Eric G and John Dudley jump into the nitty-gritty of hantavirus and pest control, tackling the not-so-fun reality of what happens when our furry little friends invade our spaces. Don’t worry, though; they sprinkle in some humor while discussing the serious stuff—like how to keep your home safe without turning into a hermit. After that, they switch gears and dive headfirst into the adventurous world of camping this summer! From RV shenanigans to the best state parks to pitch a tent, they’re all about making your outdoor escapades memorable and slightly less chaotic. So, whether you’re a seasoned camper or just a curious couch potato, grab your favorite drink and tune in for some real talk and playful banter that’ll have you itching to explore the great outdoors!

Takeaways:

• The hantavirus is not just a scary headline; it's a real health concern we need to manage at home, especially if you have pests like mice lurking around.
• Cleaning up rodent droppings requires serious precautions, including wearing protective gear and using specialized vacuums to prevent health risks.
• If you're thinking about camping this summer, preparing your RV can save you money and provide a fun escape into the great outdoors with friends and family.
• Buying a used RV can be a smart choice if you know what to look for, like avoiding those that were previously lived in full-time.
• When it comes to pest control, it's crucial to understand the local laws and regulations, especially regarding humane treatment of animals like rats.
• As summer approaches, planning your camping trips early will give you access to the best spots and keep your adventures hassle-free.

Links referenced in this episode:

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Foreign.

From home repairs to smart home technology.

This is around the house, your national source for real answers to your home improvement questions.

Joining us today are host era G&CO host John Dudley.

Whether you're listening on the radio, watching on YouTube or streaming the podcast, they're diving into the projects, problems and pro tips that save you time and money.

Visit them online anytime@aroundthehouseonline.com and now, here's.

Eric G. Welcome to the around the House show, your trusted source for everything about your home.

Thanks for joining me today.

I'm Eric G. Hey, John, how we doing today, brother?

Doing all right, man?

What's happening, man?

I tell you what, I have been watching the news, which is always dangerous, and everybody out there is freaking out.

My message inbox has been filled with these questions about the Hana virus thing.

And this is one of those things that we've seen it here in the States.

It's from usually playing around in the farm or cleaning up mouse droppings or things like that.

But the cruise ship kind of changed things on the news and all of a sudden people are freaking out about wearing masks and going back to Covid Part two again, which nobody wants to do.

So I thought, let's talk about the facts.

I am not a doctor, don't pretend to be.

But we can talk about the basic facts that we get out of the news here and kind of put this together and show how you can keep your house a little more safe with this stuff.

And John, I don't know if you noticed it, but on the news they had that whole thing with the cruise ship and the Andes Hanna virus and all that stuff down there.

And it's an interesting one.

In the United States, you traditionally don't, let's say I was in a crawl space cleaning up mouse droppings or whatever and I got it.

If you and I went out and had a, a beverage later, the chance of you catching them for me is slim to none.

I mean, it's just not going to happen that way.

But the problem with is this different version of it out of extreme South America, that one kind of spreads around a little bit more like the flu does.

So if I had the flu and we're hanging out together and I cough or do something like that, guess what, maybe you'll get it.

And so there's some differences here that I thought, let's talk about.

And then of course, how do we sit there and keep our house a little more healthy?

So even if we have our local version of it here, how we don't get sick because it's still a dangerous one if you catch it.

I mean, I think there's a 38% death rate if you get it.

So this isn't something you want to mess around with.

But at the same point, I just want to make sure that we're not over freaking out over stuff that, well, isn't that big a deal, right?

That never happens over freaking out.

Yeah.

How many times have I told you to quit watching the news?

The only reason I know about news anymore is because my gal tells me about it.

I.

If I watch the news, I would just worry about a bunch of stuff I can't do anything about, like my little brother.

Absolutely.

Well, no, no question, man.

So let's talk about how this thing happened down on this cruise ship thing, it looks like.

And again, this is just preliminary information.

So I'm taking the news and kind of going, okay, let's see if we can put something together here.

It looks like you had a couple who, it sounds like later died from this.

They went out before the cruise and went bird watching, which seems so innocent, except they were walking through a garbage jump in Argentina or someplace down there to go watch birds.

Not smart.

I don't know.

I wouldn't go on a vacation.

Hey, let's go to a garbage dump in another country.

Seagulls or what?

Yeah.

I don't know.

I'm like, that's.

That's not awesome.

Well, this was before the ship.

And of course, for the time they got on the ship, allegedly they had the Hana virus, the.

This other version.

And so what happens is you put 150 people on a small cruise ship, and with this stuff spreading around, kind of like the flu does, more people get sick.

And that's the thing that was probably a pretty dangerous thing to do going down there.

Nobody knew about this, so it's not like they had any idea what they were getting themselves into.

But I would have not wanted to bring all that stuff onto a cruise ship because, I mean, I learned one thing from Caroline when we were doing a lot of our episodes together years ago is she's like, when you come in the house, take your shoes off because they're nasty.

Why should put it around your house, do a lot more of that.

Now, the US Is one place that nobody pays attention to that.

But I'll tell you what, you go to all these other countries that everybody thinks are so dirty and third world everywhere in Asia, everywhere here in South America, people have a different set of.

It's usually flip flops, right yeah, you leave your freaking shoes at the door and they're serious about it.

Same thing.

Ukraine, Russia.

Yeah, they're like shoes off.

Gross.

Yep.

Yeah, totally makes sense.

When you go off in the garage, we got a shoe rack right outside the garage door in the garage.

It stays out there and pop around and whatever else.

But I think that is probably the most likely scenario with this.

But now people are going, okay, oh my gosh, I have mice outside and different mice, different rats, things like that.

And if you live on a farm or you live in the country or even living in the city, they're everywhere.

I mean in Tacoma, remember the.

Remember if you remember at old time woodwork, remember those wharf rats that would be walking around in that place?

Yeah, dude.

Yep.

They're the size of a cat.

Yeah, yeah.

No, it's.

Well, New York's that way as well, but.

Oh, Thailand, dude, they're the size of your leg.

Yeah, huge raccoon.

No, it's a rat.

No, stay away.

But I wanted to talk to, you know, our seat.

I want the people, I want the people in Portland to pay very close attention right now that won't let that try to stop the rodent killing.

No, don't kill the.

Gosh, we want the HANA flu.

Yeah, actually, yeah, there's the crazy thing Is with that IP28 or whatever it is, that initiative that wants you to, wants to make it a criminal offense to kill a rat with this HANA virus thing going around.

That's really not the best idea either.

Yeah, let's put rat lives over human lives.

Rat lives matter, Eric.

Yeah.

Oh my lord.

Oh my gosh, there's the New York Times.

I'll stop, I'll stop.

But you know what I'm saying, brother, it's just insane.

And I'm looking at this and it's like, this is crazy.

And here's what we should be doing in our homes.

I mean, here's the thing.

If you've got a crawl space, probably half the homes in the country have a crawl space.

There's not that many in the Southwest and then Pacific Northwest there's a ton the Midwest, there's some.

A lot of basements out there and the basements work too.

But all these places that we never go that are below grade are just prime for those as well as anything out in the barn.

They love to live in classic cars.

Mice have a huge problem with some vehicles out there because they went to a soy based greener wire wrapping.

Well, guess what?

That's food for them rodents.

That's delicious.

That's delicious.

They're going out for Thai food.

Speaking of Thai, they've got the soy based wrapper on the wires and all of a sudden you're in for a few thousand bucks at your local Toyota or whatever dealership you've got out there.

So it's absolutely nuts while these things are tearing stuff up and the rodent droppings get left around.

And half the time that's the one thing that you use to to see if you've got them is you might not see them.

But when you see the rodent droppings and crawl spaces are so big on that one and so much air goes into your crawl space.

So if you have a concern about this now, couple things you can do is one, get that crawl space cleaned up.

I recommend if it's a really big concern is to go ahead and go through and do a full encapsulation in there.

And that's where they come in and use the thick kind of rodent proof factory fabric, wrap it all the way up.

They just hermetically seal that and then they put in with clean plastic.

It's all sealed off to the outside.

No venting, no nothing.

And then you put a dehumidifier in there to keep the moisture from coming in.

And you've got a space that's going to be clean.

That's kind of the ultimate in that.

Yeah, that's the luxury version.

It is a decent size lift.

Sounds good, but yeah, dude, it is.

And by the time you pay somebody to come down there, I mean, some of these dehumidifiers now the mounted ones in there are insane on price.

A handful of years ago there were a thousand bucks.

Now they're almost four or five.

And so you can spend 10 to 15 grand down in your crawl space that you don't ever want to see.

It will keep mold down in your house, it will keep for healthy air coming into your house.

But dude, that gets pretty expensive quick.

Yeah, that's crazy expensive.

You brought up the southwest and I just want to make sure that there's tons of roof rats there is what I'm getting at.

Right.

So it's not just a crawl space.

This can end up in your attic as well.

Which if you've got something vented wrong, if your range hood is actually just dropping into the insulation in the attic is full of rat poop.

You might want to.

If you want to find out more about us, head over to aroundthehouse online dot com.

We'll be right back after these important Messages don't go anywhere.

Never understand what it's like to play an instrument, to be in a fan.

What's up?

This is Sticks It In Ya and.

Satchel from Steel Panther.

And you are listening to around the House with Eric G. Yeah, we love Eric G. And you should too.

Welcome back to the around the House show, your trusted source for everything about your home.

Thanks for joining us today.

Johnny and I enter in the commercial break here.

Just came up with a complete marketing plan for Rat Lives Matter.

So that will be.

So who's ever listening.

Pay attention out there.

You could steal that probably in about five minutes exactly.

So much fun, man.

So much fun.

And this is crazy.

Mice squeezing around in your home and doing damage is tough and it can be such a rough one.

And there's so many things you could do to keep these things from getting in.

First off, I say the size of a pencil, they can break themselves down into squeezing into something as small as a pencil.

And so just make sure and walk around where the, where the cable guy went into or.

Or the H vac lines going to your house.

There's all these places where maybe a hole was drilled and it didn't get sealed up.

But these days you don't have to just like jam it full of steel wool and try to caulk it in.

They make spray foam now that has.

I don't know what they're putting in it.

I think it's got like hot sauce or ghost pepper or whatever in it.

And they put it in the spray foam so you can clean that all up and spray foam, clean it all up, throw a coat of paint on it.

Looks perfect.

And block off those things.

And they just won't go through that stuff because they'll get a bite out of that.

Go.

Whoa.

Not my entrance.

Not my entrance.

And I've seen or just, you know, daily throw, throw cheese in the neighbor's yard if you want.

Dude, I tell you what, the neighbor's yard can be one of the biggest places for this.

And you know where I see it.

And we have it here around in my area.

And that's the issue.

There's somebody out there your side.

It's like fleas on the.

You got the Pied Piper next door and what they're doing is they're feeding all the birds.

They'll go out and take the five pound bag of bird seed and pour out on the ground in front of.

On their concrete patio.

And now you got all the rodents over there, you got the birds over there.

You even Got the, the raccoons, trash pandas or whatever hanging out over there.

And it's just a hot mess.

We had that at my last house where somebody would sit there and, and you could just see if you.

I put a camera on it and you could just see them coming under the fence.

And I was like, all right, now we know where it is.

And so we ended up the neighborhood kind of worked around it and luckily they were a renter and ended up leaving.

But man, they caused a neighborhood hot mess with that.

Yeah.

And the problem is too is areas where you've got the homeless camps and all that other stuff.

Same kind of thing, just garbage everywhere that's just feeding them.

So it can be a battle.

And I'll honestly, here's the thing, if it's something that's out of control, you can do it yourself and try to get them.

But there are times that maybe spending the money and having a professional come out and deal with it is going to be your best bet.

Not a lot of people like dealing with dead rodents.

You gotta dress up into gloves and a N95 or better mask.

Little eye protection out there and you don't need to be messing that stuff.

So when in doubt, hire the professional.

They'll come out and put their bait boxes or traps or whatever they do out there and they'll get it taken care of.

But man, I don't, there's not much I won't mess with just because if you're going to be stupid, you better be tough.

But, but that's one thing I'm like, I know rodents now.

I want no part of it.

Yeah.

And in the mess that they create, and I know people are out there having lunch, dinner, breakfast, whatever they're doing when they listen to this.

So we're not going to get into it, but you really got to get in there and if you're going to vacuum it up, you gotta have a HEPA vac or a HEPA filter in there.

And still at that point you better have a good one.

I don't want to see that stuff.

So really you kind of need to suit up, get everything cleaned up, prevent them from coming in.

And then you gotta hit the, hit the something, whatever you're gonna use, whether it's a 10 bleach solution or whatever, you gotta just absolutely disinfect everything.

And, and I, I don't want to give anybody any ideas out there, but I do want to caution anybody, as I was a property owner for many years and a landlord, there's some Liability there.

So you need to be on that stuff.

Yeah, John, excellent point.

If you're a landlord, this is where your biggest mistake is, being cheap.

Because you want to be able to defer that.

Hey, I hired company ABC to come handle this.

And here's my receipt.

Effort, good, good faith.

Effort goes a long ways in court.

If some jackass decides to sue you because he got.

I got sick.

Yeah, absolutely.

You probably got sick at the restaurant you ate at last.

Oh, man, I tell you what, I have been in a lot of.

I. I'm a die bar connoisseur, but when I see that the rats are coming out of the kitchen, that's when I start going, yeah, maybe not, but.

Yeah, again, yeah, really going through.

And then here's the problem, though.

You run into.

When you DIY this.

Yeah.

You got all your clothing.

How you gonna disinfect that?

What do you do there, Fire?

Yeah, it's tough.

It's.

It's.

It's just like anything else.

Okay?

You can put it outside and let the UV help.

But really now you're cleaning all this mess up.

And I think it's just, it's get.

It's crazy.

Get a professional.

Yeah, yeah, get a professional Tyvek overall.

You gotta do it yourself.

Get.

Yeah, if you gotta do it yourself, get some overalls that you're throwing away when you're done.

Because, yeah, you don't want that stuff in your clothes at all.

And you can't use the paper mask, the cloth mask, all that stuff.

You gotta use something that's certified and rated, so it needs to have an actual N95 on it, not the.

Not the cheapy one your doctor gave you when you came in and had a cough.

You gotta have something that's pretty solid that seals up, that's actually gonna work.

And, and trust me, getting the professionals in to do this isn't that big a job.

If you've got it really bad, it might even be something that, that if you've got a ton of damage, it might be something that the insurance company can help you with.

Be careful with asking questions, but do.

And here's one thing with insurance companies.

Let's talk about this for a second, Johnny, because it's important.

It's always great to have your friend as the insurance agent versus calling up the 1, 800 number.

Because as soon as you call up the 1, 800 number or talk to somebody you don't know, I've seen this happen.

Hey, I've got a potential problem.

I'm not sure If I need to do a claim on this, if I did, would it be covered?

I had a buddy selling somebody's house.

It went through the whole process and they're like, what about the water damage claim from two years ago?

Yeah, Nobody had any water damage claim.

Somebody from had called up and said, what if I had water damage?

What's my, what's my deductible?

And stuff on that.

They called it.

They put a note in the file, water damage.

And then they had to go back and have all these other inspectors going in the real estate sale just because someone called up the 1, 800 number for the insurance company and it came up in the title search and stuff in it.

So.

Oh, geez, again, be super careful with that stuff.

But everything you do with cleanup, let it be disposable, throw it away.

I don't like vacuuming stuff up because again, unless you've got something insanely crazy out there as a, as a vacuum, it's just gonna spread it around.

It's so moving the air.

Yeah, absolutely.

So.

Not that I haven't done a thousand times with the shot.

Oh, man.

I have gotten a mask thinking it's fine.

I have gotten so lucky over the years from cleaning out that shed.

And you see it and you're like, I'll be fine.

It just takes once to not be fine.

Hey, we're running out of time.

When we come back, we've got a lot more of around the House.

If you want to find out more about us, head over to aroundthe house online.com and make sure you follow us on all our social media channels and everywhere else.

We'll be right back after these important messages.

Welcome back to the around the House show, your trusted source for everything about your home.

Thanks for joining us today.

If you're just joining us, we just wrapped up talking about Hana virus and all that stuff to make sure that you can keep your house a little bit safer.

But Johnny, Lisa and I went on this last couple of weeks ago, dude, got an rv, we're going camping.

Nice.

And I tell you what, you think about it.

Wow.

I've lived in them and I've toured in them and I know what kind of work they are, so let's just leave it at that.

Yeah, well, it's funny, I go, man, hotel rooms are expensive.

Let's get an rv.

No, you could buy a lot with what you spend on an rv.

You're not saving any money.

It's like a boat, right?

Yeah, it's a boat.

It's a Boat, you know, it's not an investment.

It can be a lot of fun.

And for me, in my situation, it is going to be a way for me to break away and turn my brain off every once in a while, which I think will be healthy, but.

Good luck with that.

I know, right?

Day drinking and campfires.

That's.

That's where I'm at.

So this close.

This is close to as turned off as your brain's gonna get.

Exactly.

Exactly.

What's interesting.

And.

And it's one of those things that I learned a lot going around and looking at the process, because brand new RVs, dang, they are expensive.

But if you buy something that's been well cared for, that's a few years old, you can do okay with them.

We didn't go out, buy something new.

We bought something used that was exactly what we wanted.

And it was like, all right, here we go.

But there are so many things when you're looking at RVs, and the first off is, what are you going to tow with if it's going to be a trailer?

We got a trailer.

And we were debating because RVs can be great for families, but I was like, all right, I'm going to pull something because I want to be able to.

If we want to run to town, I want to have to pack up camp.

Right.

If you knew a van or a motorhome.

Yeah.

Put everything in, and I don't want to do that.

So we got a trailer, and I needed to find something that my.

My truck would pull comfortably because I don't want to go blowing stuff up there either.

But the other thing with RVs, and I'm not trying to justify it for people, but there are some added benefits.

One of them is that I think is really cool, is that if you do this right and you're doing a kitchen remodel, it gives you a place to cook, and it gives you a place to escape away for that major remodel.

You could pull it up in the driveway or on the side out of the way of the construction crew, and you got a place to live, and it can be a pretty good way to go.

And you and I were just talking about a few months ago, Johnny, about some contractors out there that are actually using RVs or mobile kitchens that they've had made in food carts that they're.

Putting in such a brilliant play.

I mean, yeah, it's fantastic.

Super smart.

I'm going with that guy.

I'm like, okay, I don't have to move out.

I have to Go to a hotel and I have to pay for restaurants for a month.

You do this.

Fantastic.

Yeah.

Have a little bit of life there somehow.

But plays for poker nights or we just had a big fight nights.

It is the dog house you can sleep in.

Let's put it that way.

It is.

And.

And it's smart.

I think it's a good way to go.

And the other thing that I like about it is that we have storms here in the northwest and it doesn't make sense for me where we live now to put in a power backup or anything like that.

But if you got the RV set up, I've got solar panels on the roof on that thing, so it's pretty self sufficient.

I can go in there and hey, we're going to go over the rv.

Let's bag on the house for.

Because out here with trees twice in the last six years.

I've been out power at my house for four to six days.

Twice.

Yeah, it's brutal.

And at least you got a place you can go put your freezer food and all that stuff because that's running and you can do something with that.

And it's a lot better pool than have to go in and do that.

And summertime, it's great.

You can go out and take family time, go fishing, hunting, camping, whatever you want to do.

Go to the lake, go to the beach, go to the mountains, whatever.

Sounds good to you.

Not for long in your state.

Oh, dude, I know.

Keep throwing it in there.

I have to keep throwing it.

It's just so.

It was funny.

I was talking with Craig from the homeowner show here recently.

He was in town here and I told him about that when we were sitting at dinner.

And then of course he put it on his show last week or the week before and I was laughing that he was dogging on it too.

And.

And sorry, it's crazy, but really, I think it's a really smart one.

But I learned a lot of stuff.

There's a lot of things that have upgraded since I last had an RV out there.

And when you go buy the rv, you need to plan on a few thousand more bucks probably if you're going to fit that thing out by the time you put in the.

The sewer hoses and all the other stupid little stuff you need to get.

Yeah, that's when it becomes a boat.

You're like, oh, that's exactly what it does.

Oh, we need one.

What is that?

Oh, what do you.

Yeah, that list never ends, by the way.

Oh, dude, it doesn't I mean it's.

Oh, do you have corner jacks that stabilize it?

Well, yeah, you wind them down.

It stabilizes it.

Great.

If you're gon to stay in the state park, you need to have plastic things that don't hurt the asphalt in the hot summer.

Okay.

There's one more thing, right?

Oh, you need to have a pressure regulator for the hose so it doesn't over pressurize and hurt the fittings in it.

Of course.

Oh, don't forget about the surge protector for it too.

That's 30amps.

Oh, there's another thing.

Yeah.

You need a carpet out in front of it so you can set everything up and you need.

Yeah, huh?

Yeah.

Then they need the barbecue.

So.

Yeah, I'll be doing some videos on outfitting that, get that thing going.

But I'm.

I'm excited for it because one, it's going to give us some camping stuff.

Two, it's going to give us some music festival stuff, which is going to be a lot of fun.

Yeah.

And a couple things that I want to talk about here before we go out to break that I think is super cool too.

It's great for you to take your pets out.

But a lot of things when you're out there looking.

The two things that I think that are the biggest problems with these are one, somebody was living in them.

So you want to make sure if you're out finding something used.

Those were designed really to be part time camping things.

And now with housing prices and stuff, there's a lot of people that are living in them for years.

You don't want to get some RV that's already got all the life squeezed out of it, you know what I mean?

And paying a premium for.

So you want to make sure of those things.

Two, there's a lot of little maintenance stuff.

So many people will look down and look at the tires and go, oh, tires look great.

Well, they're seven years old.

Probably need to be changed.

Doesn't matter if they're.

Especially if you're in the hat.

Like the desert southwest where you were, you know, old tires, you get crusty or bad.

Not only tires, but you, you just brought up.

There's so many grommets on everything, right.

Little everything's got a little rubber grommet that goes to garbage in the sun.

In the sun just dries up, they're gone.

So you're like, oh, this RV's been sitting on the lot for a year.

They maintain them kinda.

You fire everything up, you put some water pressure through everything.

And you're like, okay, we got water fountains everywhere.

Yeah, absolutely, absolutely.

And then people take them out there and they got the summer edition one not thinking they're going to take it up in the mountains.

And I know people that were out camping last weekend and it was snowing in the mountains up here at 8,000ft a couple of weeks ago.

There was a foot of snow up at the, up at the campground up there in the mountains.

And it's.

Did you get something that's insulated, that's got a winter package to it?

Do you have a water hose that goes in, that's got the heated water hose and yes, they make those.

They got a plug in and there's a little low voltage cord that goes through it to make sure it stays warm.

But a lot of those things, you need to understand how you're going to take it, where you're going to take it and what you're going to do with it.

And you could do three hours on what's spent on that.

And then of course, there's just all the things of, of the fun stuff of RVing.

The gray water tank, the black water tank dump and all that stuff.

It can be a little bit of work.

Yeah, it's.

Yeah, yeah.

Been there and done that.

Yeah, yeah.

And it's not, I mean, more so on tour than camping.

Yeah, yeah.

Or it's the same kind of thing.

Whose turn is it to dump the tank?

Dump the tank.

Dude, you're flipping coins, you're arm wrestling.

And a lot of people would rather buy the beer for the next night than to empty that tank.

Yeah, no, they're a lot of work, a lot of maintenance.

Again, that's one of those things just like we're always talking about with homes.

Plan ahead, do your research, do your homework.

Understand what you're getting yourself into.

Understand it's just another hole to throw money in.

Even if it's not in the water, it's.

You just.

It's gonna.

Every time you go camping, I promise.

And if I'm wrong, send us an email and say I went camping once and didn't have to buy something for the rv.

I dare you.

I dare you.

Because every time you fire that thing up and put it down the road, you need something else.

Like what boat means.

Right.

Bust out another thousand.

Yep, true.

Same kind of thing.

Same kind of thing.

But it's.

If you do it right, it can be good.

That.

I mean, they've really come a long way with them, too.

And that's the Fun part.

I mean, really, there's a lot of stuff, a lot of features out there that make it a lot better.

But.

Hey, John, when we come back, let's run out to break real quick.

We're out of time already on this segment.

We come back, we got more for you around the house.

If you want to find more information about us, head over to aroundthehouse online dot com.

We'll be right back.

Welcome back to the around the House show, your trusted source for everything about your home.

I'm Eric G. John Dudley and I have been having a great time today.

We've been talking about a smorgasbord of things from dealing with Hana virus to, well, dealing with RVs.

And it's funny because so many things have changed, Johnny, since I was last RVing 15 years ago.

But some of it's kind of cool.

They've got now AC units that are ducted.

So they've got, instead of just that big one in the middle, you can shut it off and it'll run out to the other parts of the trailer, which is kind of nice.

So you don't have it.

You're not standing in the kitchen cooking on something and you got that thing four inches from the back of your head blowing ice cold air on you when you're, it's like, I don't like that.

Yeah.

One thing too is some companies have not understood that there are people over 5 foot 11 that are going to use these.

Here's my rant.

First time I walked into Camping World and I went, okay, time for some education.

There was not a trailer there that I was going to find that I was going to buy that day.

But I went, okay, let's walk around and look at 101 and get a crash course on this.

I started stepping into showers and about 60% of them there, if I was gonna take a shower, I was like, I was in a kid's shower.

It was, yeah, it was like a drinking fountain.

It hit me in the lower of my chin.

I'm like, that's stupid.

Yeah.

And one of them, they put a, the ceiling height was so low in it and they, they put I think the gray water tank underneath it.

So that you step up into the shower now.

Well, they put a sunlight, a skylight over the top to give you a little more room.

But your head, my head was touching the skylight and I'm like, no, no.

And you would think that they could come up with a better way of doing that.

Yeah, yeah.

And I wanted to spit something Out.

But I'm sure there's a million reasons why that hasn't been done, but yeah, why not?

Why not A pop up ceiling, right?

You got tip outs, you got pop outsides that expand out with a whole couch on them.

You can't create like a pop out for the bathroom.

So I could actually put soap on my body without smacking my elbow and hit my head on the ceiling, right?

And by the way, some of them were 2 foot by 2 foot.

It was like I was in a crawl space opening, going to take a shower, right?

I'm like, no, no, I can't do it.

You hang the hot water bag out in the sun, you do it outside.

When we were in El Salvador down there, working down there with this group, we went hiking around because they didn't have running water.

We went hiking around and found a cliffside where water was coming out of it.

And it was where some of the locals would grab their drinking water out of that.

So I'm like, okay, if they're drinking, it's probably halfway clean.

But we went up there and they were, they wash clothes and stuff on the rocks right there.

And we just went up there and went, all right, shower time.

And that was the best we did.

And it was just whatever the groundwater was, it was cool.

But when you're in the, in the mountains and the heat and it's almost 100 degrees outside, cool's a good thing.

So that worked.

I just felt bad for the people downstream that were drinking that water.

But that's how they do it out there.

Everybody's washing their clothes in that river.

So it's just one of those things.

This was at least coming out of a. Aquifer or something.

It was coming up out of between rocks and stuff.

So it was coming out of someplace.

You'll never know.

I'll never know.

Didn't get sick afterwards, so that was key.

But.

And I tell you what, there's state parks out there, which usually are pretty good.

In Oregon, Washington, they're really good here.

Other places I can't attest to because I haven't stayed.

But the cool thing is too, is, man, some of these are.

You can get pretty bougie on some of these other ones.

It's like, oh, if you join this camping club now, you can have the, the pool and, and all that other stuff too, which is kind of nice.

But I kind of like to be in the state parks where it's just a little more chill and not so bougie.

Yeah, I don't Go to the Hilton.

Dude, if I'm gonna do that, just.

Why not?

Where are you staying?

What?

Just go to the Hilton?

Exactly.

Look, for me half the fun of camping is the work of it.

Right?

Because it's work.

Yeah, you legit have to create a little kitchen area, figure out a way to wash it.

And I'm saying sans rv, like, yeah, just regular camping.

You gotta pitch a tent, you gotta like, that's the fun stuff.

It's like for me.

Yeah, for you.

And there's other people are like, well, where am I gonna plug in my hair dryer and how am I gonna.

Okay, you go to the Hilton.

I mean camping, I love getting the.

Fire going in the fire pit.

Half a million dollar rv, if that's what you need.

But dude.

Yeah, we didn't even buy a twenty thousand dollar rv.

It was just.

No, but you know what I'm saying.

Oh, absolutely.

Oh, we bought an RV to go camping.

And I'm like, that said that's a, that's a condominium.

That's.

What are you talking about?

Some of those, if I wanted.

Here's the thing, and I noticed this too.

I was looking around and I went, okay, let's go look at that 100 foot ridiculous thing or whatever.

And it looks like a NASCAR race trailer almost with the, where they store the cars in it.

But some of those you walk into.

And I'm like, it's got a six foot kitchen island in it because it's tipping out on both sides and I don't know if I need the rock around the fireplace.

But yeah, and that's awesome if you're touring, right?

Because you're legit traveling the country.

Awesome.

I'm not, I'm not camping.

I'm like, dude, yeah, I'll take the island.

I'll take, I'll take all you got because that's gonna be my home for three months.

Yeah, okay.

That's a different story.

Different story altogether.

Now the other thing is Memorial Day weekend.

I don't think you need all.

Well, here's the problem with those bigger ones.

Good luck finding a state park campsite to park it in too.

Yeah, right.

I mean anything over like a 24 foot trailer, now you better be booking six months in advance, otherwise you're not.

Going to get it or Google map a Walmart nearby.

Yeah, absolutely.

I've seen people, Walmart, Camping world, those kind of things.

But that's not.

That again is not my thing of camping.

That's, that's here they, here they call that camping but that's a homeless camping.

That's a whole other story.

That's blue tarp.

Blue tarps in Seattle.

Well now I'm curious about that.

Speaking of that kind of camping, I'm curious now that they got the World cup coming to Seattle, how they're going to clean that up for tv.

They're not.

That's.

No, they'll just move it around the corner to somebody else's place and keep it away from the cameras and do that.

They'll throw a blue tarp over it and some Tallulah.

They'll go all camo tarps now.

They'll go hand out camo tarps so it looks like chain link or something, man.

But what if you ask go.

Now we're back to Rat Lives Matter.

Absolutely, we'll go back to that.

But the fun part about rvn, and this is the cool part, is, is that you can make it your own.

You can do what you enjoy with it and it can be that great getaway to go do stuff my, my brother's been doing.

I grew up doing it as a kid, so that was a lot of fun doing it as a kid.

It was nice to, as I got older to stay in the tent outside instead in the motorhome with the parents.

So that was kind of cool too.

But it's, I think it's a lot of fun and it's good times for people.

For me, I'm going to use it a lot for going to festival rock concerts.

Way easier.

You can pull in, hook up, do your thing and then you gotta, you got a place to go to especially for these three day festivals and stuff.

That's going to be a lot of fun.

All the kids are going to look at you funny.

You realize that.

I'll be the old man in there.

I'm fine.

Yeah.

Bring a trampoline, they'll love you.

Oh, geez.

Used to be called a jumping until.

Never mind.

Yeah, but seriously though, it's for that it's fun because you can have your friends show up at the show and, and if you got two or three friends with RVs, that can be a blast.

No, it's super fun.

Yeah.

Go see your favorite band.

We were just, we were just talking about Scott Nutter the other day.

Right?

Yeah.

And he had that cool RV trailer.

It was nice, decent, nothing luxury.

Right.

But served its purpose, had the backspace and we'd go.

He was still racing dirt bikes at the time.

Nice.

And we go to the races in that.

You throw the dirt bikes in the back and the dog and his wife, a kid, and go to the racetrack and everybody's got an RV there.

And yeah, it just turns into a big shindig.

It's a blast.

Absolutely.

Absolutely.

It's really.

It's a.

It's a club.

Right.

It's just, it's a.

There's a shared interest, accommodate.

It's like voters.

Everybody waves and everybody suddenly like instant friends.

It's just absolutely.

No, it's not community.

No question.

No question.

That to me is the fun part of that.

That's where I look at and go, all right.

That's where the coolness is, is that sense of community, the friends together.

And I've got a lot of friends with RVs, so does Elisa.

So we'll be kind of fun with that, going out and having some fun with friends this year.

It's a little late.

I know, it's.

Sheesh.

As you look into June, all of a sudden you go, oh, I should have booked these things in January.

And now you're kind of picking over the spots that you have.

But still you can get out, do stuff and.

And without spending a ton of money.

But some of the parks are pretty inexpensive.

40, 50 Bucks a night.

That's not bad for camping with everything, so.

Wow.

Oh, I know it.

It's not the $20 it used to be.

So you can rent like a three story Airbnb down here for that a night.

Oh, I know.

Trust me.

That's cool.

Part with a hot tub in the penthouse, like that's.

Oh, my gosh.

Yeah.

Well, things are expensive up here, brother.

They are.

Yeah.

It's just.

I'm just so like that number just kind of smack me.

Yeah, yeah.

That's a.

Used to be like 12 or 15 bucks.

I know it.

Yeah.

Now.

And now you got to sell some T shirts on tour to be able to stay at the place, so.

Ah, man, Absolutely.

Hey, Johnny, we're out of time.

Hey guys.

Thanks for tuning into the Round the House show today.

If you want to find out more, follow us on social media, Facebook, Instagram, check out our two YouTube pages.

When in doubt, head over to the website@aroundthehousonline.com I'm Eric G. And for.

For John Dudley.

Good to see you, brother.

Thanks for tuning in to around the House.

Thanks for tuning in to the around the House show.

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We will see you next time.

Grab your buddy.

Grab your.

But take this good time and turn it up.

Louder.

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