Hi Jean! Congratulations on Bertie, love the nickname. :) I hope the weather in SC is better than the weather in DC, most of our friends are complaining about the cold spring so far. Thinking of doing longer road trips once you get the hang of it?

Since we have a MH with it’s own brakes and parking brake (like a car), we only use the chocks if we’re on an incline or near the edge of a drop-off. If we’re level and in a stable location, we just depend on leaving Rover in Park and putting on the emergency brake. I know trailers and fifth wheels use chocks regularly though. Hope that helps!

It’s pretty funny, we are Big Bang fans, but haven’t watched it since we went on the road, so I didn’t know they played Catan on the show. Hm, not sure when Iowa makes it on our itinerary but if we do, I will definitely reach out.

That was great information. As I said in a previous post, we are newbies too. Other than a local “shakedown” cruise at our county campground (Oak Hollow Lake Campground High point, NC – very pretty) we have yet to get Bertie, short for Big Bertha, on the road. We are planning a 5 day trip to Willowtree in SC as our first outing. We know so little about the mechanics of leveling and this was helpful. So, another question – why and when do you use chocks?

You must be a Big Bang Theory follower (based on your wood for sheep reference)! Lately, we’ve been concentrating on finding good two-player options, and Akrotiri certainly has proven to fit that bill. You won’t be disappointed if you have the opportunity to purchase it.
We live in Central Iowa (not a real popular hot spot for fulltime RVers – even for just passing through). However, if you happen to have plans to be in our neck of the woods, give me a shout. Would love to share some good times and gaming with you guys.

Hi Louis!
Congratulations on the RV! We were all newbies at one time so asking questions is always great! We use leveling blocks anytime the ground is unlevel enough that our tires are going to leave the ground. Usually we find out by auto-leveling, then watching our tires. If they lift off, then it’s time to re-level with blocks. We used to use 4×6 blocks, but we found the weight of the RV would crack them over time so we moved to the orange plastic blocks. I would definitely recommend having some sort of blocks, not only for unlevel areas but some RV parks require blocks under your jacks to prevent damage to the asphalt.

We don’t like our tires off the ground for a few reasons. First, the tires do provide a little more stability in addition to the jacks. Second, we don’t like having the suspension springs stretched for a long period of time. Lastly, we prefer to be cautious. If our hydraulics jacks suddenly fail, we’d prefer not to have the RV crash down

Hope that helps! Safe travels, and I hope we’ll meet up on the road.

We haven’t tried Akrotiri yet, thanks for the recommendation, I’ll have to check it out. I’m always collecting ideas for two-player games since most of the games we have/played are for 3+. Love Settlers of Catan (so many bad jokes….need wood for sheep). We would love to meet up with you guys. If we pass near your place, let us know. I’d love to find new gamer friends! Good luck on your road plans, hopefully we’ll run into you on the road someday!

Excellent! We look forward to it!

Thanks for any info that you can add. You have a great and very useful site! I’ve been reading and learning a lot! Thanks!

-Louis