Last week I offered some tips related to travel courtesy. This week I give you the first of a two-part series of my tips for assuring your travel comfort.
Travel Comfort
- Most RV mattresses aren’t as comfortable as your bed at home. Adding an eggshell foam mattress, placed with the smooth side up, makes sleeping more comfortable. – Louis and Ann Beeler, Salome, AZ
- To decrease the heat/cold transmitted through the bath skylight, solar windshield covers for cars can be trimmed and attached with Velcro. Clean the area for the Velcro with rubbing alcohol to increase the adhesiveness. – Karl M. Green, M.D., Westminster, MD
- If your bed mattress shifts on its wood platform while you’re traveling over bumpy roads and during sudden stops, place a piece of rubberized matting between the platform and the mattress. This will eliminate your having to push the mattress back into position after a day’s travel. You can buy the matting at carpet stores and RV dealers.
- When riding through monotonous rocky formations that go on for miles, challenge your and your children’s imaginations to identify images such as cathedrals, whales or pyramids. Or if a highway runs on for miles lined with trees, look for hues of green and other colors, textures, shadows, and lines as if you wanted to paint the details of what you see. It will bring interest and excitement to even a “dull” scene. Look for wildlife, too.
- Take breaks—whether that means stopping at a rest area, taking a walk along the beach, or having lunch.
- Be sure to include some no-travel days. Don’t try to crowd too many miles or activities into the time available. You need time to rest and catch up with chores (and yourself).
- A shopping center or Wal-Mart parking lot is a good place for a rest stop on a secondary road that does not have designated rest or picnic areas.
- Passengers can do many things to keep from getting bored during a long day of travel: do handiwork such as knitting or crocheting or cross-stitching, listen to the radio, play games that don’t distract the driver, write in a journal, browse tour books and maps, or listen to audiobooks from the library (with a headset, if desired). You may even voluntarily give the driver a neckrub or backrub. Sitting still and putting off doing activity creates fatigue and boredom.
Stay tuned for more tips on travel comfort in this series next week.
Happy travels and I’ll be back with more.
Bernice
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Joe Pankchuck
Great post. I really enjoy it! looking forward to more.
Turkey
thanks you , perfect Post.
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Jking
My wife and I bought a custom made memory foam bed. We ordered a 3 inch memory foam and a 3 inch foam sub mattress and had a 6 inch mattress cover made for it. The whole thing ran around $600.
The hardest part was getting the old mattress out of the camper.
Before memory foam we did use an egg crate foam topper which made it a little better but still had back problems.
bob
Got a Memory Foam toper from costco and it fits ok just fold the top in at the head of the matress and a sheet holds it fine and just makes a good bed much better. cost about 125.00 but worth it.
Bob McCrady
A comment on mattresses…. We bought a pillow top style mattress pad for our queen bed in our coach. It’s a bit large, as coach beds aren’t a true queen, but for the price difference from a custom RV size pad, we’ll tuck it in here and there. Unlike mattresses with a built-in pillow top, ours can be removed and washed. It adds just enough cushion for great sleeping.
William Gerald
It is my understanding that Sam Walton, the individual that started Walmart and later Sam’s Club, was an RVer and realized that by allowing RVs to drop in for an evening or so would be good for business so he established the precedent and his family has continued to allow it to continue.
However, some of the outlets do not allow overnight stays which is usually due to complaints by local RV park owners and others resulting in local laws restricting the practice. In other cases it has been brought about by inconsiderate RVers leaving a mess, setting up housekeeping for extended periods of time, putting down jacks damaging the parking surface, opening all slideouts, firing up the barbie, running the generator at all hours and other offensive practices.
When you are in an area that you are not familiar with, just check with the Greeter inside the door and they will let you know if it is permitted at that particular outlet.
talapus pete
The best thing about parking in shopping centers and Wal-Marts is they all are the same! No surprises at all. Phew!
Charley
I’m new to RVing. You mention, and so do others, that WalMart permits RV stops in their parking lots. Is there a written policy by WalMart published anywhere, or some reference data I can see? No one mentions how the privilege came to be or how to verify if a particular lot is available.
Thanks. C