Picking up our BRAND NEW RV (and Home!) Alliance RV

Slow! Slow! That was a little, that was coming in a little hot. Yeah, that was a little, a little hot. But now you got one foot, Chris. Yep. Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. All right, today is actually the day we're gonna pick up our RV. For real this time. This is gonna be Chris's first time towing a fifth wheel, second time hitching up the fifth wheel, first time backing up the fifth wheel, and there's gonna be a lot more firsts today. Yeah, so I'm actually a little bit more grateful that it's the beginning of the day. My energy is fresh. I'm spry. It's not the end of a long day that was like mentally draining. So that's a good way to start any new situation. Are you ready for this? I'm so ready. You're gonna kill it. Thank we don't even have a backup camera. So this is kind of nice. We just discovered that if we keep the tailgate up for the most part, Chris can at least line it up. Until we hit a certain point. Yeah, but that's pretty good. It's a good method to get started in the right alignment. We're figuring things out. Yeah, I think we are at a good point now to stop and do our first vision check. All right. Okay. Look who showed up to help us off on our first journey. Our good friends, Jeff and Deb. I have cheerleaders. It feels good to have a support team here because Jeff and Deb have been towing a fifth wheel for many, many years, and they even had the Superglide for many years. All right, Superglide. Love it. Yes. So we appreciate it. We're gonna try to do this from memory, but if we need to call a coach, we'll call you guys in. Call a friend right here. Four feet, three feet, stop. Let's do a check here. Looks a little passenger to me, but what do you think? Well, see, now that's confusing language because I don't know what you're saying you're a little far to the passenger side. See, I think that the pin is passenger. Yes, that's what I'm saying. Okay, I thought you were talking about that. No, the pin, the lineup, we're too far passenger. Jeff, what's your expert opinion on that? Are we too far passenger? Oh, no. You guys can make that. The beauty about the pull right there is that you can be off angle just a little bit. Yeah, it glides in a little bit. Yeah. Oh, Jeff, one thing that's very tight on ours is our tailgate is very tight on here. So if we're too far angled, we could hit. Yeah, the problem is with the tonneau cover, she can't see where her hitch is there. So we're trying to figure out where the alignment is on the headrest. Okay, four feet, three feet. All right, stop for a second. Are we still looking good? Looks pretty good. Yeah. And the way he told us was to have the top of the capture plate to hit about the center. I think it was right around the hump. He said somewhere around here, somewhere around there. As long as you're as long as it's touching there. Yeah. Yeah. Okay, so I'll plug us in here quick. I like to plug it in and then she uses the brakes inside and holds the. Yeah, there you go. Okay, so we'll get a little bit closer just to check our height. Okay. Is your, is your hydraulics that loud? Yeah. Okay. That's normal. Yeah. All right. All right. Stop right there. I think height wise she's okay. That's where we unhitch. So looking good. Does that look good to you? Yeah. Okay. So lever open. Right. That's all I need to do with that. Um, the cord, make sure that's out of the way, right? Yeah. You're looking good. And you told her to pinch the brakes. Yeah. That's why she's doing it. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. She'll pinch the brakes and that, that takes the stress off the leveling lights. Yeah. Okay. So nice and smooth, babe. Uh, two and three feet back. We're going to connect on this one, right? Yeah. We're going to connect. So come back till you hear a click. Yep. Well, slow, slow. Okay. But now that was a little, that was coming in a little hot. Yeah. That was a little, a little hot, but now you got what? One foot, Chris, one foot. Go tell you click now. Yep. Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. That was way too light. That was, that was a little light, babe. No, this is what I like here. This is your key. That's okay. Or did that go all the way up? Yeah. It's not in all. Yeah. I didn't, I didn't think so, but it's close. So once you feel that first, which you may not even feel the first pressure, then you got to do that nice, smooth click into it. I have had, I heard some cheering, like we were in, I heard some emotions out there. Okay. Be ready to stop just in case it's like partially engaged or something. Okay. That's a little bit forward. All right. Stop. As you practice a little more there. What Deb was saying is that, uh, if you raise the RV just a little bit more, yeah, it makes that connection. Okay. I think we just stopped at just the hair too short before it clicked in. So now you're going to go back that one foot, but we need the nice click. Yep. Oh, it was almost like a double click. Like the first click and then a second click. And then you can verify by this little guy being clicked over there. So that, that there, that's what we saw was not on the first one. Yeah. And then the visual in the back. Right. So I see on the one side, you've got plenty of room. Look at all that room. It gets close on that side. Yeah. Jeff, what do you think about this safety? Should that go over here? So it stays, I'm worried about that getting caught up in the turning radius. Yeah. Um, so I go to see this hole over here. I've got an eyeball down here. I wonder if you could put it there because, um, yeah. Oh, there you go. Is that going to, yeah, that'll stay out of there. Okay. And the beauty about that is what, as opposed to the side is that if this ever does come disconnected, it's a straight pull from your brake. Okay. Yeah. Well it won't hang up. I got it. Yeah. That's a good call. I just, Nick recommended, maybe we get a shorter bungee cord. So this is like out of the way. Do you guys do the tug test? Um, no, no, because you used to, uh, yeah, yeah, yeah. We used to, but, uh, this thing pull rights has been solid every time. Yeah. And, uh, when that you get used to this, uh, latch when that locks and that pin, uh, and you verify that then yeah, tug test is important. Okay. So, so this is auto, auto retract. Okay. And that'll bring up all six of them. Does it look shorter than yours? Yes. Bye. Thank you so much for the help. Bye. Okay. We're going to do a little practice now in the parking lot. Yeah. All right. Let's see. Lights are working lights, lights, lights. All right. That looks good. So we didn't do the tug test today. We decided to do a quick tug test. Okay. I don't know why I'm slightly nervous. I think just kind of, you know, I just want to make sure everything goes right. And, uh, this is a big jump up in weight. This thing has a dry weight of 12,800 pounds. And our last travel trailer was just over 9,000 pounds fully loaded. So we got some extra pounds on see what I was talking about with this moon roof. It's like right there. Okay. We got the fifth wheel. It's definitely right there. Yep. And then in the rear view mirror here, it's definitely, but with the diesel, it's got so much torque that just you'd let off the brake and it just rolls forward. Yeah. Like right now it doesn't feel like I'm pulling anything. Yeah. So this is our first, uh, action with the slider hitch, the automatic slider hitch, which is why we got it. So we don't worry about that hitting the cab at all. Great. I can't tell if it's slid or not, but it looks beautiful. How's it feel turning? Oh, that looks so different than the travel trailer. It just, it's just so foreign to us and it looks pretty good. That gray tremor and the black and gray paradigm. It looks really good. So that's a 33 foot paradigm, the shortest Alliance paradigm. And we wanted to stay as short as possible because it's still a very big RV 13 and a half feet tall, three giant air conditioners on there. Can't wait to get the electrical system going. All right. We're going to do our first backup. Chris is going to practice putting her in, putting her in her spot. Yeah. And this looks like it's actually like three spots that are open. So I have a really big window here. Again, this is why we got that automatic slider. So we don't have to worry about it with her backing up and we got to get our backup camera ASAP. No worries with that RV hitting the front cab. Just love that. Yeah. Now that she's clear, I'm moving to the driver's side mirror so she can see me. You're right in the middle of the spot. So you're good. She can see me. I can see her looking good. Looking good. Okay. Very nice. Not, not too bad. Huh? I'm excited to actually have a real reverse camera. Yes. But until then, at least I have like, that way you got the feel for what it feels like to back up a fifth wheel. Cause it's a little bit different than a travel trailer. Okay. Perfect. I think we're ready to get on the road and get to our home spot. I do too. Let's go. All right. So we have our very first right hand turn coming up. It is so interesting to see this big fifth wheel behind us turn as we go. But this is our first big right hand turn. And I think, I think you're pretty confident now after the parking lot. Oh yeah. You know, I really feel quite confident about the driving. I'm still mostly just worried about that very first back end at the campsite because it's full of trees. So. Are you doing, are you, are you going right babe? Yeah. I think. We got honked at in the truckers club. First right turn. Easy. It was that trucker that was at that light too. Anyway, that first right turn was easy, breezy. It feels really good to drive. I think that was a friendly honk that he gave me. Yeah. First railroad tracks. Those were smooth. Yeah. It's very smooth. And even the width of the fifth wheel doesn't feel terribly wide. Like we knew that it was going to be a wider carry and it feels pretty good. Yeah. Actually I haven't really looked in the mirror that much. So not too bad. Yeah. It's probably the height that's going to be the biggest. It's really not much different from the travel trailer in terms of length. All right. Four minutes to our campsite. That was a very smooth and wonderful 30 minute drive. Chris, what do you feel? I feel like awesome. It felt, it drives very smooth, very strong. It feels like it's very straight and secure and there's no, there's no bad feelings on anything. Yeah. I think we can definitely feel the independent suspension as a smoother style of suspension over a traditional leaf spring suspension. For sure. When we were going over those bumps, I felt the bump really hard in the truck itself. But then when the fifth wheel went over it, it was super smooth and so much smoother than what our travel trailer would have felt like. Getting pinstripes down the side of the RV already. First drive. All right. So already the height is crazy. Like we've hit or, you know, slightly drug on three or four tree branches like, and there's nothing you could do about it. Like we were hitting them on both sides. So uh, that's something obviously like it just is what it is. But even these half a million dollar Integras probably hit the same trees. Right. They're probably pretty worn down. Are you ready for our first park? Yep. Okay. Okay. Calling Chris now. Okay. So site C31. Yeah. So the white pole is your left marker and then you'll have a tree over on this side that I'll swing you to. There's one low hanging branch that I want to watch out for. So actually try to get your truck even straight. Can you pull straight? So the truck and trailer are straight. There you go. Yeah. So now it's gonna be easier. There you go. Now you're gonna be able to turn that RV a lot easier. I'm going to get up and get that tree branch really quick. I think I'm going to be doing that a lot. Okay. Yeah. We're ready. Yeah. That branch was going to give us our big old gouge right down the side. Love that slider hitch so far. Looking good. Yeah. Keep cutting driver if you can. You're looking good. I can run up to front if you need me to look at something too quick. Okay. You're basically going to be clear of the tree right now. So we have no idea if we would be able to make a turn like this without a slider. You can see we're slid back a good, I don't know, eight, 10 inches. All right. Yeah. That was, that was really good. Great job backing up. And, uh, this is, it feels so much bigger. Do you think we would have parked our travel trailer in like six seconds? Um, yeah, I think there would have been less back and forth. Um, this was a, this was a kind of a tight spot just because of the poles and the Allegra right there. So it was a harsh turn in. And I think that we did really, really well for it being our first time. I think that our communication was spot on. I got to go to the bathroom. I think I heard you say you do too. Okay. This is taking us so long. We have to take a potty break. Am I shutting it down? Yeah.