Having Guests in your RV and our Adventure with Our Trailer at the Airport

Let me begin this blog post by saying I probably have no business writing it.  I am in a Facebook group for owners of our rig’s manufacturer.  I thought I knew what I was doing until I saw pictures of peoples’ beautiful spreads they put out at the national rally last month. Suffice it to say, I’m a low-key entertainer and I like it that way.  

When we purchased our current 5^thwheel one of the things we shopped for was more visiting space.  Not more sleeping space.  We tested the pull-out bed in the sofa to make sure it was comfortable so that we could have over night guests.  If it wasn’t, it would have been a deal breaker.  It turns out, the pull-out bed is more comfortable than the bunks in our old trailer.  Go figure!  We wanted more visiting space because we end up camping in places where we’re visiting other people, or people come to visit us.  It’s fun!

If you’re still shopping and you think this might be your situation, you might consider something with an island in the kitchen and a living space near the kitchen.  It makes for great visiting, snacking, and fun. We purchased our rig in May. Since our purchase, we have camped 20 nights in it on four separate trips.  On only one of those trips were we without visitors.  Our “rear living” / island kitchen has served us very well! We love it!

Here are some things I keep in mind when entertaining in my rig:

• K.I.S.S.– My geometry teacher in 10^thgrade always used to remind us when solving proofs, “Keep It Simple…Stupid.”  (I seriously doubt he was calling anyone stupid!  I think he was trying to get teenagers attention after lunch).  Back when my kids were little and before we had a trailer, I tried to be my own version of Martha Stewart.  I pretty much failed at it because I turned into a crazed over thinking entertaining machine that my family dreaded.  Therefore, they dreaded any party I’d throw.  It was no fun for them!  Now that I’m older, and wiser (Ha! More like older and more tired!), I’ve realized that no one cares how fancy your party is.  They care that the company is fun.  These days, sometimes I even leave the chips in the bags! (Gasp!).  Really, make it fun for you!  Don’t go overboard!
• Plan ahead –I really love to cook.  When I’m camping, my cooking is much simpler.  I marinate meat before the trip and freeze it, make simple salads, make things ahead when possible, etc.  That way, when I’m ready to have guests, I can pull things out and go.  No major prepping in the rig.  
• Grill!– Everyone loves good grilled food!  You can grill anything.  I know someone who grills peaches and says they’re delicious.  I prefer steak, but whatever!  When you grill, it brings people outside, keeps your rig cooler, and makes less dishes to wash.
• Easy clean-up is key –Most rigs don’t have dishwashers.  Mine doesn’t.  Easy clean-up is a big deal.  Use recipes and foods that are easy to clean up.
• Whenever possible, invite people who help –So far, we’ve been super lucky this summer with company that helps.  On our first trip out in our rig, the people we camped with wanted to cook for us in our rig. It was awesome!  We just watched as they cooked.  Later, we washed the dishes while they watched.  When we camped with my brother and sister-in-law, they were super helpers.  My brother loves grilling and cleaning the grill, so he cooked all of our grilled meat. My sister in law likes drying dishes (or pretends to) and jumps up to help as soon as anyone is at the sink.  Having people like this over makes entertaining a lot more fun.
• Order pizza!– In our favorite place to camp, we love the pizza place in town! We order pizza and bring it back to the trailer.  We’ll make salad, have wine and drinks ready, and have a fun, easy, and delicious dinner.
• Pot-luck it– We have friends that we camp with regularly.  We eat together on the nights that we’re camping together. When we don’t order pizza or do something “organized,” we’ll have a BYOM (bring your own meat) pot-luck.  We share sides, salads, drinks, etc.  Then, for dessert we’ll have s’mores.  It’s fun!

Overnight guests

We are in a new phase of life.  We’re empty nesters.  For 15 years, we had bunkhouse trailers.  Our first rig had 4 bunks and we let our kids bring friends on our trips sometimes. Other times, we parked it in our driveway when we needed more sleeping space at the house and sent some kids out to sleep in the driveway.  My brother and his family would come up to visit, but there is no hotel in our town and no room in our house.  So, we parked our trailer in the RV park and they stayed in our “vacation condo.” This past summer, we realized that our kids hadn’t come on a long trip with us in years and that we were only using the bunkhouse for was storing my husband’s golf clubs.  We decided it was time to re-think the bunkhouse situation. We bought a 5^thwheel with a comfortable pull out sofa-bed (Not a jack-knife sofa.  Jack Knife pull outs are only comfortable for kids!).  It turned out to be a good choice.

My brother and his family have a 23-foot travel trailer.   They rarely ever camp anywhere with hook-ups and sometimes tease us about how wimpy we are for going to RV parks.  They live in Southern California where he owns a landscape business.  Getting away for more than 7 or 8 days at a time is really hard for them.  As a result, it’s kept them camping mostly in California, Arizona, and Nevada.  We let them know we were planning a trip to Glacier National Park.  At the time, we had our bunkhouse trailer that they had used in the local RV park when they came up to visit us.  My brother said, “We’ll come!   We’ll fly up to Montana and we’ll camp with you and sleep in your bunk beds!” A plan was hatched!

After we hatched the plan, we traded in the bunkhouse and sweated a bit about whether or not having guests on the pull out sofa bed was going to be a good situation.  We did our best to make it as comfortable as possible. Here are some things we did:

• Got a good mattress pad for the pull out– Even though the pull out is comfortable, it’s still not a mattress.  A quality mattress pad helps with that.
• Got quality bedding – Nice sheets, comfortable pillows, and a nice quilt made the bed a lot more comfortable.
• Found space for them to unpack their bags – Suitcases in a trailer would be a trip hazard! Our new rig has a cupboard that is “extra” for us.  We decided to keep it empty so that if we have guests, they can put their things in there.  They unpacked their suitcases into the cupboard and we stowed the suitcases in the basement storage of the trailer.  It worked great!
• Made space in the medicine cabinet – Our medicine cabinet is HUGE for a trailer. We made one side of it empty so it could be just for them.  
• Find places to hang towels – We live and camp in the Pacific Northwest.  It is imperative that we have places to hang wet things inside the trailer.  We put some hooks in the “hallway” of the trailer for this.  Our guests used them to hang their towels.  
• Gave them space – We made it a point to go to bed at a decent time and let them have the living space to themselves.  We watched some TV in the bedroom.  It helped that we hiked almost every day.  Everyone was, as my sister in law would say, “knackered.”  We were all ready to flop fairly early.

You’re probably wondering where our airport adventure fits into this post.  Well, on this trip to Glacier, my brother and his wife flew into Kalispell, Montana.  We had a great plan.  We used Google Maps and found a Cabela’s with 40 Acres of parking and a Chick-fil-A in the parking lot.  The plan was for them to take an Uber to the Cabela’s parking lot.  We had a meeting time.  It was a great plan!

We were coming from Coeur d’Alene, Idaho where we had spent a night on the way to Montana.  We stopped in St. Regis, Montana to buy a Huckleberry Pie (very important to the Montana experience), some jam, and use the restroom.  There’s a really great traveler’s stopping place there with a great store, restaurant, espresso, ice cream, etc.  We looked around a bit, but not terribly long.  When we got in the truck, we were shocked at the time!!  How was it possible that we had spent an hour and a half in that store?!  I checked my brother’s flight on my phone and it said it was late.  Perfect.

We started booking down the road when I got a text from my brother, “Just landed.”  I looked at the GPS and we were 80 miles out.  So, I texted back, “Crap!  We’re 80 miles out!  Take your time getting your bags and getting to Cabela’s.”  We continued on trying to figure out where the time went.  Later we got a text from my brother that said, “Uber says ‘No cars available.’  Now what?” We texted back and forth with things like, “Are you working the Uber app right?”  He sent a screen shot of the Uber app.   Looked right…  “How about Lyft?”  Finally, he calls.  “I’ve been walking around the airport and I think you can pick us up in the passenger pick up area.”  We’re thinking, “Obviously, he doesn’t know how tall we are!”  I explain how much clearance we needed and he assured me that since he’s had plenty of time, he’s walked the whole outside of the airport and it’s going to work.

We drove to the airport and picked them up in the passenger pick up area.  Of course, this irritated the people behind us and they insisted on honking.  So, we were throwing suitcases into the back of the truck trying to avoid the 5^thwheel hitch and laughing because the scene was just crazy!  

We drove over to the Cabela’s and Chick-Fil-A and had lunch and did some “we forgot__.” shopping.  At one point in the store, I checked my watch and it was an hour earlier than I thought.  Then, I checked my phone to see the time.  Head slap!  We didn’t get the memo!  There was a time change between Idaho and Montana!  We lost an hour!  

The whole trip went really well and we decided that we’ll do it again sometime.  They stayed with us 7 nights and we had a great time.  They reported being comfortable and said they enjoyed their stay.  We might have to avoid the airport, but everything else worked out great!  We are proud to be able to say we picked up people from the airport with our trailer attached.  Not everyone can say that.

Entertaining in your rig is fun.  There are lots of ways to do it from tail-gaiting, to pot-lucks, to just having people over for s’mores.  I see people in RV parks camping with friends and sharing meals.  I never really considered when we bought our first rig how social it could be.  We have been happily surprised at how much fun we’ve had entertaining in our rig!

Enjoy your rig and entertaining at your own speed.  You don’t even have to entertain at all if you don’t want to!  It’s your rig!  It’s your vacation!  Enjoy it!

Feature Photo note: This photo was taken in our backyard at a barbecue with my grandparents. The kid with the big bow in her hair is me. That was our trailer when I was a little kid. My brother and I figured out that it had been about 45 years since we camped together in a trailer by the time of the Glacier trip in this blog. My parents sold it and we were tent campers after that … until we had kids of our own….

Next Trailer Girl blog post – Why I’m Banned from Barstow