RV Life Heatwaves and Bugs

Unwanted invaders can put a glitch in your plans. So can heatwaves and sketchy weather.

This travel season we have had moths, earwigs, wasps, endless flies, and the worst invader that is a massive pain to get rid of – ants. It seemed every state had a heatwave this year. Everywhere was experiencing 100 degrees. This makes finding a camp spot with hookups a challenge. Overpriced campgrounds that charge $100 plus dollars a night are not my thing. The state parks were all booked. It is peak travel season.

I can calmly deal with a lot of issues. Mechanical issues on the side of the road don’t bother me quite as much as bugs. I don’t do bugs. And I cannot handle the heat anymore at my age.

Oh, August, and the challenges you bring. Every. Single. Year. What is it with August? It’s the end of the summer, and right before the beloved Fall season. For full-timers, it marks the end of the summer travel season. Happy days ahead. Campground prices go down, availability goes up and we can get back to our quieter, cooler travels.

The day before we travel, I vacuum, dust, do laundry, clean out the front cab area that is usually covered in dog hair and prep loose items for travel. I had a brain fart and plugged the vacuum into the battery-operated outlet and tripped the invertor. Not good. I don’t know why I did this. I had too much on the brain and wasn’t paying attention. Then to top it off I put it out of my thoughts and never mentioned it to Wolf until …

Time to relocate

We left our month-long spot in Richfield and drove about 100 miles east to Green River Utah. The booked site (40) was a pull off and in the front yard of the camp host. Nope that would not work for us. I went back to the check in, and the sweet kid running the desk knew exactly why I was there. He gave me about five spots that were available to move into for our five days stay. We drove around a few times and settled on spot number 18.

Wolf plugged into the shore power, and I plug the Starlink into the battery-operated plug which is located in the overhead cabinet with the TV. Nothing is working. Then I remembered the vacuum incident and told Wolf my story. “Why didn’t you mention this when it happened?” he inquires. Well, I forgot about it. I truly did put it out of my mind. Nothing we tried worked and he thought I blew out the invertor. I’m mad at myself for doing it, but we still had power. We had to run an extension cord from a different outlet, and it all worked. It had to be a problem to put on the list to fix later. Nothing we can do about it at this moment. Not a lot of hardware or fix-it stores to choose from in Green River.

The five days plan was to visit Arches National Park, Jurassic Monument and see a few sites in the area. I booked us into Green River State Park. It has grass and trees and thought the location would be a good base camp. All sites include water and power, and they have a dump station on site. If you are a golfer, the park is surrounded by a golf course. I looked at the park online and it appeared to be an inviting change to the rock and desert of the past month and a half. The park has an unusual layout with sites that don’t make a lot of sense. Your picnic table is on the driver’s side or even at the back of your site and quite a distance from your rig. When you check in, they warn you verbally, and there are signs located throughout the park, that they water around noon every day. The park ranger suggests that if you are going to go anywhere it is best to leave before noon and come back after 1:00 pm. Close your windows and vents and put chairs and items that you do not want to get wet away. Okay, we’ve had these warnings before no big deal– or so I thought.

Day after travel day is a rest day and we don’t do a lot. But remembering the water time, I went out before noon and put everything away. It was hot so no worries on any windows or vents open and the A/C was on full blast. Well… the sprinklers came on and holy cow we felt like we were going through a car wash! Those sprinklers are no joke. Our rig was doused! It got a good bath. But that is ridiculous. They have golf course-type sprinklers, those massive rainbird ones that cover farmland. There is no excuse for it. The host makes excuse after excuse. To replace them with “normal” lawn sprinklers is over $200k. (so spend it already). There is absolutely no valid excuse to have those types of sprinklers in a campground. And the main host has a very flippant attitude about it. And refers a lot to all the people who have complained. Green River State Park Campground does not care one ounce about your complaint. And they have had a lot. So, after the flooding of the hour-long watering fiasco…

The next day… it happened.

I went about my morning routine: I woke up and turned on the kettle for coffee. Wolf gets up and I make his bed and put Sasha’s bedding away. Simple quick five-minute routine. As I begin to make Wolf’s bed, I see an ant. I pull the blankets out and see a few more. I lift the mattress up and I see a trail of many! CRAP. If you’ve ever seen the movie INDIANA JONES AND THE KINGDOM OF THE CRYSTAL SKULL when Cate Blanchett crashes her car on the giant ant hill? Yeah, kind of like that. These are the invaders YOU DO NOT WANT TO SEE INSIDE YOUR RIG. Especially, your bed.

I alert Wolf of this issue; we check the outside to find their entry point and the driver’s door and drivers’ side of the rig is covered with black ants. Their entry point is everywhere! I look at the RV pad and it is littered with black ants. They are inside the bay; they are inside the battery bay and now working their way into the dinette area inside.

I happen to have two new bottles of Zevo bug spray. We emptied those two bottles in an hour. (I use this because it’s labeled as okay for pets.) I put the dogs outside away from the raging ant hill we were right on top of, and we sprayed inside and outside. All the windows are open, and fans are on full blast trying to air out the rig. We started packing up as quickly as we could just so we could move off the spot. We had to throw out all of Wolf’s bedding, and our outdoor rug because they were so littered with ants, that I couldn’t begin to figure out how to clean anything.

During our rushed packing-up job, I saw one of the camp hosts driving around. I flagged him down to say we needed to leave early due to the ant invasion. His response was a casual okay and he said, “You’ll still have the ants”. The thing is, I wasn’t sure how to respond to this? Was he being sincere or an ass? I just responded with “Not when I’m done.” He suggested I go into the office area and let them know. I did. And I basically got another flippant attitude. But I did get a refund and a sorry this happened. I can honestly say, I will never, ever go back to that campground. I still have nightmares about it. Now I have a paranoia about ants.

They seem to be obliviate that ants are attracted to water. They blame people coming from out of the area that are bringing in the ants. 👌

We headed back to Richfield. I needed full hook-ups, a laundry mat, and a Walmart. It took us two days, but we did eliminate all the invaders. In case you are wondering why go backward from where I wanted to visit? If we continued east to go south, we were going to be in the $100 per night campgrounds or sold-out state parks. Which I don’t do. So, we went back to a place we could afford, friendly faces and a familiar area to fix our problem. I love Richfield Utah.

Now it’s time to re-plan. Where to next?

Since my plans of visiting the Mighty Five have been flushed down the anthill so to speak. Now what? Too bloody hot to even enjoy anything this summer. We needed elevation, pine trees, and a clear lake view. And I knew exactly where I needed to unwind – The Dixie National Forest. Panguitch UT. I looked up one of our favorites, White Bridge Campground. I saw spot number one had a three-day availability in August. I booked it. Panguitch Creek runs along the campground. Spot number one has the spillway. The sound of the water coming through and the clear water that does have fish if you’d like, and it’s only about a foot deep. We were the only campers on this end of the campground for our three-day stay. BLISS. This made this girl a happy camper.

A very dirty rig, and a lot of rain and wind this season in Utah.

My Birthday weekend

Before we arrived at White Bridge Campground my daughter had sent a text and inquired if we were going to be in the Navajo Lake area anytime soon? She wanted to come up and camp. Now my happy momma heart is beaming. Yes! I went into booking action to find two available camp spots and it was happening the weekend of my birthday. Navajo campground near Duck Creek was booked. I looked at Panguitch Lake North Campground and there were spots open. I booked two spots for the weekend and new plans went into action. Family camping trip. This is something I have been waiting for since we set out as full-timers.

Two of my three children were coming up. The third child’s daughter was going to be in town that weekend and couldn’t make it. That’s okay a good excuse. He doesn’t see her much, so I completely understand. Looking forward to the weekend family camping was why I went into a brain fart and plugged the vacuum into the wrong plug. The family weekend was the only thing on my mind. It truly made me so happy.

It poured down rain and we had thunder and lightning every day during our weekend. That was miserable. But in the early part of the day when it was sunny and cool, we all piled into the motorhome and went to Navajo Lake and spent the day. My daughter and her fiancé wanted to go fishing. My daughter had a blast and remembered how much she loved fishing when we did family camping at Navajo Lake in her childhood. That girl was the fish slayer that day. One after another. She had a great time, (mama did too).

And the grand pups came up with my son. Five dogs, three days it was total chaos. I loved it!

Legion on the left, Hera on the right. This was Hera’s first road trip and first camping trip. She did so good. All five dogs and five adults into the motorhome traveled up to Navajo Lake. Our rig was a mess after the weekend. But so worth it.

Now where do we go?

During this season our generator backed up and was no longer working. Infested with bugs, a lot of rain and wind. The heat was a bit much we are now a bit frazzled and overwhelmed. So, we decided to head back to Vegas to do some regrouping. Now it’s so flipping hot in Vegas too, but staying with my son, we could stay inside his house during the peak heat time and not sit in a hot box where we couldn’t cool down. Not to mention the rig needed a deep clean and I had a few daily items that needed to be replaced. I decided to do a little redecorating and change out a few things. Since we were not traveling and spending money on gas and camp fees, I had a budget for it, and I spent it! I had so much fun. I’ll share my crazy eclectic boho style next month.

Back on the road next month and I am so ready to travel again. We didn’t travel last year in the fall and really September is a great time to go. Temperatures are generally just right for sitting at the campsite and visiting new places.

Thanks for reading, happy travels, and stay safe!