Captain’s Log – Jackson Lake State Park: Mistakes were made…

So we started the day patting ourselves on the back for getting the earliest start ever for a camping season – April 9th! Previous record was late May, and since we live in Colorado, April can be anything from almost summer to 8 inches of snow on the lawn – you never know.

We felt pretty confident about the RV itself – Little Blue, as we like to call her. I de-winterized everything, Shanna cleaned and prepped it for the 2026 maiden voyage, and we even worked together on a fabulous new teak counter top and a big vessel sink for the bathroom – it came out great!

It was so great, in fact, that in order to rig up the new sink and countertop with the right plumbing and water sealant, we had to rush things to get it done in time to meet our deadline of getting out so early in the year. Other prep work suffered, and we paid for it in a big way…that was Mistake #1.

Weather had been warmer than normal all year long, and we were pretty confident it would hold for our trip. So confident in fact, that 2 grown adults with dozens of camping trips under our belts missed one critical weather factor… that was Mistake #2.

Our final camping conundrum came as a result of our “preparedness” that we actually pride ourselves on. We have so much gear and emergency tools and supplies on that rig that we feel prepared for everything from the Zombie apocalypse to pretty much anything that might happen while we’re out in the field.

We’ve got a full set of tools, digging/chopping/cutting equipment of all kinds, enough wood for at least 2 or 3 nightly campfires, emergency lighting, portable battery banks, extra food and water, blankets, sleeping bags, wet weather gear, and we even have a rechargeable battery charger in case the house or truck batteries die in the middle of the woods. Yeah, about those batteries..Mistake #3.

MISTAKE #1 – Check to make sure EVERYTHING works on your RV before you leave home!

Some great advice that we got of things to do when de-winterizing totally made sense. Go camping in your driveway to make sure everything works. Wow, that really is a great idea! Unfortunately, we noted it as a great idea, promptly ignored it, and went camping without making sure the slide out worked.

Our Class C RV is pretty good size – 24′ stem to stern – and even with two 100+ lb dogs in there, once we pop out the slide, there is enough room to maneuver around our huge canine companions. We always figure out exactly where we want the RV to sit for any given trip, level it out, then pop out the slide to give us some breathing room inside. Except the slide didn’t move when I flipped the switch!

It not only didn’t move, it didn’t even make a sound. It was getting zero power, and no matter what we tried, it would not even attempt to slide out. It had always just worked before, so instead of testing it in the driveway like we should have, I just assumed it would work this time as well. I was oh so wrong.

The cellular signal at Jackson Lake is never amazing because of its remote location, and it was very cloudy, so the signal was worse than normal. You can pay for wi-fi access, but for some reason I couldn’t get that to work, either. I was forced to search for solutions online using a signal speed that was probably worse than the dinosaurs had. I ended up outside in rapidly fading daylight with a flashlight, digging around in the house battery bank trying to figure out why the batteries that had been charging for 2 days straight suddenly weren’t working for a critical part of our RV.

We were plugged into shore power, and the DC powered lights in the RV were working, but the AC outlets were not, nor was the DC powered slide out. I had no idea what was going on. In desperation, I flipped the 3 circuit breakers inside the battery bank housing. That fixed the AC outlets inside the camper, but now NONE of the DC powered devices inside the RV worked – not the slide out, not the refrigerator, not even the lights!

We decided that enough was enough, we would do our best to preserve our food using ice we brought with us, and we could deal with the close quarters for the night. We would reassess during daylight the next day when it wasn’t so cold, dark, and windy outside. Oh, windy you say? Let’s talk about that…

MISTAKE #2 – Check ALL of the weather factors!

Shanna and I both checked the temperature and precipitation forecast several times in the days leading up to the trip. A little chilly at night, but nothing the campfire wouldn’t ward off. There was a small possibility of rain, but if it happened at all, it wouldn’t last, and we have a pop up that we keep tied down tight that we can duck under if need be.

However, despite the fact that most of the time I really don’t like the wind, and Shanna isn’t a huge fan, either, both of us somehow forgot to check the projected winds for this trip, and Mother Nature made us pay dearly.

The water of Jackson Lake early in the season is right up to the rocks along the shore, and our campsite was on the water’s edge. The first night we were there, the wind spun up so badly that it literally sounded like we were at a beach with waves crashing non-stop against the rocks. There were white caps all over the lake as wind whipped over its surface, relentlessly lashing the entire campground.

I had tied down our pop up earlier when it wasn’t so windy, and staked it down tight as well. 8 different ropes or stakes were holding it in place, and the wind was so bad that we couldn’t risk trying to take it down. It could have easily turned into a large and very dangerous metal parachute careening about the campground leaving damage in its wake. We had no choice but to have confidence in my ties and stakes, and hope the cover didn’t get shredded in the wind.

And a campfire? HA! There were somehow no fire restrictions in that area despite the high winds, but there was no way we were lighting anything out there. We spent our first night camping locked inside the RV watching our popup fight the wind and waiting to see when the cover would finally rip against the force of gusts that had to be 30+ mph – maybe even more.

Mistake #3 – Not understanding how your batteries and your tools work!

So after a windy, cold night inside the RV (SO glad Shanna packed the thick sleeping bags), we woke to a brave new day along the lake’s edge, ready to take the dogs for a walk around the park, and enjoy a full day of camping.

Our pop up cover somehow survived the night without ripping, there was no significant sun due to the cloud cover, so we quickly collapsed it and put it away in case the wind picked up again. We decided that the cramped conditions inside the camper weren’t worth spending more time on troubleshooting during this trip, so fixing the battery problems could wait until we got back home.

Weather wasn’t fantastic, but the wind had died down to a steady 10-15 mph-ish breeze that we didn’t love, but at least it wasn’t gusting anymore. Temperature was warm enough that even with the breeze, we would take the dogs on their walk and not be too uncomfortable.

Winds that night were still borderline as far as safely having a fire, but we were only staying for those 2 nights, so we went ahead and built a small fire to enjoy our last night of camping. I dug a deep hole inside the fire pit to help block the wind, and we used camping gear from our site to create a wind-break that was kind of/sort of effective. It wasn’t the best campfire experience we ever had because the wind was still pretty steady, so relatively early we completely drowned the coals in water and went to bed.

The Aftermath

Got up the next day, licking our wounds from so many things not going right on the trip, but still glad that we got to have the adventure, learn the lessons, and get our dogs out of the house for a while. The weather now was great! Sunny, warm, almost no wind. The exact trip we thought we were going to have, but today was pack up day, and we had to head home.

It was fairly early, so we decided to take the dogs on a longer walk to tire them out before we broke camp so we wouldn’t need to fit in a walk with them once we got back home. The weather was perfect, Jackson Lake State Park is very picturesque, and the lake was now the calm, serene body of water we originally came here to spend time near.

We got the dogs back to the RV, got them water, and let them chill out as we started working on breaking down camp. It was really nice out, so we wanted to get home and enjoy the rest of the day. We quickly got ready to leave, and when everything was done, we got the dogs up the RV steps and into the rig to get buckled in for the ride home.

One of the last things we do before we drive away is pull in the RV stairs once the dogs are safely inside. It is one of several dozen things we check off of the Pre-Flight Checklist that we consult every time we pull the RV out of our driveway or out of a campsite.

So we tried to pull in the stairs. Yes, you know, the DC powered stairs! Shit.

We just looked at each other in a mutual moment of realizing that we now have a very real problem. We had decided to not try to fix our battery issues until we got back home, so nothing DC powered – including those stairs – was working.

Clearly we weren’t about to go flying down I-76 at 75 mph with 12 inches of iron stairs sticking out the passenger side of our RV, so now we HAD to find a way to fix the electrical issues, or we were stranded!

I got back online, and the signal was a little better now that the clouds had mostly cleared up. I figured out how to rewire our 4 house batteries so they would work in parallel, and I did that. By this time those batteries were completely dead, so I got out the battery charger. Yeah, about that…

The battery charger that I had used many times in the past on other batteries didn’t even register the house batteries. They were so dead that the charger didn’t “see” them, so it in turn wouldn’t charge them! I found out later that after rewiring the batteries, I could have jump-started them by turning over the engine of the actual truck, but I didn’t know that at the time, and those stairs were still a very real problem.

Now time was ticking away after spending all of that time researching the issue and then rewiring the battery bank, so we decided that there had to be a way to manually force those stairs back in, and there was. It required me to get extremely dirty crawling around under the RV, but there is a pin that locks the RV stairs in place. By man-handling that pin for a while (it had probably never been moved before), I finally got it out and the stairs collapsed in – thankfully not on my face since I had the wherewithal to brace them with my free hand before pulling that pin out.

3 bungee cords later, brushing off a lot of dirt, and just shaking our heads, we finally broke camp and headed home. We somehow only ended up about 30 minutes behind schedule after all of that, but our pride took quite the hit as we realized how many ways we could have very easily avoided every one of those problems.

So, the morals of the story are to always, always check out everything on your RV before you leave the driveway, understand how your rig and your tools work, and by all that is holy – don’t forget to check EVERY aspect of the weather forecast!

But hey – we can say we went camping in April!

Here are pics from the trip – we paid for them with blood, sweat, and tears!