5 things your RV NEEDS after a long road trip | MUST-DO steps

So we just got back to our RV lot in Southern California after traveling over 5,000 miles in our motor home, going from Northern Michigan, down the East Coast of Florida, and then West all the way back to California. Here, let me help you. Thank you, thank you. So now that we're finally back, we need to take some time to make sure that our motor home is in ship shape. Now that we've got some time here in the RV lot, the coach is gonna be sitting for a month or two. It gives us a chance to actually catch up on some maintenance items that we've needed to do for a while. Yeah. Chassis maintenance, coach maintenance, systems maintenance, all of those things that need to be done. So in this video, we're gonna be sharing the five things that we try to do to our motor home after every big trip that we go on, just to make sure that she's going to be ready for our next adventure. Anytime we get back, we always try to make sure we do a really thorough wash. The next thing that we always like to do once we get parked and settled is to fix anything that broke on the coach. Chris is usually in charge of organizing the basement and he does a really good job. Another thing that's really important is the chassis maintenance on the coach. Not only do you have the maintenance on the chassis and the engine, but you've got a lot of other systems on here. So after 5,000 miles of driving through all kinds of conditions, I think we saw, we made it, maybe we didn't see snow, but we definitely saw a lot of rain and a lot of dirt and a lot of sunshine and mud. First thing we do is always get the grime off. So coach gets pretty dirty after all of that. We try and wash it while we're traveling, but in 5,000 miles, we maybe washed it one time. So it's got a lot of junk built up on top of it. I think we washed it twice, but every time we would wash it, then we would immediately drive it again and it would just get filthy again. It does seem that way, doesn't it? Kind of amazing. But anytime we get back, we always try to make sure we do a really thorough wash. So we're going to get on top and start with the roof and then we'll work our way down and wash the entire thing from top to bottom. And in case you didn't know, this is a 45 foot motor home. It takes a lot of time to wash it. It does, it does. We will wash it, but we won't wax it. We'll let somebody else wax it if we decide to do that. There's a lot of people at these resorts, I usually have someone come in and wash it for them, but Chris and I like to do it ourselves. It is fun when the sun's out, it's nice and warm and I don't mind doing it. That's right. And the axle is going to be a huge help as usual, laying out on his lawn chair while we're doing this. So we always like to start on the top of the coach and work our way down so that way all the dirt on the roof can just go down and then everything gets cleaned around it. Much easier than working bottom to top. It is, it is. Let gravity do the work. It's kind of amazing how dirty the roof gets on an RV, but it's amazing from all the rain and like if you're parked under trees and just from driving, like the roof gets filthy. But what's really important is while you're up here to make sure that you check all the seals and then also to clean out things that you don't always see or get to clean out. So like the AC units, our Starlink dish top, the solar panels we have up here, those are all important just to make sure that they're in clean and in good working order. Yeah, I mean, make sure that you get all the big stuff off, but most importantly, get the condensers or the coils cleaned inside the AC units because they get up so much dust and they just start working inefficiently. So if you've ever been in one of these coaches when it's hot, you know how miserable it can be if the AC units aren't working right. So we like to make sure that they're always working the best they can work. Yeah, and thankfully it's a nice day that's not too hot because it's a good 20 degrees hotter up here than I think it was down there. I love it, it feels nice. That is dirty. It is dirty, surprisingly dirty. But you look good doing it. Thanks sweetie, you look good filming it. Okay, funny that you do the scrubbing and I just get to do the rest of the thing. Seems like I have the easier job. It's true. You've got the muscles. You've got the looks. It's true, you wouldn't want me to get dirty, now would you? No, well, I don't know how to answer that. Okay, that was a lot of work and I know it probably seemed like it was pretty quick on video, but in reality, it takes us a couple hours to do this from start to bottom. So we started around, I don't know, 11 a.m. and it's already two o'clock. So a couple hours down, it's definitely much faster when you can fast forward on video. Last step after we wash it, Chris always wipes it down with a microfiber towel before it has a chance to water spot and the water dries on it, especially here in the desert, that's pretty important because it'll look really bad after you spend all that time washing it and you don't want all that to go to waste. So now that the coach is all clean, the next thing that we always like to do once we get parked and settled is to fix anything that broke on the coach during our travels. When you're driving your home through an earthquake, you're gonna have some problems. So we've had a few things break over the last two months or so that Chris is going to fix. Some latches on some of the cabinets and things snapped. So Chris is gonna get working on fixing those. So that way, whenever we go on our next trip, it's ready to go. First things first, these latches on our pantry drawers. I tend to keep five or 10 of them on hand. So they're pretty easy to do. Yeah, and usually this pantry is full of food, but we took it all out and moved it inside the casita and it also makes it easier to fix. Yeah, and that's one of the reasons it's nice to do this stuff when we've got it parked. So these are the little plastic clips that hold a lot of our cabinet doors in. They are closed. I mean, they hold our cabinet doors closed. They hold some of our pole doors closed. I tend to have five or 10 of these on hand anytime we're traveling. I get these off of eTrailer. You can buy them at half a dozen at a time, I believe. And we just keep them on hand for whenever we're traveling. But easy things to do for yourself. Oops, except when you drop them. Yeah, and like Chris said, we get a lot of our replacement parts and other things that we need for RV living off eTrailer.com. eTrailer has honestly become our one-stop shop for all of our RV supplies, camping items, organization stuff, automotive things. Like they have a huge inventory of products. It's honestly kind of amazing. What really sets eTrailer apart though is that not only do they have almost any RV part or item that you're looking for, but they have such an experienced team who can help you with whatever questions you have. And you can actually talk to a real person in the US. It's pretty amazing. They have an incredible support team that can offer technical expertise to help you either find the right item or troubleshoot how to use it. Like I said, it's a pretty quick fix. This little plastic piece is held in with two screws. I take the old one out, drop the new one in. It lines up with the existing bracket and you're good to go. One of the other things that we added here again from eTrailer is these little plastic nubs. So it helps whenever we shut the door, it's not slamming wood to wood. It's one less rattle point. Works really well. I just wanted to also give you guys a quick update that eTrailer is running special holiday promotions all through the month of December for the holidays. This is an incredible chance to score some really, really great deals on some items. So if you've got an adventurer or road tripper on your holiday shopping list, or if you just wanna treat yourself, now's the time to grab something that'll actually get used and at a great price. Whether it's items like camping essentials, organization upgrades, towing gear, or just anything that makes RV life more enjoyable, it's the kind of gift that will show you actually know what's important to them. So be sure to check out the link in the video description down below to check out the latest offers from eTrailer.com. Okay, the next thing that we always like to do once we get back from a long trip is reorganize the basement of the coach. So Chris is usually in charge of organizing the basement and he does a really good job, but it doesn't matter how good we do it before we leave on a trip. By the time we get back, because we're always like rummaging through things and trying to get to stuff and going through our supplies, it's a mess by the time we're done with our trip. Yeah, that's true. No matter how well organized it is, it always seems like I put it back in a different spot. Yeah, and this time was also a little bit unique because we sold our other RV lot in Northern Michigan and we had a bunch of items from our house. I shouldn't say a bunch of items. We had some items from our house that were special to us that we have kept and didn't wanna get rid of, like my thimble collection from my dad, for example. So we packed all this up and we're towing it with us the entire trip, the last 5,000 miles. So we have some of these items that we just need to take out now that we're here in California. They'll stay here. And then we got to repack the basement eventually and get this all cleaned up and restocked with all the supplies. Make sure we got enough paper towels and toilet paper stocked up in there. I can go through a lot of that. All right, those are the thimbles. Be careful with that. So we'll keep all this stuff that we're gonna keep here at Desert Shores right here. Okay. Off to the side. These are all the decor and pictures. Ooh, that one's kind of heavy. I gave you the heavy one. An extra brush, extra blue ox. This is probably all garbage. This is a bin of nothing but just a bag for the tire shades. Well, so that's where all the Magna shades and stuff go. So when they're on the coach, of course, then they're not in the bin. Yeah, true. Extra water softener stuff. This goes back in the coach. That we got to go through. This is coach stuff. Yeah, but it's all random. Toilet paper and dog food, but half empty. And then this is my desktop, which is an old barn door from Louisiana. And it made it 5,000 miles. Well, we hope it made it. It's wrapped in a nice moving blanket. It's in good shape. Where do you want to put it? Let's just put it over here. Okay. Random golf clubs. They're not random, that's my whole set of golf clubs. You don't even play golf anymore. Oh, but I don't have a golf bag. We might have to start rethinking the golf clubs. Another thing that's really important is the chassis maintenance on the coach. There's not a lot that we do on this on a regular basis, but I like to just make sure that when we're parked, I go through it and check it for leaks, check it for anything that might look like something's going wrong, check the fluids, pretty simple stuff. But we've caught a couple of things, or I've caught a couple of things on this coach, which were early prevention. One time I was underneath it, I noticed there was a coolant leak. So it was a simple hose clamp, replaced the hose clamp, but that could have been a problem down the road. So it's simple things like that that just help prevent anything. So all I'm doing in here is, you know, we've got our diesel filters in here and our fuel, sorry, our oil filters in here. So I'm not replacing them, but I like to just make sure we don't have any leaks. We don't have anything that obviously looks like, you know, it's a problem that's about to happen. In our last coach, we had a fan, if you've watched us, we had a couple of fan clutches go out and you could actually, in hindsight, I could tell that they were going out because they started to actually leak. So. But of course you didn't know to look there until that happened. Exactly, right? It's hindsight. So now it's another one of those things that I just like to make sure that we, I stick my head in here and because we got it brand new, everything is reasonably clean. It's a little dusty, but there's no wet marks on it that you would see from an oil leak or a water leak or a fuel leak. So I just like to look at everything, touch things, you know, fan clutch is probably high on my priority list just to make sure that everything looks nice and dry. And then I'll check the fluids and peek around at things. Again, just make sure nothing looks like it's coming loose or a belt or, you know, some of these wires that are zip tied in aren't looking like they're coming loose, but basic things like that, just to make sure that we're preventing problems down the road. So the last thing that we're going to talk about today is the overall coach maintenance. So not only do you have the maintenance on the chassis and the engine, but you've got a lot of other systems on here. So we look at the generator itself. It's a small engine. It's a small diesel engine. So check the oil, check the radiator fluid, radiator fluid, sorry, the antifreeze. I don't know why I've done that a couple of times recently where I've called it radiator fluid, but it is actually the antifreeze. Check those just like you check the engine. Then what we'll do is start that up. You're supposed to run the generator, bring it up to temperature and full load for like 15 minutes every 30 days. So we never want to find ourself in a situation where our generator doesn't work and we need it. So we run this about 30 minutes every 30 days just to make sure. And that's really important. Normally we use the generator quite a bit while we're traveling, but while it's sitting here over the winter for the next few months, and we're not traveling as much, it's really important to do that. Yeah, it really is. The other thing is we've got hydraulic fluid and hydraulic systems here for our jacks and for our slides. So you can see there's a big tank right here. And all I do with that tank is make sure that it's at the right levels. And you can see it on the side there where the hydraulic fluid's at. Make sure that we're in good shape. It's supposed to be half full? With the slides out, it's right where it's supposed to be. The next thing we look at is the aqua. I look at this on a fairly regular basis, probably anytime we're in here, but I like to make sure that we do it at least, you know, once when we're stopped. It's hard to see, but back here in the corner is the tank of the antifreeze that they use with the Aquahot system. So the way that Aquahot works, it heats up that antifreeze and pipes that antifreeze throughout the coach to get you the heat in the floors and to get you the heat on the baseboards. So that should be a nice color of green. It's supposed to be replaced every couple of years or something. So I just check it, make sure it's the right color, make sure it's not dirty, make sure it's at the right fill level marks, but pretty straightforward. It just takes a second to glance at it and it's good, but it's important to actually look at. If you had a leak or something and that was running low, it could be dangerous for the Aquahot system. So it's good just to glance at it and check. So the other thing that we do every 90 days, roughly every three months, is replace our water filters. We've got three water filters. This one's actually a UV light. So this one, we don't replace. It looks like a water filter. These are the two filters that we actually replace on our Bluetech system. So pretty straightforward, pretty simple. The key is to try not to get wet. So I try to let the pressure out of it first, slowly, slowly. Chris has learned that the hard way over the years from getting sprayed many a times. So it's just sucking all the water out of the filters now, but that's probably good enough. So very easy to spin off. You've got- Let's see the dirty filter compared to the new filter. It's a little different. I've seen them worse. This isn't as bad as I've seen them sometimes after 90 days. So there you can see the before and after. Pretty gross. First one back in there is the same, but different. That one doesn't look so bad because it's the second filter, but it's a little off color compared to the first one. Make sure you get the seal out of there because it comes with new seals. And this water filtration system makes all the difference. So highly recommend the Bluetech water filtration system. We also have a water softener and a Qi tank, which is an additional filter as well. And if you use the link in the video description below, you can get 7% off your order from Bluetech. Yeah, I mean, it's so much different than the stock water filter, whereas now we've got the multi-stage filtration system with the UV light that's connected to it. And then it goes through the water softener and the Qi filter and everything. So it's much different, much better. And we're not gonna do the water softener today because Chris actually just recharged that while we were in Arizona on our last stop. So it should be pretty good, but we usually recharge that every three to four weeks. And I say we, what I mean is Chris. You help, you're supportive when we do it. Yeah, I help let you know that it needs to be done. That's right. Okay, now that we have the coach back in good shape again after our trip, we can finally relax a bit. I promised Chris that once we got back to California, I would actually let him relax and work on his Corvette some. Well, no, it still hasn't happened. It hasn't happened too much. He's gotten a little bit of work done. I got a day here and there, that is true. It's important to know though that a motorhome is a lot of work. One of the questions we get a lot, people will ask us if diving into the RV lifestyle is a good move if you don't have any experience or if you're not mechanically savvy. Honestly, you can do it without any experience. Chris and I did, but I do think you need to have some level of mechanical knowledge and comfort, at least with learning things, because these are pretty complicated and they do require a lot of maintenance and a lot of time and upkeep. Yeah, I think to enjoy yourself, you have to really have some comfort level with being able to fix a minor thing here and there, because things do break. And if you're just constantly not able to repair them and you got, even like the door latches, if you got four door latches that all of a sudden aren't working and you're trying to move the coach, that's a real pain in the you know what. So it's much easier if you do have some comfort level being able to repair things on these coaches. Yeah, and I can't say enough just about the simple walk-around maintenance or the simple inspection, right? Just look under the coach, make sure you don't see any leaks, you know, near your jacks or near your aqua hot or near your generator or your engine. You know, if you see anything on the pavement, it's time to get serious. So now that we're back in California, we plan on spending the winter here. We're gonna do some traveling here and there, but we plan on being mostly stationary throughout the winter, which Axel is very much looking forward to being able to relax at his own private pool. And Chris is gonna be working on his Corvette. I'm gonna enjoy the pool as well. Yeah, it will be nice. But we just absolutely love being in the Palm Springs area this time of year. It is beautiful and we are so happy and grateful that we get to spend our winters here. So with the holidays coming up soon, we wanted to wish you all a wonderful holiday season and we hope you get to spend time with family and friends. And we also wanted to just thank you again for all of your support without your views, your comments, your interactions, none of this would be possible. So from the bottom of our hearts, thank you so much. And we're wishing you all a wonderful holiday and an awesome new year. And we're really looking forward to getting on the road in 2026. We got a lot of big things planned. If you haven't already, please hit the subscribe button. We wanna make sure that you're following along with us and able to see all of our great adventures in 2026. All right, well, we should have one more video coming out this year, but if we don't see you until next year, happy new year.