Since I haven’t been posting much if at all while I have been on a two week vacation I figured what better way to restart my posting schedule than by sharing what I learned on my travels.  So here we go.

Not all Walmarts (and Targets) are created equal: For those of you that are unaware, California has some pretty strict rules when it comes to unions and the Supers don’t like that.  I’m not sure how many Supers there are in CA now but when I was living there last year they were few and far between. Where I live now there is no such thing as a NON-Super Walmart, but it would appear that the Non-Super Walmarts are just as big and they are filled with some things I have never seen inside my local Walmarts. I didn’t get the opportunity to try to price match what few groceries they have because I wasn’t sure if a non grocery store could be matched with the few grocery items they have against another actual grocery store, but I’d be prepared to have limited options when it comes to price matching Non-Supers.

Be careful what you stock up on: I planned our meals to a T, breakfast, lunch and dinner.  Turns out to feed a family of 5 just a single sandwich every day for lunch for 12 days takes 10 loaves of bread.  The problem is that placing 10 loaves of bread in a compartment (inside or out) in an RV and taking it through the desserts of Utah and the humidity of California meant that over half of the bread was molded by the time we got back home. It was a good thing that I’d over estimated the amount of times we would be eating sandwiches.  I also took two packages of deli meat and opened both to keep variety which caused them both to be bad after a week instead of having one last through each week. Other than that I did fairly well when it came to not having things go bad or running out before the end.

The words “standard size” do not always apply: When you make the decision to cook “real” food in an RV it’s a good idea to bring out all your cookware and confirm it will actually work in your appliances.  I failed to do this particular step and wound up with a cookie sheet that would not in any way fit inside the oven, fortunately I had also brought a lasagna pan as well and was able to use that instead. Also don’t expect more than a single one gallon of milk to fit in the fridge, in fact loading an RV fridge takes some pretty good Tetris skills in general.

This was my first real RV trip over a long period of time so I’m sure I’ll learn new things from future trips, as always I’ll be sure to share with you all What I have learned.