Our 7 RV Foul-ups: Coming Clean!

Experience has a way of turning expensive lessons into pretty good campfire stories.

Published on September 6, 2026 – Narrated by Jim

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After ten years and more than 78,000 miles of towing our Airstream, we confess that our full-timing success has been shaped by a series of experiences that, in polite discourse, we call foul-ups.

The Road will teach you. It will lift you up and smack you down. Class is always in session, and the surprise quizzes are gnarly. But if you pay attention, one day those gut-wrenching foul-ups become good stories — a nice bag of Road Candy to pass around the campfire.

How’s that for a sunny-side-up view of full-timing?

Had we known then what we know now about what lay ahead, would we have made the same decision to live like criminals on the run?

Yes. Undoubtedly. Absolutely.

But we might have looked more hardened:

In our first 12 months on the road, we traveled more than 14,000 miles through 28 states and stayed in 86 campgrounds, snatching as much freedom as possible as quickly as we could just in case what we were doing was actually illegal.

It wasn’t all fun and games, though. We had a tire blowout that damaged Beauty, hail battered her in South Dakota, a tornado chased us out of Kansas, and we encountered several wildfires, including the devastating fire in Gatlinburg. Flooding stranded us for days on a peninsula in Florida, stink bugs invaded us in St. Louis, and an Arizona dust storm became so fierce we couldn’t see The Beast parked inches away from Beauty.

Though none of that was our fault, we managed to pull off a whole string of undignified foul-ups with no help at all from Mother Nature. Some cost us money. Some cost us time. Some merely cost us our dignity. A surprising number cost all three.

These are seven we’re willing to publicly admit.

But coming clean and having a good laugh about our early-career foul-ups might make someone out there feel better about their own. So let’s go full-frontal.

We Drove Down the Road With the Door Open

More than once.

Roadside bio-breaks are to blame.

One morning, upon leaving Carpinteria State Beach campground in California, a motorcycle cop pulled alongside us, flashed his red lights and hit his siren while pointing back at our Airstream. Carmen waved at him and smiled, thinking he must really like our rig, until he hollered, “YOUR DOOR IS OPEN!”

Wha—?! 😲 Oh, yeah. We knew that. Do it all the time. No big deal. Just airing it out. 🥴

What we do now: Doors, windows, vents and outside compartments are physically checked before we pull out.

We Went to Sleep With the Awning Out

Our first anniversary on the road, July 18, 2017, we camped at the Airstream factory’s Terraport in Jackson Center, Ohio, while Beauty was undergoing repairs from our first-year mishaps.

At 3 a.m., we were jolted awake by a violent noise outside. A sudden storm had caught the awning, billowing it up like a sail and slamming it back down.

Half-asleep, Carmen and I threw on our parkas and braved the torrential downpour as we wrestled the awning down and locked it in. Miraculously, neither of us suffered a serious head injury.

What we do now: The awning is never left out when we’re away or sleeping.

We Dragged the Hitch Down the Road

Early one morning while pulling out of Fontainebleau State Park in Mandeville, Louisiana, a horrible sound escorted our departure. What was making that freaky sound? Carmen stopped, and we both looked out the windows.

Seeing no tree limbs or vehicles near us, we got out of the truck.

That’s when we discovered the hitch dragging across the pavement, foot plate and all. 😲😳

We don’t make screw-ups often, but when we do, we like to make a big, noisy, stupid mess of it.

What we do now: Before Beauty moves – even if it feels dumb – the last one in the truck visually confirms the hitch is up and clear of the ground.

We Forgot the Chocks

We unhitched in Mammoth, California, in a shady site that looked level to us former tent campers but was actually gently sloped. We didn’t immediately chock the tires.

Carmen strode off into the distance to get a photo of me and the rig to send to her dad. When she turned around, Beauty was rolling away. Her blood-curdling scream clued me in to what was happening behind me.

The next thing I remember, I was running behind our five-ton Airstream with my arms out, apparently intending to stop it.

Fortunately, I never got the chance. A tree root pushing up the asphalt did the job, bringing Beauty to a gently rocking stop.

Shaking from the terror of what might have been, we still had to hitch up and tow Beauty back into our campsite.

Once we were firmly chocked in, we guzzled a bottle of champagne — no glasses — just passing it back and forth to calm our nerves and celebrate not being crushed into road jerky by our dream retirement plan on Day 16.

What we do now: We chock the tires the moment we arrive, before doing anything else.

My Brown Shower

At a rest area dump station off I-20 in Mississippi, I attached one end of the sewer hose to Beauty and inserted the other end into the sewer connection in the ground.

At least I thought the end attached to Beauty was secure.

Then I pulled the black tank valve.

The hose immediately blew off the Airstream.

Instead of several gallons of everything you never want to see or smell traveling politely down the hose, it geysered straight out of Beauty’s arse-end and splattered all over the ground.

And me.

This is one RV mistake you only make once, assuming you make it at all.

One and done.

What we do now: Before either of us pulls the black tank valve, we physically check that both ends of the sewer hose are secure, connected, attached, joined, allied and fully committed to the relationship. Then we check again.

Who Latched the Fridge?

After stopping for a roadside lunch along the Natchez Trace in Mississippi, someone failed to latch the refrigerator door.

When we arrived at Meriwether Lewis Campground and opened Beauty’s door, it looked like the kitchen had succumbed to motion sickness.

Who had closed the door last was the hot topic of the day.

What we do now: Before departure, both of us listen for the click of the refrigerator latch, whether or not the other claims they checked it.

We Forgot to Tell Our GPS We Were an RV

Driving north toward Montreal, the GPS routed us onto Vermont Route 108 through Smugglers’ Notch.

We had an RV-capable GPS specifically designed to avoid this kind of drama-trauma-oh-help-me-mama. 🫣

But we forgot to set our journey preferences to “RV.”

We realized the foul-up too late. We were committed to a narrow, twisting mountain road, one-sedan wide and winding tightly around enormous boulders. Carmen was so petrified that she couldn’t take a usable photo.

Beauty emerged unscathed. Our nerves… not so much.

What we do now: Before we pull out, we make sure the GPS knows we’re an RV.

Memory Sucks

Somewhere along the way, we finally accepted that there are just too many small details to remember, so we stopped beating ourselves up about it.

The most important things became habits. Others became rules. And everything that matters before Beauty moves became part of a departure checklist.

Before every travel day, one of us reads each item aloud. The other verifies it has been done and checks it off. No separate lists. Just one list we do together.

That way we both know it is done. Not, I think I did it.

Not I’m pretty sure.

Done.

At first it feels kinda dumb, but we soon noticed how much more relaxed we were when pulling out. And if we stop along the way for a meal, a dog walk or anything else, we run the checklist again before Beauty moves.

The checklist isn’t evidence that we’ve become extraordinarily disciplined RVers, just that we’ve made enough mistakes to know better.

We’re Better at This. Mostly.

Ten years, more than 78,000 miles and hundreds of campgrounds later, we still have foul-ups, but not nearly as many as Year One.

Foul-ups, we’ve learned, are a stress-sandwich. Stress can cause the foul-up, and then the foul-up causes even more stress. When stress takes over, we’ve learned it’s better to take a shower or a nap or go for a walk than to wrangle with five tons of Airstream or tackle a big job.

We just try not to foul up anything expensive — or dangerous — and never make the same foul-up twice.

Or invent new ones.

Eventually, somewhere way down the road, it becomes another good story to pass around the campfire.

Now it’s YOUR TURN. What was your first RV mistake, or the one you still laugh about today?

You can see our exact route on this map.

*Photos in this post, unless otherwise noted, were taken and copyrighted by Living in Beauty.

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