Made it to Oregon

by Matt in News on Thursday 29th August, 2019

If last week was about milestones, this week was about miles! 961 miles and 4 states in 7 days!

Harper's Corner Road Boondocking
Stories from the Road Podcast
RV Parks
Hall Labs
Golden Spike National Historical Park
YouTube Milestone
Outdoors RV Factory Visit

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Harper's Corner Road Boondocking

While we were exploring Dinosaur National Monument last week, we camped just off Harper's Corner Road - technically on Blue Mountain Rd. This is an unassuming patch of land about 11 miles up a long, steady hill, and turn left over a cattle guard.

But the views. Oh my, the views! This has to be one of the most scenic spots we've ever camped at - honestly, it was incredible! So much so that our photo and review of that spot made it into Campendium's weekly newsletter "Hot On Campendium This Week".

Just look at that sunset! From our dinette window we had a panoramic view of the valley below. Perfect!

Plus, the ground was almost level, there was a lovely breeze blowing through which kept it cool in the summer heat, and if that wasn't enough, the cell signal was rocking! We had over 50Mbps download speed on both AT&T and Verizon.

We were there for 4 nights, but we were joined for 2 of those nights by another rig - which is how we met Felix and Anja from Germany. Hi! They're on a year-long RV expedition around the Americas - North & South! They were a lovely couple, and we had fun chatting and hanging out with them.

Stories from the Road Podcast

Before we left Dinosaur, we took advantage of the great cell signal to do an interview with Sam Nuerminger, host of Camping World's Stories from the Road podcast. On his podcast, Sam chats with lots of different RVers - from weekend warriors to full-timers - about their lifestyle and stories from RVing.

It was our first ever podcast interview, and we were very nervous, but I think it went well. We talked with Sam about our quest to visit all 419 National Park Units in the US. We also recounted our terrifying experience from Great Sand Dunes National Park just a month or so back!

If you haven't done so already, check out the Stories from the Road podcast - we had a lot of fun recording it, and Sam is a great interviewer!

RV Parks

In a departure from our normal style, we decided to spend some time in a couple of RV parks with hookups - first at Willard Bay State Park, just north of Salt Lake City, UT, and then at Intermountain RV Park near Twin Falls, ID.

Normally we try not to park under trees because the shade isn't good for our solar, but it didn't matter since we had full hookups at Willard Bay State Park, UT.

Why? To escape the heat. With an electrical hookup, we can run the AC in our RV and stay cool.

It's been a little while since we stayed in an RV park with hookups. So long in fact that Diana forgot how to hookup the water and did it wrong. Oops - fortunately no harm done!

My favorite thing about going to an RV park with electrical hookups is that we can run the AC in the trailer while we drive there. Although our rooftop solar and truck charger can't completely offset the power usage of the air conditioning, our Battle Born lithium batteries have enough capacity to last a good few hours.

Our Smart WiFi thermostat lets us turn the air conditioning on and off remotely from the truck, so as we're getting close we turn down the temperature. That way, after disconnecting the trailer and getting everything set up, we can step inside to a nice cool trailer!

Hall Labs

You may not have heard of Hall Labs before, but they're a cool company! They're based in Provo, UT and we were lucky enough to have a guided tour around their facility by their CEO, Michael Hall.

Their stuff is incredibly innovative, and they have some super cool products - you may have heard of Vanderhall, a company they span out to make hand-built three-wheel autocycles.

As RVers however, we were really interested in their Haul Gauge product. If you haven't heard of this before, it's a tiny device that you plug into the diagnostic port on your vehicle and it will calculate your tongue weight, total weight, weight distribution and more! We were super excited by this, so we picked one up to try - we'll do a full review once we've had a chance to put it through its paces!

This tiny device can measure your payload and towing weights using built-in accelerometers and diagnostic data from your engine about transmission slip. Super clever!

Golden Spike National Historical Park

While we were staying near Salt Lake City, UT, we drove up to Golden Spike National Historical Park. We timed our visit on Saturday to see not only the trains driven down the lines, but also a historical reenactment. Promontory Summit, the site of Golden Spike National Historical Park, was where the final spike was hammered in to connect the railroads between the East and West coasts of the United States.

Also, we love trains! Although these trains were replicas of the original trains (the originals were scrapped in the early 20th century), they were beautiful! Stay tuned for our blog post to find out more!

YouTube Milestone

Last week we hit 1,000 Instagram followers, but this week we hit 2,000 subscribers on YouTube. We are seriously excited about this - thank you everyone for your support, and we're so pleased to have you along for the journey

Diana handles all of our video editing, and she spends hours and hours on every video. Seriously, each video takes her, on average, 15 hours to edit! We love reading the great comments from you all, so please, keep them coming - they're so motivating! Thank you, and if you're not already subscribed, head over and check out the Adventurous Way YouTube channel.

Outdoors RV Factory Visit

So the big question, why did we drive all the way from Colorado to Oregon?

To visit the Outdoors RV in La Grande, OR!

We've driven a long way to reach La Grande, OR but we are very excited!

That's right, Outdoors RV contacted us a couple months ago and invited us up to visit their factory. We've done their factory tour before, and it's amazing - in fact, our tour of their factory in November 2016 was one of the main reasons we ended up buying an Outdoors RV 21RBS!

Normally, no photography is allowed on the tour, but they have offered us the exclusive opportunity to video the entire factory tour for our YouTube channel!

Not only that, but we're also going to be interviewing several of their staff about what sets Outdoors RV apart from the competition, including their rugged off-road capabilities and four-season design. Plus, we're going to be sharing with them our experience of living full-time in our Outdoors RV 21RBS for the past 12 months - including all our mods and ideas.

Needless to say, we're very excited about our visit!

For now, we're working hard to crunch through some more blog posts and videos so we can keep sharing our adventures with you, but we do have one little surprise in store for next week - make sure to subscribe to our weekly newsletter to learn more!

Let us know in the comments below what you'd like to see on the factory tour!

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Comments

CHRIS Hamilton6 months ago

Q1 for ORV on your visit: Ask them why they specifically state in the manual the vehcile is not intended to live in full time and how they feel about you two living in it full time? Obviously they like the publicity.... Q2 - what issues have you had with the rig so far? Q3 - You've done some Mods too, what other Mods do you wish you had??

Matt6 months ago

Great questions, thanks Chris!

With regards Q1, we thought we remembered seeing something similar, but we can't find it in the manual. There are some vague references to usage in the warranty section, but nowhere can we find that it explicitly states that it's not intended for full-time living. We'll double check with them though!

For Q2 and Q3, maybe I can take a stab at answering those.

We've not really had any major issues with our trailer since we've had it - we caught most things in the pre-delivery inspection. The only two issues we've had are a kinked San-T-Flush black tank flush hose (they provided us a part to fix that), and some rust, localized to the rear frame. Other issues that have come up have been of our own making - like the cracked toilet lid where something fell off a shelf during travel.

As for other mods, I have a very long list of things I want to do, but Diana keeps me in check! We really chose Outdoors RV because we felt that the major items were already in place - good wheels and tires, large tanks, etc. We do have a couple of mods on our list that might make sense for Outdoors RV to incorporate into their models - such as a U-shackle on the rear bumper for locking up our bikes, and a taller tongue jack.

We're going to show them all the mods we've done, and talk through all the mods we're thinking of doing though, so we'll see what comes out of that!

SUSAN MARTIN RIECKS6 months ago

Hey, Matt -

We, too, have a 2018 ORV TT, the 23RBS. Although we enjoy just about everything about it, the sensors on the grey and black tanks seem to consistently OVER estimate how full they are. Leads to a bit of stress and anxiety on our part about how often we need to empty. What has your experience been so far?

Also, would you ask the ORV folks about their interest in making more options available on each model? For example, we seriously considered the 250RDS model, but losing a window in the bedroom to a wardrobe was a deal breaker. If having the wardrobe slide OR a window was a possibility... Also, our 23RBS has an outdoor cook station which we have come to LOVE! But we noticed that none of the new models seem to have it. Again, if it was an option?

Matt6 months ago

I've not heard of tank sensors overestimating before - maybe the sensors are installed a little too high up on your tanks. We joke that our black tank sensor is really a test button for the LEDs - it always shows full, even right after dumping and flushing! We don't worry about it too much though - our black tank is directly below the toilet so you can easily see at a glance (a very quick glance!!) how full it is. As for grey, the tank sensor on ours seems reasonably accurate and we're pretty good at gauging how much capacity is left.

The way these sensors operate is notoriously unreliable. You might want to check out the SeaLevel sensors which are supposedly more accurate.

I like your question about configurability - it comes up a lot. Will be sure to ask them about that!

Kevin Brennan6 months ago

Just loving starting to dreamily follow from the desk, and see your guys journeying on the roads and with Adventurous Way! Congrats on the milestones.

P.S. Downloaded Fuelly app, after a recent post it, love it!!

E House5 months ago

That's awesome that you get a tour...When we drove 1100 miles to pick up our Outdoors RV and then drove right past Outdoors RV on our way to camp, but they weren't doing tours when we drove by and didn't make an exception for us. Bummer since I have no idea if we'll be anywhere near there again.

Matt5 months ago

I'm so sorry to hear that! Outdoors RV do often try and accommodate drop-in visitors for tours, but it's usually safer to call them in advance.

Either way, make sure you check out our YouTube channel to watch the video we filmed of the tour - it's not a replacement for the real thing, but it'll help at least. Hope you're enjoying your new Outdoors RV!

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