So far, we've only stayed in the RV when we had water and electrical hookups. When you stay at someone's house and run a regular electrical cord to the RV, you can't really use high power things like the microwave, but you have an unlimited supply of power for charging things, small appliances, etc. When you're at an RV park, you can use your 30 amp extension cord instead, which gets you basically all the power you could use, including microwave. You can also hook the RV up to a hose with (hopefully) potable water, which then also gives you an unlimited supply of running water instead of just the stuff in your holding tank.

Dry camping means that you don't have access to an extension cord of any kind, nor to outside water, so you can only use whatever you bring with you in the water tank, and can only use low-power electricity that runs off the RV coach battery (the battery that runs the "house" part of the RV, not the engine). In normal circumstances, that means in our RV we'd still be able to use 1) the coach battery for low-energy stuff like lights and for charging devices, 2) the potable running water that we bring with us in the holding tank, and 3) things that run off propane, like the heater and the stove. So we were looking forward to dry camping and testing out the RV without the hookups to see how it would go.

We met up with our friends at a campsite called River Ranch (which also got us out of the thick, smoky, dangerous air caused by all the NorCal fires), and quickly learned two things: 1) our running water was for some reason coming out of the faucet foamy, as if it had soap in it. So apparently, to err on the side of caution, no potable water. And 2) our propane tank is empty -- perhaps a leak? So no stove, and worse, no heat. All we had was enough electricity to turn on the lights, and presumably-non-potable water to wash our hands with.

I hate to call it roughing it when we're still sleeping on a king size bed and have a working toilet at all times, but as far as RV life goes, this was as close to roughing it as it gets.

Luckily, our awesome friends let us use their propane stove to make dinner and coffee. It did get into the 40s at night without a heater, but we bundled up and it was perfectly fine. And it finally gave us an opportunity to try running our generator for the first time, which we had been a little intimidated to do. We learned that we can't use it at night if there are people nearby, because it's incredibly loud. (Sorry, friends!) But we also learned it takes about 45 minutes to heat up the RV in case of necessity, without having any noticeable difference on the gas gauge, so that's good to know!

RV life is a funny life. Back when I was in college, I did some pretty hardcore hiking and camping. I spent an entire summer backpacking all around California with nothing but a 50 lb pack. We would stay a night at the trailhead and poke fun of the people with their beds and boxed wine and bacon, before hiking in 13 miles the next day to camp without even a tent. As I started getting older, I switched to softer mats, and shorter hikes, and comfy tents, and car camping, and a part of me fought it for a while. But eventually I realized that sleeping on the ground hurts, and sleeping outside when it's 35 degrees is not fun, and I started embracing the fact that, really, comfort is okay. If it comes down to nature in comfort versus no nature at all, I pick nature. So on the way to River Ranch, we had to laugh and acknowledge... man have we gone soft. And I don't even care. Bring on the bacon.

Most of all, it was a really nice time to sit around with friends and do nothing for a few days. We'll definitely miss all of our people up here, and we're trying to get in as much quality time as we can.

Mike was also able to test out his new drone! But we're too busy packing, so those photos and videos aren't processed yet. We'll post them when they're ready!