• 01Jun

    If you’ve ever rented or owned a recreational vehicle, you’re already aware of how important the shoreline connection is. Plugging your shoreline cord into a campground’s power supply is much quieter, more reliable, and less hassle-prone than most of the other options for distributing 120 volt AC power to your rig (such as running a generator, for instance). Almost any RV you see today will have a permanently attached shoreline cord, unless it’s one of those unpopular RVs that never got invited to parties in high school. The cord should have an amp rating governed by the amount of circuits that particular RV needs. 30-amp is what you’ll see most often, but smaller campers can have as low as 15-amp while larger RVs can easily come with 50-amp. It all depends on how many 12 volt AC gadgets and outlets the RV is equipped with. The more devices and places to mount devices, the greater the rating of the cord, and all of the electrical components should be appropriately and similarly rated.

    It is most often the case that your whole electrical system will be distributed AC power as soon as you plug in the shoreline cord, but some rigs have an automatic transfer switching device. This might cause a small lag between plugging or starting a generator and receiving the juice. When you turn on your generator or plug into shoreline power, it is advisable to keep the following in mind:

    • Switch off all of the heavier loads on your electrical system, such as your AC unit, water heater, etc.
    • Check for appropriate voltage and correct polarity in the power supply before plugging in to shoreline power. It takes a few extra minutes, but it’s definitely worthwhile. Otherwise, you tempt fate with potential injuries to body and equipment. Reversed polarity can be very dangerous! Don’t plug into any shoreline power that measures as “reversed.” Report it to the campground authorities and find another outlet.
    • Check the frequency of the power supply. It should be at or around 120 volts AC, though it could be in the low hundreds or near 130. If the voltage is too low or too high, damage will likely occur.
    • Replace the shoreline cord if it receives any kind of damage. If it’s got cuts, nicks, tears, bends, pinches, stretches, kinks, or wear-and-tear from age, you should replace it as soon as possible.
    • The frequency you measure will likely fall very close to 60 Hertz, especially in America and other places with a very standardized use of electricity. More remote areas may have very different ranges, so make sure you check!
    • Clean the metal prongs of your shoreline cord regularly with fine steel wool or sandpaper.

    Plugging into shoreline power is a major part of enjoying your RV, and staying on top of the related simple maintenance can ensure that you enjoy a healthy 12 volt electrical system for a long time to come.

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  • 26May

    Sounds like a pretty sexy test, right? Well, sorry to get your hopes up, but it’s actually pretty tame. Unless you get all steamy for precautionary safety measures on recreational vehicles, that is. The Hot Skin Test is the name for a test you can perform to determine whether or not your rig has an electrical short, and it is just about the most important test you can perform for your RV, perhaps next to the “Is my RV currently on fire?” test and the “Is my RV sinking to the bottom of a large body of water?” test.

    Usually this is done by professionals, and we recommend that you carry on that tradition in the name of safety. Obviously, some of you are professional electricians, so we leave it to your better judgment in deciding if you want to do this test on your own. This test is important to perform whether your RV has a lot of exposed metal or not. Even fiberglass RVs have the electrical system attached to the metal chassis somewhere, so no RV is immune from injuring or killing you with a high resistance electrical short. Exciting!

    Here’s how a Hot Skin Test works:

    • Plug the shoreline into shore power.
    • Make certain all the circuit breakers are flipped to “on.”
    • Adjust your Volt-Ohm-meter to test at the 250 volt AC scale.
    • Attach a test lead onto a bare, metal surface somewhere on the RV. If you have a fiberglass RV, you can use the metal entry steps or some part of the chassis.
    • Attach the remaining test lead to an earth ground. You can use a grounded water pipe or drive a grounding stake into the earth somewhere nearby.
    • Check your Volt-Ohm-meter. If it reads “0,” there’s no high resistance electrical short. Good for you! You can celebrate a little, but don’t get all smug about it.
    • However, if you do measure some voltage, you’ve got a high resistance short. Repair it before you use the RV! This is non-negotiable!
    • Switch the test leads and measure again.
    • Repeat the test on a different component of the RV’s exposed metal.
    • Get the rig repaired.
    • Do the test again from the beginning. Repeat as necessary.

    How do you know if you may have a high resistance short on your hands? Well, there are several potential warning signs. Check your AC wires regularly for wear, tear, nicks, cuts, bends, and pinches. Another helpful sign is if you feel buzzing, shocking, pain, or anything else associated with human-on-electricity action when touching the ground and a metal part of the RV. If the sensation disappears when you detach the 120 volt power source, you almost certainly have a high resistance short.

    So that’s that. Check this stuff out, stay on top of it, and keep your friends, family, and self out of harm’s way. Trust us, it’s a much better option than letting it go and just hoping you get superpowers from a freak RV electrical accident. That almost never happens, and if it did, you’d probably get a really stupid set of powers. RVs aren’t exactly known for their ability to grant amazing superhuman abilities in the same way that radioactive spiderbites, dying alien worlds, and flying mechanical armor suits are.

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  • 20May

    Anyone reading this blog likely knows that all of the electronics in their RV reside at some point on their rig’s 12 volt electrical system. Like markers on a circular racetrack, if you follow the circuit, you’ll pass by each one in turn. Anyone who is reading this blog and has had their RV for a while also knows that when something goes wrong in the 12 volt circuit or in a device that sits on the circuit, repairs can be a painstaking and laborious process of guessing games. It kinda makes you wonder why no one has taken advantage of the fact that your 12 volt electronics are all interconnected, perhaps devising some bit of diagnostic wizardry to let you know what part of which thing is misbehaving.

    Well, someone did. It’s called RC-V and it’s becoming increasingly popular in RV design. The RC-V standard allows your 12 volt devices to network or “multiplex” with each other and with a central diagnostic port. This has been a common convenience on most regular automobiles for a while now, but is only recently making its benefits known to the RV operator. Now, instead of having a repairman come check each part of the circuit and the many parts of each individual device to find malfunctions and miscalibrations, the technician can just come up to the diagnostic port, plug in their laptop, and get a specific message about what to fix.

    Another helpful faculty afforded by multiplexing is the ability to program controls for various devices and activities. The diagnostic port can allow you to set timers for lights and generators, inform you of structural elements of the RV you may have forgotten to retract, or even configure an array of modes for things like “dinner time” and “movie watching.” This convenience, coupled with the streamlining that comes from having all of your options presented clearly and in one place, are set to revolutionize RV design and use.

    So don’t be afraid of the RC-V standard. It is the future of RVs and it is your friend. Having your 12 volt technology cooperating and speaking the same language between each device can only make your life easier. If it starts going by “Hal” and calls you “Dave,” though, we’d suggest maybe spending the night in a motel.

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  • 13May

    There are plenty of overhauls you can perform to increase the efficiency of your RV and its 12 volt electrical systems. We’ve gone over some of them in previous entries, such as adding solar panels and wind turbines. That’s all well and good, but as anyone who has ever done their own home repair or taken a kid to an amusement park can tell you, it’s the compounding nickel and dime stuff that’ll kill you. Luckily for you, there are scads of ways to boost efficiency on your rig, whether your aim is lowering your carbon footprint or just lowering the amount you spend on feeding the beast.

    A big one is efficient appliances. There’s been some scandal recently about the whole Energy Star thing, with some of the appliances supposedly rated “highly efficient” actually being “crummy, regular efficiency.” Check Consumer Reports and various online resources to find what really saves you energy and what just comes with an Energy Star sticker on it. Since power is always at a premium on an RV, getting the most bang for your buck can help out a lot.

    On that topic, let’s talk light bulbs. The old incandescents don’t really cut it anymore. They’re inefficient, short lived, break easily, and lose most of their energy to heat. The newer energy-saver bulbs are a big improvement, being much more efficient, durable, and longer lasting. However, the new technology coming down the pipe is LED illumination. LED stands for Light Emitting Diode, and you’ve seen them all over the place whether you realize it or not. They look like tiny, bead-sized light bulbs, and come in many colors. If you have a keychain flashlight, chances are the bulb is an LED. What’s so great about these things is that they are ludicrously energy efficient, highly durable, astoundingly long lasting, and getting cheaper by the day. New LED light bulb technologies are being developed that encase dozens of LEDs in a bulb shape, giving off more light than a regular bulb. As it stands, one of these will probably run you $30-$40. Sounds crazy? Yeah, until you realize they use 80% less juice and last for a mind-boggling 25,000 hours. You could leave them on, nonstop, for nearly 3 years before they’d need to be replaced. Not bad at all.

    As for other little things, just look around your rig and ask yourself what can be improved. Are your windows tinted and temperature resistant? Do you have any gaps or cracks in your weather sealing? Are your air filters clean? When was your last oil change? Are your tires filled to the appropriate level? Are the couches, beds, dishes, etc. the most lightweight models you could find? Does your faucet or shower head leak? Is the weight of your RV evenly distributed on both sides of the rig? Is your alignment good?

    The great thing about these fixes is that most of them are simple weekend projects. You can knock them out easily one after the other, enjoy the benefits of greater energy efficiency, and feel like you’ve done something good for yourself and the world. It’s a win-win situation, gang. What’s more, hybrid RV chassis are just around the corner, which should finally put a stake in the heart of the gasoline vampire that bleeds the wallet of every RV vacationer.

    One day in the future, RVs are just gonna be solar powered floating bubbles or something, and it’s going to be awesome.

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  • 04May

    How many times have you walked out of the house thinking “I just know I’ve forgotten something, but I can’t think of what it is, and I don’t have time to look for it,” only to realize what it was later and kick yourself for it? “Ah, dang it, I forgot to put on any clothes at all. Again!” And of course the cops aren’t going to make it easier on you, arresting you for public indecency when all you’re really guilty of is a bad memory. Or maybe you just forget your cell phone a lot. That happens too. If it’s this hard to remember all of the things that go in your pockets before heading out the door, how much more difficult is it, then, to keep track of all the little things you need to do before driving your RV!

    This is why we at JuJuDeals strongly advocate checklists. The reasons for this are twofold. First, checklists are a simple and efficient way to make sure you’ve taken care of the tasks you need to handle. Second, checking little boxes makes us feel like we’ve gotten stuff done, more so than actually doing the task we’re checking off. We don’t know why that is, but we’re fairly sure most humans would agree that checking things off a task list is way more satisfying than it empirically should be.

    Make checklists for all of the multi-step endeavors that will go into RV travel, like “Starting the Vacation,” “Docking at Camp,” “Emptying Waste,” “Ending the Vacation.” Split them into boxes marked “outside” and “inside” so you can more easily track what you’re doing. Staple all the lists together or put them on a clipboard, and every time you do something you have a list for, get the clipboard. You can even put “get clipboard” as the first thing on the list. Look at that, now you can check one off already! Doesn’t making progress feel great?

    In all seriousness, though, keeping a checklist of proper protocol for your RV is both useful and highly advised. It’s a great way to make sure your dinner plates are secured, of course, but it’s also a constant reminder to check all those little travel safety things you know you should be doing. Plus, it keeps you from accidentally opening your black water tank all over yourself.

    Trust us, the inconvenience of making and using a checklist is nothing compared to the inconvenience of being drenched in the contents of an RV’s brimming sewage tank.

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  • 29Apr

    What is it about cooking on the road or at a campsite that brings out our inner fat kid? Why do we intrinsically crave food cooked in kettles, cast iron skillets, and open-flame grills the second the city fades from view? There are certain foods that, yeah, you could make any time you want, but you really only make them when you travel. S’mores are an obvious example. Homemade beef stew and chili are another RV and campfire mainstay. Anything barbecue is an obvious choice for when you pitch the tent or pull out the awning, but all too often, these nostalgic dishes get abandoned in favor of hot dogs, trail mix, prepackaged food, and other simpler fare. The main culprit for these missed opportunities? Lack of preparation.

    It’s all well and good to have the desire to cook up a mess of hearty vittles, but if you don’t have the ingredients or the utensils, you’re out of luck. When you’re preparing your trip, remember to plan for some meals! If you’re camping, most of the ingredients will have to be brought with you or purchased at the closest general store. If you’re in an RV, you have a bit more freedom. You should keep your eyes peeled for farms that will sell you fresh produce (usually for much cheaper than at the store), especially if they let you pick your own stuff. Aside from making for a fun activity and a great vacation memory, it’s even cheaper and allows you to find the plumpest, freshest supplies. If you’re in an area known for its cheese, get some! If you’re in potato country, ask the farmer and his wife about some tasty recipes for hashed browns, skillet potatoes, mashed potatoes, potato pancakes, and the like. If you’re planning on catching fresh fish, don’t forget the garnishes and fresh herbs that will really make the dish sing.

    As for utensils, your best bet is to grab a few sturdy, multipurpose essentials. You’ll want a teakettle, particularly if it can be hung over a fire. You’ll want a big stock pot for cooking chili, soup, spaghetti, and anything else requiring a big ol’ cauldron. Include a few different pans and skillets, at least some of which are non-stick to save yourself some cleanup. Bring some Pyrex measuring cups. If you have a seasoned cast-iron frying pan, bring it along too. RV users will benefit greatly by owning a slow or pressure cooker, as you can leave it to slowly cook dinner when you leave for a mid-morning hike. Tin-can Tourists who want to get a little more gourmet can also store food processors, ice cream makers, bread makers, waffle irons, and sundry other comfort food knick knacks.

    Last, and still quite important, is eating and serving utensils. That pot of award winning chili you just cooked isn’t gonna do much good if the only thing you have to eat out of is your cupped hands. Be sure to bring along break-proof or break-resistant plates and bowls, mugs, and cups, though not too many. Bring just as many as you think you’ll need before one washing, and make sure to clean the dishes as soon as the meal is over. It’s a lot more eco-friendly than disposables. Some wine glasses can be fun, and if you have an RV, you can handle their safe storage easily. If you’re camping, though, and still feel like popping some bubbly with friends, bring a few pieces of disposable plastic stemware, and rinse or wash it instead of throwing it away. Then you can use it for several nights of inebriated, off-key singing around the fire.

    We don’t know about you, but all this talk about travel cooking has us starving. What’s your favorite campground or RV food? What’s your go-to snack? Found any brilliant recipes in your travels? Tell us in the comments!

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  • 27Apr

    …stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds. But if the postal service can’t find you, they probably can’t deliver your mail to you, either. If you’re going to be RV travelling for a good stretch of time, or if you’re already a full timer, getting your mail can be a tougher prospect than one may initially think. If your solution at the moment involves having someone with a permanent address forward it to you, know that they secretly resent the crap out of it. Just sayin’. So what can you do to get a handle on your postage? The solution is actually fairly simple, and comprised of three main umbrellas that each cover a few smaller tasks.

    First, go automatic. Look at your bank website and see if you can get your monthly statements sent to you via email alert. Check to see if you can set up automatic bill pay for monthly expenses, so they won’t get shut off or go to collections because the mail hasn’t caught up to you yet. Have your paychecks go through direct deposit, if possible. Full timers will have fewer things they’ll need to keep track of online, as they likely won’t have a set of monthly utilities for a permanent residence the way that a vacationer will. If you’re simply leaving home for an extended RV trip, see if your utilities can forward any notices to your email, and use automatic payment methods to care for them.

    Second, minimize junk mail. Now that you’ve transferred some of your mail to the internet, it’s time to clean up the mail you don’t want. Go to the Direct Marketing Association, the Federal Trade Commission,  and the Federal Trade Commission junk mail site. At those sites, you can file to have your name, address, and cell phone numbers removed from junk mail and junk call lists, which will greatly reduce the amount of envelopes you’ll receive that tell you you’ve already won $1,000,000 on your Preapproved Ultimate-Super-Platinum Credit Card that is also a Brand New House.

    Third, sign up for a mail forwarding service. There are lots of these, and a bit of internet snooping should tell you which ones are worth the money and which aren’t. It will cost you money to ship out packages of your collected mail, so following the first two steps is highly advisable. No one needs to have grocery store coupon books and real estate agent flyers mailed to them at their own expense. That is pretty much the definition of adding insult to injury. Once you’re signed up, check ahead with camps and parks you’re planning on staying at, see if they allow mail delivery, and have your post forwarded to the next one you’re headed to. Let the office know they’ll be receiving your mail and that you’ll be by to pick it up shortly.

    Finally, as an extra step for those tenacious junk mailers that still manage to hassle you, there are a couple of things you can do. If you’re a full timer, don’t leave a forwarding address with the post office. This will kill a huge amount of the junk you’d get. Another trick, and this one is a lot of fun, is to take the prepaid return envelope that comes with most junk mail offers, stuff it full of other junk mail, and insert a note that you want to be taken off their list. Why is this so gratifying? Because they’ve pre-authorized the sending of that envelope, and will automatically have to pay shipping on it no matter how much it weighs. Suddenly, what would normally be a $.02 return jumps up to $.40 or more, depending on how much you get in there.

    Enough of those, and they should get the picture.

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  • 26Apr

    Think fast! What are six ways to spend yourself broke?

    TIME’S UP!

    What’d you get? Think it real hard at us so we can pick it up with telepathy (or, y’know, leave it in our comments). Here’s what we came up with:

    1. Replace your table salt with ground up diamonds.
    2. Instead of toilet paper, use $100 bills.
    3. Restore a classic car.
    4. Have kids.
    5. Become a Wall Street executive. (Ooh, zing!)
    6. Do your vacation budget “on the fly.”

    Fortunately, those things can all be remedied, with varying levels of difficulty. Number one, maybe don’t garnish your food with precious stones. Try hot sauce! Two, use some of those bills to buy quilted toilet paper (or a bidet if you’re feeling sassy). Three, make sure you can tell the difference between “classic” and “money pit.” Four, find ways to stay warm that don’t produce a tax deduction after nine months. We suggest a space heater. Five, well, you don’t really have to worry about it, as you live in a magical world of no consequences. Someone will bail you out.

    Six, being a little closer to what this blog is about, we’ll delve into with greater detail. For the sake of illustration, let’s pretend you and your family (should’ve used that space heater!) are going to take the RV out for a two week vacation in a few months. Instead of just winging your finances, sit down for a minute and plan out what you and the others would like to do and how much you’re willing to spend to accomplish it. Among the group, we’ll say you find a nice balance of camping, site seeing, visiting a lake or river, hitting up an amusement park, and stopping in on some family. Check out the costs involved with buying tickets, passes, and lot rentals for the excursions that will need it. Add in what you think you’d spend on food and souvenirs. Double that, cause if you take your kids to an amusement park, there’s no way you’re getting out of there without spending more on cartoon character emblazoned merchandise than you spent on your first car.

    Now look at the distance you’ll be traversing to get to and from all these places using some kind of mapping website like GoogleMaps, YahooMaps, or MapQuest. Figure out your RV’s gas mileage, and you’ll have a good ballpark for fuel expenditure. You may even end up spending a little less if parts of your vacation involve hiking, biking, or taking free shuttles to get to some of the destinations.

    Plan out how often you’d like to cook in the RV, how often you’d like to eat out, and how often you want to do a “big dinner,” such as at the amusement park or if you visit a cousin and take their family out somewhere nice. Try to stick to that framework, with a little wiggle room on the side for when your family finds some fun stop on the way that they’d really like to try. Discovering hidden gems and awesome hole-in-the-wall eateries is one of the great parts of travelling, and builds strong memories. We recommend keeping your eyes out for any places that claim to have the biggest version of some kind of food, has a “world famous recipe” for something, fries things that aren’t usually fried (Twinkies, ice cream, burritos, etc.), or only sells one type of thing that it does really well.

    Factor in a few nights of attractions, activities, shopping, or entertainment that won’t make themselves evident until you stumble on them, and you’ll have all the ingredients of a well thought out budget. The trouble is, of course, sticking to it, so don’t beat yourselves up if you skirt it here and there. Vacations are about cutting loose, after all. Just make sure you don’t cut so loose that you have to sell the house and live in the RV.

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  • 21Apr

    If you see a terrible electricity pun titling a blog post, it probably means we’re about to lay some science on you. And what do you know! There’s an awful pun right up there! Well let’s put on our lab coats, then.

    Thinking back a few weeks, you may remember a post about Ohm’s Law. It was a handy little device for figuring out voltage, current, or resistance in a circuit, as long as you know the other two. Today we’ll discuss Watt’s Law (also known, quite masculinely, as the Power Law). Ohm’s Law is certainly useful, but if you own a conveyance that uses a lot of appliances, such as a boat, RV, or semi-truck, you’ll like Watt’s Law even more. Say you want to figure out how many watts you’re going to need to adequately power your appliances (you don’t actually need to say it, we can’t really hear you). This is something you would reasonably consider doing if you were thinking of buying a generator or installing a solar panel array, and you wanted to make sure the set up would be sufficient for your energy needs.

    In the interest of accomplishing a goal like that, here is the relationship between the elements of Watt’s Law:

    I know what it says, but we're telling you, you can't eat it.

    I know what it says, but we're telling you, you can't eat it.

    • P = I x E [Power (aka watts) = Current times Voltage]
    • E = P / I [Voltage = Power divided by Current]
    • I = P / E [Current = Power divided by Voltage]

    To do something like determining which generator/how many solar panels to get in order to meet your energy consumption requirements, then, you would add up the current rating on all the appliances you’d be running, and then multiply it by volts (which is almost always 120 in the kind of situation we’re talking about). If the current rating came out to, let’s say, 40, and you multiplied it by voltage, which is likely 120, you would get a total of 4,800. You would then need a generator or solar array able to provide 4,800 watts (which may also be listed as 4.8 kilowatts, just so you know).

    You may be surprised that we didn’t make any pie jokes considering the letters involved and the fact that the diagram is even shaped like a pie. The reason we didn’t do this is because pies are no joke. We are deadly serious about pie.

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  • 05Apr

    There are some things that, when you think about what to take on an RV trip, are pretty obvious. You’re probably going to need some clothes, unless you’re planning on keeping the blinds up in between stops at nudist colonies. You’ll want some food of course. Toothbrushes, toothpaste, towels, tissue paper, and various other toiletries that may or may not begin with the letter “T” will most certainly figure highly, as well.

    But what about the less obvious things? What about the million little things that you’ll wish you had the second you realize you don’t have them? If you’re thinking about taking a trip in an RV, especially if you’re still new to the hobby, it’s a good idea to spend some time putting yourself in the mindset of a mid-RV-vacation traveler. Think first of the places you plan on going, and then of the sort of spontaneous adventures you think you may encounter in between those scheduled stops. The cool thing about an RV is that you’ll have a lot more versatility regarding which possessions and comforts you have access to. The downside is that you still have to consider how much you can bring, where you can keep it, and not overestimating the storage space you have.

    It’s always important to make your own list of things you’ll need, but let’s start with a quick list of things you may not initially think of:

    • Spices, hot sauces, and various other condiments to enhance and differentiate the flavors of what you cook
    • Batteries
    • Lashings, ropes, duct tape, and bungie cords
    • Music!
    • Several types of outfit; hot weather, cold weather, wet weather, swimming, formal, business, space travel, etc. It’s smart to have several pieces that are color and style complimentary, so you can maximize your versatility without taking up much space
    • Several types of shoe: sneakers, slippers, hiking boots, dress shoes, sandals, clown shoes, and rubber flip flops if you ever feel like taking a shower in the petri dish of fungal potential that is a campground shower
    • Fuses and bulbs
    • Folding table and chairs for relaxing outside of the RV
    • DVDs, and if you don’t have one, a 12 volt TV and a DVD player. Or even better, a combination 12 volt TV/DVD player! The space that would have been taken up by a DVD player can now be used for…
    • Board games, playing cards, and other fun, unplugged, family-time oriented activities
    • If you know how to use them, various repair kits; electrical, automotive, sewing, tire, etc.
    • FIRST AID KIT! Always have a fully stocked first aid kid, as well as any prescription medication you need. This one’s so important, we’ll probably do an entry on what constitutes good first aid and emergency preparedness kits.
    • Resealable plastic bags of several sizes
    • Environment preparedness items such as sunscreen, sun hats, sunglasses, umbrellas, ponchos, windbreakers, tire chains, flares, glow sticks, and flashlights
    • All the members of the family who will be going on the trip with you. Getting two states away from home before you realize your wife, husband, or child is sitting on the curb in front of your locked house is pretty much the definition of a no-win scenario. Cause, y’know, you have to go back, but hoo-boy is it gonna be ugly when you do.

    What else can you think of? What other easy-to-forget must haves do you make sure to pack every time? Do you have a “weekend getaway” bag filled with everything you’d need for a spontaneous outing, and if so, what’s in it? Let us know in the comments!

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