Shownotes
Transcripts
INTRO
110-volt circuit breakers, 12-volt fuses. Do I need spares? And where are they located? This is Eric Stark with TheSmartRVer Podcast, delivering the smarts you need to enjoy the freedom of the RV lifestyle without the fear of breaking down. So, welcome everybody to the show today. Alexis is here today. She's going to jump right in and take over, not the whole show, just some of it, a little bit more than normal!
So, hey, this is a shout-out to everybody to send us ideas for show content. If there's anything you want us to talk about, we get to everything. Like today we're going to talk about locks and security, which is something Frank sent in months ago. Finally getting to it. It's been on the list for a while.
-:RV LIFESTYLE
Eric- So now we're going to get into the living the RV life section of the show. And today we're going to be talking about bullet journaling. Alexis, what is bullet journaling?
Alexis- All right. I'm excited about this one, so basically, it's like, you know, bullet points, you track down what you were doing that day, like a travel diary.
So, you're out on the road, you want to remember things, so you got to keep a list, you know, and whatever's important to you, that's the beauty of you just, you write down maybe things you saw that you've never seen before, first times for everything. Maybe a song you heard while you were traveling and you just want to remember that, play it when you get home, and you'll think of the time when you were out there.
Eric- The beauty of it. The sky's the limit with this.
Alexis- It's awesome.
Eric- It sounds like it. Now, one thing you just said about the song. Yeah. Sometimes you hear a song on the radio, and I'll remember that song. Then you get home, you forget it. You do. So, you got it. Great to write it down. If you have the journal there, one spot for everything, keep it all together.
Alexis- Right? You know, if you want to write it down with each other, if you're traveling with somebody, your spouse, your kids, just everybody can get involved with this. It's awesome. And you can kind of look at what everybody else is writing, maybe get ideas. It's great.
Eric- Right now, would you suggest both the spouses do.
Alexis- Maybe a page of their own side by side. To show comparison?
Eric- I think that's a great idea. Just keep it all together and then you know where it is.
Alexis- You can go back to it, look at it, have memories.
Eric- So, I know how that'll look. One side will have all sorts of riding and the other side would be the guy's side. Right! Like having a beer today. Uh huh. Yeah. Went to lunch. Sketched a little picture. Fixed RV. Corona was good, right, exactly. Yeah. Favorite flavor of beer.
Alexis- No, that's a good idea. I like that.
Eric- Mm-hmm. And the bullet is not necessarily just a, it's just making it briefer. Right?
Alexis- Right.
Eric- That was long-winded. Yeah.
Alexis- And if you're a photographer, I mean if you don't feel like writing anything, stick a photo in there. Maybe you took something beautiful, and you want to remember it, glue it in there and just have it, have it, uh, you know, capsized,
Eric- That just made me think you could do the same thing with pictures too.
Alexis- Yeah, definitely. Take pictures of the day. Yeah. How cool would that be?
Eric- Yeah, it'd, that'd be cool. Then mark each one. Each set of pictures for that day. Yeah. Put the date on there. Yeah. And go back, you know. Oh, cool. After your trip.
Alexis- The other thing is I love. Can it, you know, When I travel, I always think, okay, where's the next place I want to go? So, write your ideas in there as a family or just personal ones. Like, oh, we did this. Maybe we want to go here now. You know? Right. So, keep that down. Keep everything written down.
Eric- Yeah. When we're driving someplace, I always look at like roads that go off into nowhere. Hmm. And like, I want to go on, check that out. Then when I get home, I always forget, or I forget exactly where it was at. I'll look at it on a map and I never find it again. Yeah. So that's what this bullet journaling's about.
Alexis- Yeah. To help keep those memories. Yeah, absolutely.
Eric- Remember, if you're driving doing something, your hands are full. You can also, you can always have your spouse, or another person ride it in
Alexis- Exactly. It's a team effort. It's, it's nice.
Eric- All right. That sounds like a good idea. Yeah. So hopefully everybody will benefit from that and put that into practice, you know, or at least try it, get a cheap journal. You can get one of those spiral bound things for, you know, right. Well, five bucks or 10 bucks, whatever they are anymore. You know, I just got some journal type books for keeping notes in that. At Costco, three of 'them for 15 bucks. That's the deal. You know, they're nice. Yeah. Line paper, you know, the kind, you just leave it in there. You don't tear it out. So, I got that for different notes. But yeah, they're, so you can do that relatively inexpensive then.
Alexis-Yeah.
Eric- All right. Good idea Alexis. We appreciate that. Yeah, it's going to give us more things to do on our trip, and then have more ways to remember it.
STAYING ON THE ROAD
Staying on the road. That's the part where we talk about maintaining the RV. And today we're going to talk about. If you're, you're not seeing this, if you're, uh, just listening to the podcast, but on YouTube there'll be a little bit more like, you know, and I bring that up.
Go to our YouTube channel, watch these videos if you can, and all this stuff I talk about on here, just so you know it. It comes out basically in another video at another time. You know, it's, it's kind of redundant. We talk a little bit about this stuff, but I'll get more into depth, like on a circuit breaker, 110-volt circuit breaker, you know, we'll probably do a video on these for our task.
Fast Tip Friday. Mm-hmm. So, keep that in mind. If you're not missing anything. If you're just listening to it, the visual helps some. But if you know what 110-volt circuit breaker is, then maybe it's not that important to you. So, we're going to talk about 110-volt circuit breakers, 12-volt fuses, very small. And the question of do you need spares?
And where are these things located in your RV? Because everybody has probably come across this where they, something stops working in the RV. and you can't find the fuse or the circuit breaker. And Alexis, how many people have come in here? You heard me talking to them on the phone. Did you check your circuit breakers?
Alexis- Yeah. I mean, a lot of people, even myself, I've asked you questions about it, for my RV.
Eric- Then how often do they say I don't know where they're at. Yeah. Or I didn't check it exactly. You know, being able to find them's important. You know, knowing how to check them great, but you still got to be able to find them.
So, everybody's been there. I think one way or another, even I have in homes or like. Business here. When we first moved in, trying to sort out some of the electrical, because some of the things we were doing, and it actually turns out the electrical system in one unit was tied into the electrical system in a new unit next to us.
You know, so things are complicated, but we worked through it and that's what it's all about. It's just working through the little issues with these things in everything. Well, every RV should have 110-volt circuit breakers. Some of them might have built their own and left them out, because they didn't have any 10, 110-volt in it.
But your typical RV is going to have 110-volt circuit breakers. It's going to have 12-volt fuses, the little plastic type. There, you know, there's ATCs, there's the micros, minis, maxis. You know, there's different types of fuses. And sometimes they can be very hard to find and sometimes they'll be in plain sight.
Well, maybe not truly in plain sight, but more visible. So, the age of the RV's also going to kind of tell whether they're, uh, how visible they are. Really old rv, like in the seventies. Might not even have 110-volt circuit breakers, but it'll have fuses. And the fuses are probably on the ancient converter that's located in a cabinet someplace.
Newer RVs, circuit breakers and fuses are generally in a power distribution center. usually very visible, easy to find. So that makes it a little bit easier when you're trying to diagnose a problem, because sometimes when diagnosing a problem, you can get lazy and you really don't want to look for the heart thing.
You want to just, ah, what's the easy thing? Mm-hmm, you know, we get phone calls here, Hey, Yu, this stopped working. What's the easy way to fix it? They don't say that, but you can tell that's what they want. They don't want to have to check fuses or wires or anything. Where's that silver bullet? Yeah. Yeah. So, at, at some level, the circuit breakers are going to be in a central location in the rv, maybe in a power distribution center, maybe separated, but they're going to be probably closed to each other.
And if they're not, well, they're not, every RV's a little bit different, but you have them, and that's the main thing, knowing that they're there. And so you sometimes you have to dig for them, but no matter where they're located at, you know, one box or several boxes, they work the same. They look the same, they provide the same function.
If it's 12-volts, it's going to be on the 12-volt fuses. If it's 110, it's going to be on the circuits where the 110-volt breakers are. But they all function the same way. Even circuit breakers in homes function the same way in an RV. A fuse in a car is the same as an rv, 12-volt wires going through it. There are safety devices, so if something shorts out overloads, the FUS will burn up and the circuit breaker will pop, you know, depending on which one it is.
So why does it matter? Why are we talking about. Well, knowing what these parts do and how they work can save a lot of headaches and hours of wasted time. You know how many people have canceled a trip? Cut a vacation short, delayed something a day or a week because something stopped working. Oh boy. We have to get this to the auto, to the shop right now so this mechanic can fix it.
Mm. and, and maybe you can't get in right away. You know, let's say it's your RV, you're going on your trip and well, something's not working, so you have to wait till maybe Monday to take it to a service center. It sits there all day and they finally check it out and you have a blown fuse. See, that's crazy.
Yeah. Now fuses and circuit breakers sometimes just pop or blow. It's not normal. Sometimes there's a problem that happens, so, but we'll get into that. But see, you don't want to. Waste all this time. Waste money doing this, you know? Remember when we were moving up here? We were in Arizona. Just pulling out the driveway in the air conditioning stopped in our car and before we panicked, I checked the fuses and that's all it was, was a fuse.
Yeah. You know, and since we had little time and had an inn in the shop, I took it over there just to have them check the fan in the air conditioning, make sure that the fan wasn't low and that caused the problem. Never had a problem since, but it saved countless hours of going to a shop and monkeying around with that.
So that's why we're talking about this. So, you can be a little smarter, like TheSmartRVer that you already are. We're going to add to that a little bit. So saves time and money. So, another thing that's in an RV that we're not going to spend a lot of time on is the GFI or GFC outlet, they both have different names.
They basically do the same things. It's two names, one device. Just call it GFI or GFCI. It doesn't matter. Someone will know what you're talking about. So those are the outlets in an RV. They're generally located near water in a house, it'd be in a bathroom, kitchen, in a garage, or a basement. Anything that's prone to flooding or getting water splashed on it.
They detect the amount of electricity the milli amps down to like, you know, a hundred billionth one or something. Any kind of loss or drain, it'll blow or pop and quit working. It's a safety device, so in an RV. You're going to have one, generally one or two, one in the bathroom, one in the kitchen, depending on the rv, you might have more than that, but you'll have one in the bathroom, one in the kitchen, and, so those sometimes will pop.
They have a little button on there, you can press it to reset it. Some of them have a light on there that tell you when it's popped. Then, you know, to reset it. And generally, g f I outlets work great. They don't fail very often, but they do. So sometimes they quit working and you must reset them. And I bring these up because they're not really, uh, a circuit breaker.
They're not a fuse and they're on 110, uh, 110-volt side of the system. But they're overlooked a lot. Sometimes people have problems. Did you check your GFI? And they say, oh, I didn't even know I had one. Well check that first before you go any further. and it turns out it's a GFI. Mm-hmm. like my microwave's not working.
Or you know, the refrigerator's not working in 110-volts. Sometimes it can be the GFI outlet. So that's just a simple thing to check. You don't, you need a test light, generally a little button on there, I'll be popped out or the red light will be on you just push it in and reset it and that's it. Pretty simple.
So now let's get back to the circuit breakers. Infuses. So, let's talk about the 110-volt circuit breakers for a moment. We're going to dissect these now in the 110-volt circuit breakers. When you're working on the 110-volt system, it's always good to turn off the power. You have to test them with power on, but, you know, be careful.
Don't just go sticking your fingers in and touching things. And use a voltmeter. Always keep a voltmeter. That's the best way to test things. Whether it's 12-volts or 110-volts. There is an occasion where you want to test light. Sometimes they're more practical, easier to put in a toolbox. But volt meters give you much more information.
And then go from 110 to 12, one tool for both. So, on circuit breakers, if you're looking on YouTube, this is a single poll. Right there. So, this does one circuit. A double pole would be two of these switches side by side. I should have brought one in here, but I didn't. And it runs two circuits. Typically, you'd use that for a two 20 situation.
This is pretty much what you're going to find in an RV is a single pole. And pretty basic deal. So not really complex. When you go to replace a circuit breaker, if it is bad, just take the circuit breaker out and show it to the guys at the store where you buy it. A lot of these RV circuit breakers can be bought at hardware stores.
, don't tell them it's for an rv, otherwise they run your ride out. So, it's not a real complex deal. And one cool thing about most of the converters today, they take just about any, they, several different circuit breakers, and they're all kind of interchangeable. So, if you buy a new power distribution center, you can use your old breakers.
It's not an issue. It's a real simple little deal. So, in the, so you have your circuit breaker, it mounts in front of the power distribution center. So, I have one here, there's no, no breakers in it. So, we'll do a video on this. We'll get a little more complex. So, it mounts in the front of the, in the, in the power distribution center.
And they have a bus bar. The bus bar is what has 110-volts on it. Then you have the opposite side, little clips that hold the breaker in. So, the bus bar and the clips, the breaker snaps right in, easy to take in and out. They pop right in and out. Not a big deal, so you have all the wiring, the panel, you're going to have green wires.
White wires and black wires. So green and white are your grounds and neutral black is your positive. So that's the 110-volts. So that's the wire that you need to be very careful of. And the bus bar. So, all the breakers are not the same. You know, in general, your RV ones are going to be very similar. They're going to be the same as a house.
They work the same. But you have 15-amp, 20 amp, you can have a 15, you know, you can have a a uh, double mini breaker where it has two poles on one breaker so you can get twice as many in your box. They call it stuffing the box. So, if you run out of space and you need to put another breaker in because you ran another circuit for something, you can.
A mini breaker where it has two poles on it, two individuals, uh, 110-volt circuits, but they work the same. They have a screw on them where the wire goes into it. The screw is either a flathead Phillip's head or a square tip, usually a number two, and you always want to make sure you tighten those up very tight.
You do not want to lose connections, whether it's 12-volt, but especially not 110. Alexis, how many people come here with melted things and what do I say?
Alexis- Connections.
Eric- No…I'm just kidding. Yeah. Connections. Paying attention. Huh? And so, a surrogate breaker can be tested in the panel as well. That's probably the easiest thing to do.
So, if you're a suspect of it, you just leave the 110-volts on, you have the breaker in the on position, you get your volt meter, and you have grounds and neutrals in the breaker panel or the power distribution panel, the box, whatever you want to call it. So, you can ground out your meter there and you put your pos or the, uh, positive lead of the meter onto the screw where the wire goes in.
If it's got 110-volts, 120 volts, it's good if it has nothing, and the breakers. It's bad. Very simple. It's cut and dry. Circuit breakers do not fail all that often, so don't be in a hurry to rush out and buy new circuit breakers. If something fails, definitely test it, in my life I've only replaced a few circuit breakers.
on my home RV at work. You know, I've put more in because I'm adding rather than replacing because they've gone bad. Mm-hmm. So that's circuit breakers in a nutshell and hopefully that makes it clear your circuit breakers are on the 110-volt system in the RV. And, before I forget, or actually I did forget, when a circuit breaker pops.
You know the little switch is going to go about halfway. It's not going to go all the way over to off. Oh, I didn't know that. And so, when that happens, you turn it to off and then you switch it back on. Okay. Now, if you have a GFCI Circuit breaker, which is in a lot of new buildings and it's codes in most places anymore, it has a little red indicator when it's.
Their indicator turns red. Oh. So, it gives you a clue? A little window red indicator, but you start to turn it all the way off and then on. Okay. Do not try to just shove it to the on position. That will not work. Okay. All the way off. Back on that Resets it. Okay. And if you're not sure, the circuit breakers popped, sometimes they sit in the panel and they look a little out of whack.
If you're looking at them all, you can just flip it off and flip it back on. Test it. Yeah. Just remember if your TVs are on that. Give it a minute for everything to shut off. Don't just flip it off back on real fast. Right, right. Yeah. Computers on the circuit, let them shut down. Uh huh , you know, or turn them off beforehand.
You don't want to just have that like a Yeah. Quick power surge. That's what ruins things. Hopefully if surge protectors. Right. You know, it's like when the power goes off in your home. Mm. For a split second. That's the worst kind. Yeah. You know, that's that off than a power surge. Not good. Yeah. Okay, so that's 110-volt circuit break.
Now let's talk about 12-volt fuses. Yay. So, 12-volt fuses are obviously in the 12-volt system or circuitry of the RV. They're not settable like a circuit breaker. However, they can be tested pretty darn easy. Circuit breakers are very simple to test. Also 12-volt circuit breakers that can be found in RVs.
And there's several different types of 12-volt circuit breakers and there's different purposes for them, for them, for them. So, we're going to tackle that in another episode. They're, because they're kind of an animal all to themselves. They're, they're not that complex. And if you have some, like if you have solar class A motor homes always got 12-volt circuit breakers and abundance of.
It's basically just a little gate, you know, that the circuit or the power goes through, so you can pretty much tether test whether they work or not in a simple way. Very similar to the 12-volt fuse. So, they're not that difficult, but we'll come back to those. We'll get those in another episode or another video.
So now here's something interesting about 12-volt fuses, in an rv, they should be in the power distribution center. This thing right here, if you're looking on YouTube, but sometimes they're not. I mean, there's always going to be fuses in the power distribution center. You're going to have the main fuses for the RV.
You know, the trailer motor homes will have their, their fuses for the house portion. They'll have fuses for the engine and chassis portion. And we're just talking about houses here now, or a trailer. So sometimes manufacturers, when they put in a power awning, there might be a fuse behind the switch for the power awning.
, sometimes there might be something in the RV and they don't put the switch in the power distribution center. It goes into the wall. This summer I was doing a solar panel cut into the wall. To put in our charge controller and there's some wires in there, and lo and behold, there's a fuse in there. Mm.
In the wall. The guy would've never found it. Ever. . . So, I made sure I told him it was there and he could access it by taking out our charge controller. I don't know what the fuse went to. Didn't spend the time to figure it out. Yeah. But I thought that's so interesting. A fuse stuck in the wall. Huh? So, if that fuse blows.
You know, a shop diagnosis, something, they might say, well, you got a broken wire somewhere. Well, they're wrong, but they're not wrong, you know, the fuse does have a wire in it, , so keep that in mind. Sometimes fuses can be hidden and if you're dealing with an awning or something, that's kind of an add-on the fuse probably won't be in the power distribution center like solar.
The fuse will probably be at the battery, things like that. So just be aware of that. Sometimes there's more fuses. Meets the eye right in a quick glance, and so generally fuses are relatively easy to find. You know, like you said, they can be in a wall, so engineers do that. They know you're never looking there, so that's where they'd like to put it, you know, to mess with you.
Because most of them don't ever RV or fix anything. They just make little drawings and put things in bad spots, now they've said engineers. So that's the only ones that do this kind of stuff. I want to make everybody mad. And so most RVs have plastic ATC style views, and you get them just about anywhere.
Mm-hmm. Now there's several different others. There's the mini fuse, the maxi fuses I talked about, but most of them have the ATC. Some of them have the mini maxis aren't really using RVs very much, but they are out there, and they all test the same way. So, the easiest way to test one of these fuses is with a voltmeter or a test light.
The probes on a voltmeter sometimes are a little too fat at the end to fit in the back of the fuse, because uh, the prong goes all the way through the fuse and it's, and you can actually touch it with the probes. Mm mm-hmm. So you ground your, your volt meter or your test light and you touch both sides of the fuse on the back of both sides.
Light up the fuse is good. Provide there's power going to it. If one side lights up, the other side doesn't. You know when I say other side, your test slider voltmeter, when it shows you up power. The fuse doesn't light up. It's your intent, so it shows power or your test light lights up. So, if it doesn't, on one side, the fuse is probably bad.
If the other side has power and the other side doesn't, the fuse is bad. Now, sometimes your test light doesn't get in there far enough. Mm-hmm. for your probe and it'll throw you off. You got to make sure you're contacting the prong in there, and so you pull it out and you can give it a double check.
By looking at it, you can hold it up to them. And the little wire in there will be either burnt through or not. Oh, okay. Interest. So that's the best way to test a fuse. Now, if you don't have a test light or a voltmeter, you can pull out each fuse. Oh. Now if you're not sure what fuse to pull out, you're going to up pulling them all out.
And sometimes that can be a hassle. Yeah. You know, especially if you're in a car underneath a dash. Mm-hmm. Now, I had to do that on the road this summer. One of us, our Prius, had a little bit of a problem. The fuse blew for the, uh, inverter water pp. Okay. So, I had no test light with me, so I had to pull out all the fuses because I didn't know which one it was, right.
And even pulling them out, looking at them. I didn't see that one of them had a hairline crack in it. Oh my goodness. And so, it wasn't until I got a test light that I found that it was bad. Mm-hmm. So even looking at them sometimes you won't see that it's bad, so that's why test lights or volt meters are the best way to check them.
Mm-hmm. And pulling them out, you know, especially if they're different numbers. You got to make sure you get all the nu, you know, the 15-amp, 10 amp back in the right spot. Right. You can't just throw them back anywhere. Well, you can, but you might have problems down the road. More fuses blowing. So, are they color coordinated?
Can you tell? Yes. What? Okay. Okay. I was wondering. 15-amp fuses are blue. Blue, always. 10 amps are red. 30 amps are green. 40 amps are like a brown color. Okay, that's good to know. Then you have yellow and white. Okay. Yeah, so there's different colors. Very good and most RVs are going to have. 10, 15th, and twenties.
Okay. A converter will generally have two 40-amp fuses on it. Okay. But a 40-amp fuss isn't really used for a whole lot of others. Sure. Now the fuse box isn't color coded, right? Generally, they're marked though. Yeah. It tells you a 10 amp or whatever. Yeah. And you know, sometimes they'll tell you the circuit.
Sure. Okay. But like in an RV, things can get around. Can't read handwriting on the side. It's not like, you know, Toyota who has it imprinted in the plastic, right? RVs is the guy who installed it writing stuff down. Oh man, he's in a hurry that day or doesn't care. You might not be able to read it. Or if I wrote it down, forget it.
You know, you'll never be able to read it, the fuses are pretty easy to test, and you definitely want to do that and to make sure it's good or bad. So this is fuses in 110-volt circuit breakers, basically in a nutshell. , you can turn it into a lot more, but just this gives you the starting point, how to diagnose things in your RV to get the diagnosis started to at least rule these simple things out.
But sometimes, you know, you check diff fuses, everything's good, then okay, you start looking at other things. So, the circuit breaker's good. Maybe it's the outlet, maybe it's the appliance, but it gives you a way to start working through it and figuring it out. Like here in our building where the power went out the other day, but it was one third, one third, one third, how it went out.
We had 310 volt legs coming into the building, it helped me cause I started checking things. Mm-hmm. and ended up at the breaker box and one third of the breakers didn't have power. Okay. So, we got an issue with the power company more than likely. Yeah. So, it can kind of give you a direction. You know, RVs are a little bit different.
In fact, RVs are simpler, you know, and generally fuses and breakers go bad, or if something's not working, it's one of them. If the appliance fails, then the appliance just fails. Easy to fix that. Right. And wires typically do not break in RVs. Hmm. Okay. They hear that a lot guys. Well, they went, took to this place and they fixed the broken wire, but now it doesn't work again.
So, it wasn't a broken wire. Mm-hmm, it was intermittent. Okay, well, we don't want to start knocking everybody. . . All right, so that's the basics for diagnosing your 110-volt, 12-volt system. Hopefully that was helpful. Like I said, we'll have some videos on Fast Tip Friday covering this a little bit more, and just one of these things if you have questions about it.
side note here in February of:Exciting. So that's going to be for the M2 and the S2 RV’s? Yes. And it's going to be solid vinyl. Mm-hmm. And it's going to be high quality. This thing's going to be awesome. We've already got fabric samples. Everything's in motion. Mm-hmm, we just won't have it done, ready to ship until, uh, February. Woohoo. So if you have a Freightliner M two or S two rv and you want a windshield cover for it, and you want it to be solid, give us a call.
We're the people. Get on the waiting list if you want. So those will be available at Sunpromfg.com when they come out? Mm-hmm.
NEXT STOP
Eric- So that takes us now to the next segment, the next stop. All righty. So, Alexis, what is our subject matter for today? Where are we going or what are we doing? More like what are we doing?
Alexis- We're going to talk about winter sports. Yay, which I will, uh, preface this right now. I am terrible at most winter sports, but I think they're fun to watch.
Eric- So sitting on the sofa, bundled up in front of a fire, a winter sport.
Alexis- Yeah, I think so. Drinking hot cocoa.
Eric- You know, how many marshmallows can you fit in a cup?
Alexis- There you go. That's my sport.
Eric- So, for the enthusiasts though, right? What's on the table?
Alexis- I guess if you feel like bundling up, you can go out and go skiing. I don't know. Snowboarding. There's snowshoeing. There’s sledding. That's always fun. Uh, snowmobiling if you feel like you're brave. Yeah. Yeah. You can go ice fishing.
Eric- I've done that before. There's also dog sledding even in Montana, right?
Yes, and if you feel like maybe you need to warm up. There’re so many hot springs, especially around here.
Eric- Yeah, true. That you could hit up. True. And that's fun to do when it's cold, definitely better.
Alexis- Yeah, exactly. So, for most of these winter sports, you can rent the equipment to do it.
Eric- Yeah. I noticed here you go into a lot of stores that. Tractor Farm and fleet type stores. Right, they sell snowshoes there. Different varieties of them too. And they're relatively inexpensive too.
Alexis- Yeah, exactly. Yeah. And they think even Costco sells them.
Eric- They do. Yeah. Mm-hmm. Those aren't that big of a deal to get, and I think they're under a hundred bucks, under 60 bucks maybe.
Alexis- I think you're right. Would not be all that expensive if you bought a pair mm-hmm, you know, figure you'd rather just buy your own than rent them, right?
Eric- Yeah. But you can rent everything. I know here a couple years ago, you got Snow Mobiling for 150 bucks for two or three hours, whatever it was. That's not bad. And he provided all the clothes. Yeah. It's not bad at all. You know, and that's probably the worst thing, is the clothing for some of this stuff.
Alexis- You know, I like snowmobiling. Yeah. It's cold. Unless it's a really sunny day, it's going to be cold, but you're going to be in the trees and stuff in most cases. Mm-hmm. So, you want to be warm. Because once you get cold it just becomes miserable. Right, right. You got to layer up, you got to wear that wool, that mid-layer, you know?
Eric- Right. Maybe you can pull it off. Big heavy coat. But you got to, you got to layer up, got to layer. That's the trick. Airing and everybody's heard that, but it works. It does, so there's a lot to do. You know, winter sports sometimes make me think of snow skiing and that's it. Or maybe snowboarding and that's it.
Alexis- Right, but there's so much more to it. Yeah. Snowmobiling the dogsledding, yeah. Cross-country skiing.
Eric- Yeah. Cross country skiing your chicken to go down fast, you know? What about E-bikes? Yes. You can take e-bikes in the snow. That's an amazing sport to do. And you just sell take. We sell them regular old fat tire bikes in the snow.
Alexis- It's true. It's really what they're made for.
Eric- Yeah, it's awesome. Snow and sand and stuff. How fun would that be? Just taking a cruise. We have a demo bike downstairs, so maybe we'll have to try that out next. Snowstorm we get here. It's pretty icy out there today. Yeah. Okay. Excuses not to do that. I love it.
Alexis- So, there's a lot to do. That's the point. Yes. And some of this stuff is not local near you, you might have to drive a little bit.
Eric- Mm-hmm, like if you live in southern California, you have a mountain. You know, big Bear, mammoth, I mean arrowhead. Different places you can go. They all rent equipment and you can do most of that stuff there.
Alexis- Nice.
Eric- Maybe not dog sledding, that's a different thing. Yeah. But maybe you never know. So are there any places that stand out to you that are real hot spots for that well, you would recommend,
Alexis-I mean, you know, locally in Montana, Big Mountain or Whitefish Mountain, now that it's called, they're just huge for skiing and snowboarding and all that kind of thing. Glacier Park does a ton of things. You can go, yeah, there's trails that you can go, uh, cross country and snowshoeing through. It's just beautiful. I think I did write down one company, a dogsledding company called Spirit of the North, and they're out of Big Sky. So that's something you really wanted to see or do that would be, you know, the, the people to contact dog sledding.
Eric- Sounds cool. I think so, yeah. That'd sound like the funniest thing of them all to try something new. Definitely. So, I'd look at dog sledding before anything else. If it's available near you.
Alexis- Yeah, definitely.
Eric- Because that's generally a day thing. Mm-hmm, they get involved, there's food fires. It's not just dog sledding, but it's really fun. So that's pretty fun. It's an event. Yeah. So that's pretty cool. Yes. So, there's plenty to do out there. Winter, some summer, spring or fall. There's always something to do. Oh yeah. And so since we brought up this subject of electric bikes, for Mountain or for winter sports, We're going to touch on that a little bit more.
RV ENVY
It's going to take us into our RV Envy section. Now we've been selling Quiet Cat e-bikes. Well, we started Stock them last month. We're in December, so yeah. November. Mm-hmm. So they're still really new to us, but you know, these things are just awesome. So cool. Customers come into the store, and this is an RV store, and we're selling electric bikes, which, you know, some RV stores are.
but the customers come in and they under, they know what they are. Mm-hmm, they've researched them. Some of them own bikes and they tell us about them. They just love them. These things are just awesome. Yeah. Yeah. And one of the things that, or you know, there's a couple things, but like if you own an RV and you want to take an e-bike or take a bike on a trip, an e-bike is really cool because.
You can bring one and it can be like that extra vehicle. Yep. You know, you need to run to the store to get something. Mm-hmm, you want to just ride around the RV park, check it out, two of them certainly would make it better or whatever the family needs are. Yeah. But getting to the other end of the trip, you have still have some mobility or worst-case scenario, you're, your RV breaks down, you're stuck on the side of the road.
You could get on your e-bike and ride into town if it's close. Or to one of their houses, you know, parked off or, you know, built off the highway. That, there you go. Looks like Norman Bates lives there. And you can knock on the door and see what happens, yikes. But no E-bikes are really cool and Quiet Cat has their website.
QuietCat.com. All their bikes are there. We sell everything that's on their website. Mm-hmm, if you have questions, you can call us, we're always running the specials on them as well. So, I also want to remind you to, to share these episodes with others, other RVers. If you use YouTube, subscribe to us on YouTube.
And subscribe to the podcast on your favorite podcast channel. You know, we want to get it out there. We're producing this stuff. We're doing more and more, and we want to help our years, and we think we are because the way we're approaching this is the quick, down and dirty way, this isn't box opening episodes, right?
OUTRO
We're getting to it. All right, so I want to thank everybody for listening today. This is Eric Stark with TheSmartRVer Podcast. It's been awesome hanging out with you. If I don't see it on the road, let’s connect at TheSmartRVer.com
