstanding coffee. And we you know, if if possible, we can find a local coffee roaster. And if not, you know, the stuff from Costco is good. We ground the beans before we got here.

Peggy Barthel

Right.

Tony Barthel

I'd prefer that we grind them right away, but we we didn't because we broke our portable coffee grinder.

Peggy Barthel

Yeah. We don't need to be carrying an electric coffee grinder. Well, it was battery powered.

Tony Barthel

It had its own battery. It was great until it wasn't. That's when we discovered all the plastic parts inside.

Peggy Barthel

What we found when we broke that that burr grinder was that the blender

Tony Barthel

Oh, yeah. We have a battery powered blend. We could make margaritas, ladies and gentlemen.

Peggy Barthel

What's that brand? I forgot. Uh, Cuisinart. Cuisinart blender, like, you know, a lot of people have those ninjas or all those ones that they make their smoothies with, and we have one of those, and we found that it grinds coffee just fine. Yeah.

Peggy Barthel

But it always is funny to me to be yeah, I mean, yes, out in nature, yes, we have 3 power packages, but I always think of the movie City Slickers. When they get up in the morning, and they're gonna make coffee, and one of the guys, I don't remember if it's Billy Crystal, but he has a little battery powered coffee grinder, and he turns it on and causes a cattle stampede. It always is funny to me, like, being outside and trying to grind coffee with a coffee grinder, but anyway, we did not bring a coffee grinder, we just pre ground the coffee because, again, it's only for a couple of days. We can handle having pre ground grounds, pre ground beans, whatever.

Tony Barthel

It all worked well. No issues. So what would we that's funny. I hear a little girl on the lake, and she's like, I wanna go home. I wanna go home.

Tony Barthel

We're right on the lake, and there's a lot of people in kayaks and stand up paddle boards and such here. It's pretty neat.

Peggy Barthel

Our neighbors were fishing.

Tony Barthel

Yeah. They were fishing. They said said the fishing here is pretty good.

Peggy Barthel

Yeah.

Tony Barthel

So next week, we're gonna be talking about fishing, by

Peggy Barthel

the way. That's right. That's right. Okay. What were your highlights?

Peggy Barthel

My highlights were we got to go camping. We finally did something we've been talking about for ever since we got an RV, talking about actually trying tent camping.

Tony Barthel

Well, yeah. We had we had wanted to do this since we bought this truck. I mean, we kinda kicked it around, but when we bought the gram 25100 and that flated truck topper

Peggy Barthel

That's something we haven't really talked about.

Tony Barthel

The flated, we did not.

Peggy Barthel

Flated. We've I mean, we could have done this without the flated, but having the flated topper on there was so nice. You know, just in case we ran through a rainstorm or something. We had, like, our sleeping bags in the back and stuff.

Tony Barthel

Well, and these 500 portable

Peggy Barthel

And these portable power stations, and we didn't have to worry about things getting I mean, we didn't run into rain. But, anyway, we talked about taking the flated off and just having the truck bed, but I was happy to have that on there and just kind of protecting the stuff that we have.

Tony Barthel

When we bought that thing, part of my thinking was we would sleep in the back of the truck. Right. And, truthfully, it's a 6 4 bed. We could have done it.

Peggy Barthel

Mhmm.

Tony Barthel

But we like to sleep on the cot. I guess we are a little boujee, aren't we?

Peggy Barthel

And we are a little we're, I mean, um, don't be offended, but we're kind of fat old people. What? We're not the kind now I think we told you that we our friends Rex and Dee came to visit a few weeks ago, and they have flayed it. And she actually just built a platform, and they'd crawl up into the flated and sleep and crawl out. Crawling in and out of bed is not for me at this age.

Tony Barthel

So, uh, well, now, flatted even has a

Peggy Barthel

A bed platform.

Tony Barthel

A bed platform. So we could have done

Peggy Barthel

that. Underneath. Yeah.

Tony Barthel

But, I mean, gosh, this thing is so, like, there's somebody driving by with, I don't know what, an army tank. Yeah. This tent is so big and so easy to set up.

Peggy Barthel

Yeah.

Tony Barthel

So the flated is a great plan b and to store stuff and all of that. And the tent just works. It's easy to get up. You can stand up. You can change in here.

Tony Barthel

It's great. And I think this would be our our setup. And our goal is to go places since the truck has 4 wheel drive. It is to go, like, one of the places we wanna go is Cerro Gordo, but other places too that are kinda less places, for lack of a better description. Places that

Peggy Barthel

are harder to get to.

Tony Barthel

Right. Harder to get to.

Peggy Barthel

And places that you can't tow a travel trailer.

Tony Barthel

Correct. Or one of the ideas is we will take the mini light to, uh, like, a base camp, leave it, and then go for a day or 2 Right. You know, somewhere

Peggy Barthel

Somewhere a little more rugged.

Tony Barthel

Remote

Peggy Barthel

Yeah.

Tony Barthel

Like Cerro Gordo.

Peggy Barthel

Right. As much as it was a campout that we needed we wanted to take, it's also practice campout. Yeah. And I think we we passed the test.

Tony Barthel

Well, yeah. So what were your what were your highlights?

Peggy Barthel

So the highlights are well, one of the things, as you said, we're not using a gas cooktop, so cooking in the breeze was a breeze. Having plenty of room for the cots and anything else that we needed inside this tent was great. I have done it plenty of times in the smaller, you know, like a 4 man tent or something, which was How

Tony Barthel

do you own a man tent? Shh. What?

Peggy Barthel

I went in the men's bathroom too because it's the only one with toilet paper. Wow. Don't ask, but don't tell. I just love that we got to it would have been difficult to get the travel trailer in this site, and I love Yeah. This site because of the view of the lake and everything.

Peggy Barthel

And I, as I said, I picked it because I could tell that there was a fair amount of privacy.

Tony Barthel

And you use campground views. Correct?

Peggy Barthel

I use campground views to see

Tony Barthel

those sites. If you're not familiar with campground views, it lets you actually see it's like Google Maps for campgrounds. Yeah. It's really a nifty

Peggy Barthel

Like street view. Tool. Yeah. I loved that we were able to leave this side open because of the privacy and we could see the lake and we could hear last night was a lot breezier and there was a lot of wave action on the lake. And so I always I'm not a big fan of like going to the ocean beach, going to the beach, sitting in the sand, getting a sunburn, all that stuff, but I love the sound of waves.

Peggy Barthel

And so being able to fall asleep to the sound of waves, not counting the flock of geese that wouldn't stop honking

Tony Barthel

Yeah. Long, but I didn't hear them. I slept right through them.

Peggy Barthel

I hadn't got to sleep yet. Uh. We we went to bed earlier than usual too, so it was hard for me

Tony Barthel

to Well, yeah. There was no cell signal there.

Peggy Barthel

So we intentionally did not bring the Starlink or any

Tony Barthel

kind of Correct. Yeah.

Peggy Barthel

Internet. And so what we learned one of the lessons, I think, that we learned was to bring either preloaded Kindle, which I do, or, you know, you've got you've got the iPad preloaded, or bring actually a paper, a magazine, or a book or something.

Tony Barthel

Well, gosh. We have enough magazines at home.

Peggy Barthel

Right. We have barely enough cell signal to, you know, send out safety, like, hey, we arrived kind of thing. Yeah. And, um, have small conversations by text. But we really are off the grid, and, honestly, that's a highlight for me.

Tony Barthel

Okay. My highlight so this is something I'm gonna admit some stuff about me. So obviously, we named our business Stressless Camping. And the reason is it's kind of a goal because I love to worry about everything. So in the trailer, I worry about the slide not coming in, and I worry about that the floor feels a little saggy in the slide room, and I worry about leaks in the roof, and I'd like to think of, like, all the stuff that can go wrong and focus on it.

Peggy Barthel

Yeah. And

Tony Barthel

that's the way my brain is wired. And this, if anything went wrong, it's like a I don't know. It's a $100. It's no big deal whatsoever. Right?

Tony Barthel

I mean, if I love.

Peggy Barthel

Oh, go ahead.

Tony Barthel

If the tent failed, so what? I could sleep in the truck. If the toilet didn't work, well, there's a toilet not far from here.

Peggy Barthel

It's not a far walk.

Tony Barthel

If anything didn't work, it was totally not a vacation ruiner or a getaway ruiner. Whereas in the trailer, if the slide doesn't come in, you're you're screwed. And if there's a leak in the roof, well, now it's a huge deal to either go and fix it yourself or take it somewhere. And trailer camping is not as stressless as I idealize because of thinking Like plumbing leaks. There's no plumbing here, so nothing can leak.

Tony Barthel

And so, truthfully, this was more, far more relaxing than being in a trailer. Now, the one thing I was not concerned about, but that I was cognizant of, We're sleeping on air mattresses, and I am no small dude. And I had this vision of the thing popping in the middle of the night.

Peggy Barthel

But he didn't stress about it.

Tony Barthel

No. Because you know what? If it popped, it'd be hilarious, and I still had a cot. So it's really it was there was nothing to worry about.

Peggy Barthel

There was not. Yeah.

Tony Barthel

That was I don't know. To me, it was so freeing doing this, and I that's why I wanna do it more.

Peggy Barthel

Right. But on the on the other side of that, doing this more, I'm all on board with that, but not for you know, we've talked before about there's a difference between camping and traveling.

Tony Barthel

Correct.

Peggy Barthel

Yeah. Now I would go camping like this all the time. Locally, a few hours from home, 2 or 3 nights, and then pack up and go back home. This is not the way I would travel from state to state to state to state.

Tony Barthel

Not us. No.

Peggy Barthel

No. Because this is it it is kind of a fair amount of work, but it's just I don't think that I would like some of the, you know, like I said, we we planned our menu, and we brought a limited amount of stuff. I don't know that I would like to be that limited on a long term basis.

Tony Barthel

I I would love, like, I'm big on structure and and all of that. If I had, like, every day at breakfast I ate this, and lunch I ate that, and dinner I ate that with variety of course, I'd be great with that. I mean, honestly, I've been I've taken the wearing black t shirts now because I don't have to make a decision anymore about it's like I open a drawer and there's black, gray, and light gray t shirts and that's what I'm wearing. So for me, that was the highlight and the the one challenge was that mattress thing, and it didn't happen. That mattress stayed inflated and was comfortable.

Tony Barthel

So, yeah. I love I loved it. Good. And it was nice to not be like, my typical MO is to go on social media for the last hour or 2 of the day, and I couldn't and I had to actually sit there in my own thoughts, which is not the best place to be. But by the same token, some stuff that I had been trying to figure out, I figured out.

Peggy Barthel

Something that we used to do as we traveled and we haven't done in a long time was every night before bed. Well, I think TikTok ruined this. I'll be honest with you.

Tony Barthel

Oh, yeah.

Peggy Barthel

Tony got addicted to TikTok at home, and now even on even on trips, even when we're camping, he watches TikTok at night. Yeah. Well, we didn't have that option last night. And so we went back to an old tradition of listening to the great detectives of old time radio.

Tony Barthel

Yeah. It's a podcast of old radio shows. When

Peggy Barthel

Adam Graham.

Tony Barthel

I even stayed awake the whole time, which is pretty impressive.

Peggy Barthel

We listened to one of my favorite series is Johnny Dollar.

Tony Barthel

Johnny Dollar.

Peggy Barthel

And we listened to an episode of Johnny Dollar last night before we went to sleep, and I missed that tradition.

Tony Barthel

Well, then we should start doing that again because I really enjoyed it. That was a good episode too. Well, they all are.

Peggy Barthel

We don't necessarily do it at home because we have all those electronics and all that stuff, but I like when we're out, when we're traveling and camping. I loved listening to the detectives falling asleep at night to detectives.

Tony Barthel

Well, then we'll start doing that again. I like it. Well, that was our tent camping experience. Yeah. And, you know, one of the things I'm gonna say, we do really like having the trailer.

Tony Barthel

I had mentioned that one of the things that is not a plus to me is worrying about plumbing and roofs and all of that. What I do not worry about ever is our power system, which comes to us from ABC Upfitters.

Peggy Barthel

That's true.

Tony Barthel

And it's an all master bolt system. It was designed and and configured by them. They maintain it. They answer questions. And the darn thing just works.

Tony Barthel

And it's just such, uh, stress less part of that RV that even if we ever swap to another RV, which is entirely possible, there would be no question in my mind where I would go for a power system. And Right. You know, whether you're looking for a drop in battery replacement that just works, or you want an entire system, or something I was thinking about when we're driving here, not only do their systems work, but they're upgradable. So let's say, today, you buy this package of stuff, you know, you think, oh, I'm

Peggy Barthel

gonna go through only need this little bit of stuff.

Tony Barthel

And then after 6 months or a year, you're like, boy, you know, I wish I had more battery power, more solar panels, or whatever. No problem. Go back to ABC Outfitters, and they can upgrade it, because they're they're doing a bunch of that at the frog rally coming up. They're upgrading systems. Oh.

Tony Barthel

They're adding 2 systems that they've already installed. And that's the neat thing. They listen to you, they ask you a bunch of questions as they're putting something together for you. And they also listen to how much money is in your budget, and they work with you to really build a system that fits what your style and your needs are. Right.

Tony Barthel

So if you're looking for a great solar or lithium system, or looking to get into it with the thoughts of upgrading moving down the road, ABC Outfitters are the great people to call.

Peggy Barthel

574 333-3225.

Tony Barthel

574-333-3225.

Peggy Barthel

Hey, guys. We did that without a script. Yeah. We're proud of this.

Tony Barthel

Well, the last thing we have for you today is our RV of the week, because I think we talked about food. We talked about camping.

Peggy Barthel

That's right. We talked about gadgets galore.

Tony Barthel

Yes, we did.

Peggy Barthel

And I'll just say, even though this is a little out of order, we're not going to ask a question of the week because we are literally recording this the day after we asked the last question.

Tony Barthel

Yeah. This is Friday.

Peggy Barthel

So we don't have answers. And so your question of the week will remain. It was Are

Tony Barthel

you gonna

Peggy Barthel

be able to assist? Escapee, and if you are, have you gone on any of their gatherings?

Tony Barthel

So And if you aren't, you know, are you thinking of it or any of that? So last our RV of the week comes from the same people who made our toilet tent, Silvinsport. And they're celebrating 20 years of business this year. And they came out. They have this little trailer.

Tony Barthel

It's a little single axle, almost cargo trailer thing. It's it's it's hard to describe. And so I'll put pictures we'll put a link to the review I wrote of it in the show notes. And if you're watching this on video, I'll put video of this thing. It's a little trailer, single axle trailer, and it's got a deck.

Tony Barthel

And you can use it for camping. But let's say you have, I don't know, uh, a small SUV. And you're like, you know, with a small SUV we're at a big box store the other day, and there was a lady who had a small SUV, and she was trying to buy this monster elevator.

Peggy Barthel

That's right.

Tony Barthel

And she had to return it because she couldn't get it all.

Peggy Barthel

Get it in the car.

Tony Barthel

So if you have a small SUV and you have this little SilvanSport trailer SilvanSport Go trailer, you could have put that TV on it, so it's like a cargo deck trailer. But the new version of this comes as a package with a rooftop tent. So you can have the rooftop tent on this trailer, so now you have the lower cargo deck for all your camping gear, and you have the rooftop tent to sleep in.

Peggy Barthel

Now, wait. There's, like, a framework. Right?

Tony Barthel

Yeah. There's a frame.

Peggy Barthel

Lift up that frame, and the rooftop tent is up higher.

Tony Barthel

Correct. Yeah.

Peggy Barthel

So you've got your deck, uh, on the deck, and then you've got the tent above you. So you still have the deck to use for sitting around your room.

Tony Barthel

So this is a new version of their rooftop tent, and it's got racks on top, so you could then put bikes or kayaks. So you you have this little trailer, all your camping gear's on the lower deck. The tent is above it on a framework, and then your bikes or kayaks on top. But you could you could take the rooftop tent off and put it on your vehicle. Oh, no.

Tony Barthel

Because it's still a rooftop tent that's removable. Now you have a little it's like a little motorcycle trailer type of look of thing. So you could put bikes or even dirt bikes back there. Silvernsport is good at making stuff that does a lot of stuff. Yeah.

Tony Barthel

And it's a neat improvement on what they have. And they've made all these pieces, but now they make them to work together better. And they've improved especially the rooftop tent has a provision to run a portable power station, and you can run the cord up through it and lights and that sort of stuff. So they've improved what they've done. This is a new version of the rooftop tent and an off road version of the trailer.

Tony Barthel

Just a neat package. Like I say, for a lot of people who have a small SUV and maybe like weekending and tent camping, it goes right along with what we're doing here, except it may be even easier to do, and it serves more purposes.

Peggy Barthel

Now if I don't wanna crawl up into the rooftop tent, can I just open the tent on the deck?

Tony Barthel

I think the tent is bigger than the deck of the trailer.

Peggy Barthel

K. Gotcha.

Tony Barthel

But it's a really short. Climb? I mean, it's not like this trailer is really tall. It's maybe neck level for most people. Okay.

Tony Barthel

So it's not that tall at all.

Peggy Barthel

Okay.

Tony Barthel

That's why if you want to really use the cargo portion of the cargo trailer, you might move the rooftop tent to the roof of a car. Okay. It's a neat thing. It's a real outside the box thinking thing, which is typical Sylvan's work.

Peggy Barthel

Yeah. Sylvan's pretty cool. Alright. Well, that is, I think, it. Right?

Tony Barthel

That's it.

Peggy Barthel

And we are so grateful that you popped in and listened to our listened to our I've been popped up story.

Tony Barthel

Yeah. We enjoyed this. It's a big change from what we normally do, but we really appreciate your continuing to be here with us. Thank you so much. Don't forget to if you haven't done a review of the Stressless Camping podcast on wherever you enjoy getting podcasts, that is very helpful for Very helpful.

Peggy Barthel

That's too awesome.

Tony Barthel

Those services telling others.

Peggy Barthel

Hang out at our website for a while. You can find all kinds of articles about how to do things. You can find videos. You can find the podcast. You can sign up for our weekly newsletter.

Tony Barthel

There's an endless list of RV stuff.

Peggy Barthel

That's right. Deal discounts, things we like, all those things are available on our website at stressless camping.com. And then if you're if you still have signal, if you still have time, you can jump up and go to the social places. And one of those social places would be our Facebook group called Stressless Campers, and that's where we ask every week the question of the week, which I said we're not doing a new one this week, but you can go and talk about escapees or find out what other people are doing in escapees. And check us out

Tony Barthel

on all

Peggy Barthel

the socials. I'm I got tired of trying to list them.

Tony Barthel

Another thing to do at the website is to sign up for our weekly email newsletter. And that way, you get our latest articles and reviews and that sort of stuff. It's all free, and we really don't ever share your information with anybody. That would just be uncool.

Peggy Barthel

And if you see something on the website that you think a lot of your friends would love to have, copy that page and paste it all over socials. Take it to stress. If you see a question actually and you know that you read an article, one of the super helpful things to us is to go and just copy that page and paste it in as an answer to your friend's question.

Tony Barthel

Yep. Well, that's what we have for you this week. We really appreciate your being here once again, and most of all, stressless 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 joining us next week. Until then, happy camping.

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