San Simeon State Park | San Simeon, CA

What an exciting day for us, we headed out on our maiden voyage in our 2016 24’ Class C Thor Synergy Sprinter RV. After years of dreaming about having an RV and traveling with our dogs, our dream finally became a reality. We wanted to keep our first trip easy and we didn’t want to roam too far from home so we headed out to San Simeon State Park just 40 miles from our home.

After watching tons of YouTube videos, reading manuals, and creating a binder with the information we gathered and notes we took (yet why is it that the information you need is never in the binder), we thought we might have a pretty good handle on things…and yet…

Our first mistake was that we arrived at the campground as the sun was setting. We had every intention on getting an early start but somehow time got away from us and the park was getting dark when we arrived. As newbies, it was no fun trying to navigate our way around the camp site and then the added pressure of having to level the rig as it’s getting darker by the minute. Lesson learned: Arrive early with enough time to setup while there is still daylight whenever possible.

Hubby then gets out and starts guiding me onto the leveling blocks and we’re not having much success. After many attempts of going back and forth and putting on a show for our neighbors, who are comfortably sitting by their roaring fire with their dinner on the grill and wine glasses in hand, we finally decide we’re “good enough” only to discover after parking that we can’t open our bedroom slider due to the fact that we are up against a large tree branch. Lesson learned: Practice using leveling blocks and always access the camp site to know which way you should position the rig.

We then go back to square one, turn the rig around so the slider is on the opposite side of where the tree was, and once again attempt to level our rig by going back and forth I don’t know how many times…and although we were more uneven than the first time, we again accept that we’re “good enough” before we’re reported for domestic disturbance. 🙂

After about an hour of this fun activity, we finally start to settle in and decide to start dinner. We had prepared some meals before we left, so the dinner prep was fairly uneventful. Now that we were a little more relaxed, we decided to listen to some music during dinner so we plugged in Hubby’s iPhone and let the first song play, Andrea Bocelli’s “A Time To Say Goodbye”. Then we noticed that the song started looping and we were just too tired {or didn’t care enough after our ordeal} to fix it, so all through dinner Andrea serenaded us over…and…over.

Once we finished dinner, we decided to walk our three dogs…keep in mind Andrea’s song is still looping. I open the door and I hear Andrea’s song playing really loud. I’m perplexed for a moment and then quickly discover we have outdoor speakers on the rig! I’m mouthing to Hubby “turn the music off”, him: “what?’, me: “turn the music off” adding hand gestures of my hand going across my throat “cut the music, we have outdoor speakers”. He finally manages to find the switch and turn the speakers off only to hear snickers from the other campers. As pleased as we are to discover that we have outdoor speakers, we’re horrified that we’ve been loudly serenading the campground with “A Time To Say Goodbye” over and over and over…and I’m pretty sure the campground was ready to say Goodbye to us. 😩 Lesson learned: Learn what features you have on your rig before your first outing.

Immediately following the above fiasco, all three dogs race to pile out of the RV and start seeing other people/dogs and get excited, then our Labradoodle starts barking/howling {those of you with Labradoodle’s can relate to that very unique, loud howling bark} which sets the two German Shepherds off….which now solidifies our standing as the Griswald’s of the campground.

After a glass (or two) of wine, we finally settle in and relax. Aside from a few embarrassing moments, I’d say it was a successful maiden voyage. 🙂 We ended the trip on a high-note when we spontaneously pulled over for a lunch stop at the beach because that’s the luxury of having an RV!