Why You Are Wrong If You MUST Make Reservations (RV Life)

We are smack dab in the middle of arguably one of the busiest weekends of the entire camping season. That's way too easy. We get to step up our game a little bit last week. You'll notice we'd left you off on a little bit of a cliffhanger, but we ran into a few hiccups. Looking for a place to stay for just one night with our RV. Do you guys have availability? Are you still with us? But it takes the game to a whole new level. If you just show up like a cold caller and beg for somewhere to stay overnight. Oh no, this up. I don't know what's happening anymore. This looks like the front office. I'm nervous. So if we don't find anywhere to stay, we're going to have no water. I don't even know where we're going. We don't even know how far we're driving. We're just going to pick somewhere on a map. Show you the hookups. It's like, if you don't know the hookups, I don't even know where to start. Spice it up. Let's keep it real and do it the Hank's way. You know how yesterday we were just like calling places, cold calling and just being like, Hey, can we get a spot? I think today we just show up, which we already talked about, but what we do is actually like look ahead of time on the map and see like how far maybe we should go. So that Sunday we're not driving like the rest of the way. How do you spell Defuniac? Defuniac. All right. Let's see. St. Augustine. Let's do a mixture two of Allstates Pro and RV Trip Wizard. Oh, it's saying 110 hours. I was like, why is it going to take us 110 hours to walk? Why is it set to walking? You want to walk it? I don't know what's going on with my life. So we got four and a half hours from Defuniac Springs to St. Augustine. We got tonight and tomorrow night. I say today, each day we go a hundred miles. We're going to cross the time zone today. So it's actually going to be later. So we'll be showing up somewhere like a little bit later. Flat Creek Campground seems nice and it's got, you know what? It's got a pool and all the amenities that people would want for Labor Day weekend. Like that might be the real challenge. If we go somewhere with the pool, we're going to step it up. Because everyone's going to want to be there. Yeah. Makes sense. Makes sense. How about if Flat Creek doesn't work, we're literally just going to stop at every campground and see how they handle being approached. I'm going to film when I walk into these places, just letting you know, like I'm going to wear a camera. So run me through real quick. What is your plan of action when you walk into these places? Are you going to be like, hey, just kind of ran out of some options. Or are you going to be like, hey, just showing up. And I want to see if you have a spot to stay. Well, I don't want to walk in cocky and being like, we just want to know if you have a spot. I think I'm going to walk in like a scenario that most people run into. Let's make it happen. All right, let's do it. You got us mapped. Yeah. And guess what? What? It's my first time driving wearing contacts. Good heavens. No six eyes. I know everyone's going to miss it, though. I'm sorry. We're not complaining. Don't worry. You feel good driving with contacts? It only took you 30 years to put some of those bad boys in, huh? I got them in in like 10 seconds today. It was really great. Better than 45 minutes. OK, what campground are we mapped to right now? Flat Creek Campground. It says it's 80. It's going to take us an hour and 10 minutes. It's 86 miles away. I guess that's enough of a gap. Busy ruined here. That's probably good enough. No, come on. Stop, stop, stop. When do I go? When it's clear. How busy it is. Is there anyone behind us? Yeah, and just start making your way out after this truck right there. That one. Well, I'm going to wait till he passes. Oh, that's a good idea. You go, girl. Turn and burn, baby. Turn and burn. Nice job, baby. Thank you. No, thank you. We didn't fill up the tank at all, the water. So if we don't find anywhere to stay, we're going to have no water. Listen, we're if we don't have anywhere to stay. Water is not going to be the issue. Or just staying hydrated. Yeah, I mean, what's important, what's important? Now, I know a lot of you guys are concerned. Need not worry. The Hanks got it under control. No, we don't. We don't have anything under control. We don't have any plans. This is even abnormal for the Hanks to just wing it like this much. There's a lot of wings flying around today. So we're glad you guys are here. Maintain the energy. We need your encouragement to make this happen, because no matter what happens tonight, we're all in this together. I just want to forewarn you, you're stuck with us. I have a feeling they're going to laugh at me when I walk in. They're going to be like, oh, ho, ha, ha. Labor Day weekend. And you want to stay tonight? We're full. Maybe if I start crying. Or maybe like the front desk receptionist will be like, she's got some cojones, let's get her in here. Yeah, we got a spot just for you. Yeah, that's risky. That's risky. We always risk it for the biscuit and the Hanks families. That's a big challenge right there. We want to show you that like three days worth of trying to find a place and pulling over is possible. Not just one day. But we're going to do it three times over, like beat a dead horse. Yeah, like we're going to just keep doing it. But, you know, we're only on day two and we're getting a little cocky because yesterday worked out so well. You don't think today is going to go so well? I mean, we're we're not we're we're setting it up not good because we're going right for a place as a pool. You know, that place is going to be full today. Not good. Not good. Labor Day weekend and pools. Yeah, that's a bad combo waiting to happen. DJ Dexy, we need some intense music. Can you kick it up a notch? All right. What is that? OK, that's better. I'm not sure what's going on with this thing. It's been beeping a lot over the last couple of days. It keeps doing this. It's not some of the sensors aren't reading. Do you think like, oh, maybe someone stole they like stole them off a rig? But don't they have a built in battery? Those things? I cannot confirm. Or maybe the repeater is like going bad or maybe the repeater, like disconnected by accident. Can you repeat that for me? It's a long drive today. This whole drive in 100 miles is just to add to some of the dramatic effects. Let's start some rain. Thanks, Florida. Raining in Florida. I don't believe it. No way. I don't know what to do with my sunglasses. Literally in the past two minutes, I've just been like, OK, it's sunny. It's not sunny. OK, it's raining. OK, OK, now it's now I got both. Now I got sun and rain. I don't know what's happening. I don't know what's happening anymore. I'll launch. I really hope we can stay here because this area is nice. No way. Is that where they grew high? I mean, it's a little like desolate. Yeah, I don't even know if we could really fit in here. Yeah. Who knows? Flat Creek is our. Yeah, that's what we're doing. What if no one's here? No, like, sorry, we're closed. I'm just going to like help myself to a site if that's the case. This looks pretty cool. They're like, who are these people coming in here? Where are you? We're not expecting anybody. No one's even at the pool or anything like what's going on. I had high expectations that people would be coming here for Labor Day. Weekend. Oh, day, night check in inside. This looks like the front office. I'm nervous. Wow. I don't know. I have a feeling I'm like 50 50. Really? Yeah. Yeah. We don't usually just show up to places, especially on a holiday, just see if there's sites. So we never done this before. No, never done this before. This is a first ever. How nervous are you right now? A little. Not too bad. You just said 50 50. I'm just saying 50 50. Like, will we get a site? Hey, how are you? How about you? How can I help you? We're actually looking for an RV site for tonight. How big is it? Thirty five feet. No reservations. But all of a sudden I come back and I got all kinds of reservations. Oh, geez. Yeah, it's like is it just for the night? Just one night. Just one night. Do you guys have it? All weekend. Yeah. Oh, wow. Really? For Labor Day weekend. Well, we keep sites open for our walk. Oh, because we're right here on the I-10. Yeah. And because we're in the storm center for their storms come through constantly. So people will be driving through a storm and they're like, oh, we ain't doing this. And they'll pull off. I mean, so you always have something available. We always. OK, that's good to know. She does not move out like all of her sites, even for the snowbird season. We're right here on the I-10. We've got traffic coming in both directions for snowbird season. We get more of that traffic. We get more business that way than we do for the long term. OK. We've never done this before. Just show up. Yeah. Let's see what happens. I was like, well, they got a pool. So they're going to be pretty cool on Labor Day. Sweet, sweet, sweet. So that worked out. Wow. That was easier than I thought. Yeah. They said they they always will have overnight spots no matter what, because of like bad weather and stuff and people traveling in I-10. So I thought that was kind of cool. And it looks like we have a pool to ourselves if we want it. Goodness. I thought that baby would be off the chains this weekend. I guess not. What was that? Just a love bug, honey. Just a love bug. We got hundreds of them up here just loving our trailer a little too much today. Goodness. Love bugs. I'm not loving. Day two, we got a site. Nice. High five with the foot. I tell you what, it has been a wild weekend, I tell you. But I am glad to be here. And while hooking up this water pressure regulator, I got to thinking about something that is so relatable to a lot of you out there, I bet if you have this exact same regulator as I do, you're going to be like, no way, check it out. I just talked about it a few days ago. What we noticed is that the pressure was a little bit too high inside the RV. So when I go to make the adjustment once again on the regulator and start turning it down, the actual pressure gauge is not moving whatsoever. So here's the stitch in order to make the adjustments needed on this pressure regulator. You have to release the pressure inside the hose because once you have that established pressure built up within the hose, it doesn't matter how much you crank on the regulator to make it go down. That needle is going to stay in a fixed position. That pressure just won't budge. You need to release it. Once that pressure is released, hook your hose back up, turn it back on and then make your adjustment. That way it will make the actual needle move to the correct position and you are going to get an accurate pressure reading. It's the simplest things, right? Double check that before you throw your regulator away and throw more money at the problem. It's just sometimes the easiest fix. I tell you what, how awesome is that? Because we've been having that problem for the longest time and beating our heads against the wall. We're thinking, man, the regulator is going bad. Really quickly. We just bought this and like a month later, it's already acting up. Not anymore. Thanks, Hanks. Thanks, Bucky's. You want some beef jerky, buddy? Good job, Hank family. We rocked it today. Nice job. High five. All paws in. Well, we made it. We got AC running. Yeah, it's good. Better than all my parking lot. So what do we do tomorrow? Just like go to a first come first serve place or what? You want to get some more wings tomorrow? Get it wing it tomorrow. So far, so good. No reservations, no plans, no problem. Let's see what tomorrow holds. Okay. Good night, Dexter. Night, family. Bucky's. Good morning from just outside Chattahoochee, Florida. It's currently 10 45 in the morning. I'm already sweating my face off right now. We made it to the Eastern time zone. And to say the least, we've been struggling with it a little bit. This morning we slept in more than we usually do. And to be honest, I'm feeling a little draggy this morning. Like I got a good night's sleep, but I'm still dragging the feet, if you know what I mean. Day three of no reservations on arguably the busiest camping season of the entire year. And the singular goal of this entire video is either one. Yes, you need to be making reservations for your RV travels during these busy times. Or two, maybe you're just overthinking it a little too much during the RV travel days. And you just need to get out there and make it happen, Captain. So far, we're leaning towards number two. But you never know what day three is going to hold in store. So hang out with us today because it's getting crazy out here. All right, Dex, man. Slides are in. Water's unhooked, sewer, electrical. You did a walk around. Where are we going? I don't know. All right. We'll just get on I-10. Howdy, howdy do. Here we go. Every time we pull out of a campground that has gravel or rocks or dirt, every time we like finally get up to speed on the interstate, you just hear the sound of like rocks and dirt kicking up underneath. We're so used to it, but sometimes when you hear it after you hook up and you're like, it just like takes you by surprise. And then you're like, oh, yeah, we have all-terrain mud tires or whatever you call it. What kind of tires do we have? All-terrain. When it comes down to it, we have one more night of anxiety trying to find a place to stay. And not only that, a place that has water, at least water and electric and preferably 50 amps since it's so freaking hot. I'm wondering what we can do to spice up this last experiment. Do we just show up to a state park? Do we find like a campground near the beach that probably would be full on a holiday weekend? I am not sure. We're going to complete this experiment. We're going to see what happens. Can we get all three days in a row? I don't know. I will say, though, pulling over and setting up every single night just to take down the next day. It takes a toll on you. I feel like it would be more exciting if we were driving cross-country and you got to see the change in landscape and you're like headed to a cool destination. But we're only driving across Florida on I-10. A lot of people would do this drive in one day, but we're literally just taking small chunks, bits and pieces. So pulling over every day doesn't really have any like cool feeling like we got so far. Look how far we are. Wow. Oh, we got an ambulance going hot. Listen, if you guys had no idea that this law existed, I don't care what state you're in. Speaking as someone that worked on the ambulance for so long, get your butt in the right lane and slow down and do not pass an ambulance going lights and sirens. It's very dangerous. I don't care how much of a rush you are in. It's unacceptable. OK, I'm good now. I'm good. Carl's fine. All right. It looks like there's an accident up here. So we're just going to make our way into the left hand lane here and slower down a little. That is exactly why. Why are you slamming on your brakes? What happened? Well, that's what happens when people rubberneck like that. My heart. So, yeah, that's another thing to be prepared for. We literally just almost got in an accident. I just had a slam on the brakes and I couldn't break any faster or harder than what I was just breaking. When you guys are passing a scene of an accident, slow down, like be cautious, but don't rubberneck. It's so hard. We were going like slow and then all of a sudden someone like slammed on their brakes and caused like everybody slammed on their brakes. Wow. The truck did a really good job stopping this. You know, if that we would have like slammed into that truck, the ambulance and police next to us would have been like, we should have been prepared that somebody could slam on the brakes. But when you're going like you're already like slowing down and going a good speed, you just assume like it's just everyone's just going to like keep it slow through there and what just happened to is like a chain reaction. And now you understand why like traffic does get backed up. One person rubbernecks and slams on their brakes and causes that domino effect chain reaction all the way back. Woo. Well, now we got tire pressures going on. Wow. Perspective real quick. I was worried about like where you're going to stay for the night, but now I'm just like so grateful that we're OK and like no one got hurt. Hey, let's check out these brakes real quick. OK, and see how they're doing. I don't know what I'm looking at, but just the brake pad. I don't know. I mean, I don't imagine anything's going to look. Well, they don't they don't appear to be on fire. So I'm going to say that's a plus. That's good. Oh, tires are hot. No smoking or anything. I don't even really smell them anymore. He did a great job. If that's like if that doesn't tell you, you want you want to make sure you get a tow vehicle that can stop. It doesn't matter about really. Well, it's important to be able to go. But can your truck stop your trailer? Everything seem OK back here. Looks like a trailer tire. That's right, baby. You know what we should go look at the inside. Oh, when we really jolted on the brakes. I mean, that is that's the ultimate test because you're thinking everything in this trailer was just going 60 miles an hour and then came down to like almost a complete stop. OK, let's do it. You know, we don't strap our new new desk or chairs in. So I don't know. Let's go find out. All right, let's go see. Well, we're making our way around. This is a good opportunity to mention that if you are in a situation like this, pull over as soon and safely as possible. So we found a rest stop that just happened to be a couple of exits down. So just pulling over to assess the situation before hitting the road again. Yes, I said situation, not situation. That's the car language after you, madam. Let's go check it out. How are we looking back there? I mean, everything seems fine. Everyone doing OK back here? The dishes are probably broken. All right. We kind of got our bearings. We use the restroom, check the brakes. Everything looks randy handy, randy dandy. What does that mean? Really? So I have an idea. OK, I think we should do a place that has online booking. Yeah, that's a good idea. OK. So I found a resort, Madison RV and Golf Resort. So back in grass for forty dollars, we can do a back in standard, which is gravel for forty five dollars. Or we could do some pull through sites for fifty dollars. You want the cheapest back it in, baby. Yeah, we're not luxury, bougie, crazy people. We don't need we just need an overnight spot to dump some tanks with the hanks and kick the feet up after that crazy, crazy close call. Do they have availability? Yeah. Wow. It's like I mean, it doesn't say like it doesn't. All right. Like it let me it says proceed to check out site selection back. And yes, back in grass. Maybe where they have us parking is like where golf balls might end up. We're on like hole 17. Yeah. Where people start to get frustrated and they're like forty three dollars for one night at a really nice RV resort. I have a feeling this site we just booked is like not going to be very nice. Actually, now that I'm thinking about it. Well, now that I'm thinking about it, you're like on grass. I thought like back up to grass. I don't know what I was thinking. I just total brain fart. So we're actually going to be on grass. Yeah. Like with all the rain we get in Florida, how do we know we're not going to get stuck or like have to move sites? I guess we'll see when we get there. Yeah, I guess we will, honey, because I wasn't the one that made the reservation. That was all you. You were. Well, I don't know. I'm really starting to rethink this grass spot that we got. The grass is going to be really soft and we're going to be in six inches of mud before we know it. Where is everyone for Labor Day weekend? What did you guys do Labor Day weekend? Hey, would you like to check this in so we don't have to keep doing it? Yeah. OK, we'll be right back. Is this even the office? Yes, we just made a reservation online like maybe an hour or so ago. Oh, awesome. A little orange slip of paper with the Wi-Fi code. Oh, sweet. I always forget about Good Sam, but they don't have a spot on the website when you book to put your Good Sam card. So it's one of those things that if you have Good Sam, you might want to call or just show up to use your Good Sam card. Make sure you have it on. Yeah, make sure. Yeah. Good call. We're getting the full service now. We're sending it. I'm putting pedal to the metal. Oh, that's not fair. You get to squeeze in between the yellows. You can't do that. No. So not only do we get a place to park, but pull through sites. Make it sure. Oh, he's just leaving. OK, I love that. That's the best. It's like, yes. OK, park us and get out of our hair, please. We got our own way of doing this. Yeah, when people try to, like, tell you how to show you the hookups, it's like if you don't know the hookups. I'm like, I've only been doing this for five years for life. And then you get out and they're like, well, I think it's good. You want to ask your wife? I'm like, what was this about? Yeah. Just ask the wife in the first place. I know. Ready to set up. Ready to let her rip. No reservations. No problem. So I think the main concern about a lot of people out there that say you absolutely have to make reservations for busy holiday weekends, I think the main concern is a lot of the times people are as flexible as they want to be. They like knowing that they have a spot held for them. There's going to be places that you could stay at. You could just show up. You could book online. You can call them. You're going to be able to get a spot. You're not going to be stuck in the Walmart parking lot in 100 degree weather. Utilize those programs that we've been talking about. RV Trip Wizard, All Stays Pro. Those will get you kicked off on the right path. This is also to prove to the people who are driving across country that you don't have to plan each night, like three months in advance. Nice one. You can call that very day, which is what we've been doing for five years, because you don't know how far you're going to drive. I'm always thinking of the naysayers out there. I'm always thinking of the people that are sitting there that are like, but what about this? But what about that? But yeah, I get what you're saying. But this is just to give the people who are concerned about not having absolutely any place to stay some reassurance. Yeah. I mean, you can nitpick the crap out of life, basically. But let us tell you, maybe RV life really isn't the avenue you want to head if you are one of those people. So keep it fresh. If you're looking for fun, flexible and adventures, RV life is perfect for you. But if you need consistency and just really like secure security all the time knowing exactly what's going to happen, yeah, you can make it happen. But it's going to be so stressful. I want to stay the whole weekend. What do I do about getting a spot the whole weekend for Labor Day weekend? Well, guess what? Two out of the three campgrounds we went to this weekend said they had availability all weekend. And those places had multiple sites available all weekend. Say what you want. But we brought the facts, Jack, and we're laying it all on the tube. Boom! What's up? We love you guys. Go check out our other videos. We have so many other wonderful videos starting with these two right here. We'll see you guys next week. Bye guys!