I did a Q&A on Instagram about my experience as a first time RVer, so I also thought I’d capture some of my favorite photos here and share some takeaways, too.

I am really about the least outdoorsy person you will ever meet. I love traveling to cities across the world, enjoying their local foods, admiring unique architecture, and getting caught up in the hustle and bustle of life in a place full of people. I don’t like to hike or really do any walking unless it involves exploring a unique street market or moving towards a delicious restaurant meal. But with COVID-19 locking us all down in our homes, I started to think about how I could safely enjoy a new change of scenery and a new experience, and a home on wheels seemed an intriguing solution. Unlike my city adventures across the globe, this could be a way to explore and appreciate some of those National Parks that my own country seemed to be so famous for—something I may never have done as a U.S. citizen were it not for the unique circumstances of a global pandemic.

So, my spouse and I rented the smallest RV we could find with a complete kitchen and bathroom that allowed us to bring our dog, Oolong. We wanted to be as self-contained as possible out of consideration for health guidelines. We ended up going with El Monte RV, but I wouldn’t necessarily recommended it because the RV presented minor inconvenient flaws throughout the trip (leaky sink, side mirror wouldn’t stay in place, reverse camera stopped working, stove stopped igniting without a lighter). But it did feel clean and spacious. Here is a very detailed video on the RV I rented, which we found on YouTube from a WA-based company; we were grateful to have found it because our own RV walkthrough from the company we used did not provide nearly enough of the necessary information as this video did.

Here are some quick notes based on the questions I received:

• It cost $4000 for us to rent for 13 nights. We also spent about $900 in gas.

• Dumping the waste tanks was okay once we (by “we” I mean my spouse) knew what we were doing. “Gray waste” from the sinks and shower and “black waste” from the toilet are both stored in tanks outside of the RV cabin, and we didn’t experience any foul odors getting in. The process is to connect the provided hose to the pipe on the outside of the vehicle and to insert the other end into the hole at the dump site, then release the black waste first followed by the gray. The gray waste helps flush out the hose to prevent the process from being smelly.

• We parked in a combination of free rest stops and “sno-parks”, national park campsites, other foresty camp parks, and random pullouts along the side of the road (so long as there were no signs prohibiting overnight parking and other RVs/campers were also parking there). We avoided “RV parks” that were just parking lots without separation between the spots.

• I would not recommend trying to drive the RV around for lots of different activities in a city with small streets and tight turns. When we were in Seattle, we parked the RV near a large park and walked downtown to avoid driving on streets that were not conducive to a large vehicle.

• Having a dog with is did not hinder us at all on our trip. However, we did choose to travel through the PNW because of the weather, knowing it would be safe to occasionally leave Oolong in the RV without it being to hot if we wanted to do a non-dog-friendly activity. We thought Oolong would have the best time of her life on this trip, because she loves going to the beach or sniffing trees, but we could tell on the road she had mixed feelings. She was anxious about the drive and bothered by the loud noises of everything rattling through bumps and turns, and she got carsick from a particularly windy road. However, we think she particularly enjoyed the Oregon Dunes, the Hoh River, and in general getting to sniff lots of different trees and bushes.

Highlights for me included:

• Digging for clams in the Puget Sound area and foraging for blackberries in Northern California

• Take-out Thai chicken rice from Nong’s Khao Man Gai in Portland

• Cooking over a campfire

• Having lunch while overlooking Crater Lake

• Picking up some amazing smoked salmon from Jack’s Fish Spot at Pike Place Market

• Waking up in a new place every day that was quiet and smelled of either the forest or the sea

I realize that many of my highlights involve food. Hmm…

Here is a map of some stops that felt notable to me: