Our top 5 scariest experiences while living in our RV

It's Halloween, and that means it's prime time for some scary tales by the campfire. As we near the end of our second season of travel, we have lots to reminisce about. We always say that our life as full-time RVers is not without its drama, and while we have many highs that make this life worthwhile, we've also had our fair share of difficult, dangerous, and downright frightening situations. Thankfully, even those are stories that we can look back on and see just how much we've learned. Sometimes, we can even get a laugh out of the chaos. So grab a warm beverage and join us for this special Halloween post, where we relive our scariest experiences while living in our RV. We'll share our top 5 as well as some honorable mentions.

#5. Getting bullied at our campground

This story never made it to our blog posts, with the exception of us mentioning it in passing among a list of RV problems, so we're happy to share it in full now. Last year, we were making our way through upstate New York on our way to Lake Ontario. We booked a campsite at an RV park near Saratoga for two nights. Our site was incredible. We backed up to a massive field, which we only shared with a couple other RVs. There was no cell service, but we got to put our Starlink to the test for the first time and it worked great.

Everything seemed fine, until we started getting inklings that perhaps these campground neighbors weren't ones we'd be getting close to anytime soon. It was clear that most of them spent the entire camping season at this campground, which isn't an issue necessarily, but it becomes an issue when they all think they own the entire place. As transient campers, we were the "other." Most of these neighbors spent their time all hanging out together outside their RVs, smoking, drinking, and blasting music to all hours of the night. For only two nights, we'd just deal with it. But then, on our second day at the campground, we were returning from running errands, and we got ambushed. The speed limit in the campground was 5mph, standard for campground roads. We pulled into the campground and proceeded to go down a hill, which resulted in the truck picking up speed just a smidge. Our speedometer was saying 8mph. All of a sudden, this big dude walks out into the road and blocks our truck. He refused to move until we rolled down the window, at which point he says in an intimidating tone "DO YOU KNOW WHAT THE SPEED LIMIT IS HERE?" Anthony responds 5mph. The guy then goes into a whole spiel about how we better start going the speed limit. Then he goes back in front of our truck to try and read our vehicle tag, wondering what our site number is. Nicole quickly ripped the tag down so he couldn't read it, as he then says he's going to report us to the office. He finally moves out of the way, and we return to our campsite.

That night we stayed awake, wondering if the guy was able to read our campsite number before Nicole took the tag down. We weren't sure if he actually reported us and we'd be getting a knock from staff, or if he was unstable enough to come to our campsite himself. We considered leaving that night but instead figured we could just get up early the next morning, pack up, and go. Thankfully, we never saw the guy again and we were able to sneak past his RV site unnoticed on our way out.

#4. Leaving Long Island and towing over the George Washington Bridge

Right after launching for season 2 of travel, our first stop was Long Island, to spend New Years with the Vicari clan. We had driven onto and off Long Island many times over the years and it's never an easy feat, but towing was a whole other ballgame. We successfully made it to our campground, but only after towing over scary bridges, getting lost, and arriving after dark. That was nothing compared to what awaited us trying to leave Long Island. We went over possible routes several times, even talking with Anthony's dad who used to send commercial trucks all over the boroughs. We thought we had a plan that would help us avoid the dreaded George Washington Bridge, a two-level nightmare that gouges holes in the road, in people's pockets, and in dire times, in the sides of vehicles. However, once we were on the road, our GPS devices all started changing their directions. Yes, all the GPS devices. We were using 3 at once because that's what's necessary around NYC. Leaving the final decision up to Anthony, he chose to follow our main GPS and go over the George Washington Bridge. What happened next is not for the faint of heart. We first had to navigate onto the bridge. That's probably the biggest challenge because all the signs say different things. There are original signs saying "keep left," but construction signs saying "keep right." We ended up following the truckers, who were unbelievably nice, letting us into lanes and hanging back to give us room. It was a Tuesday morning, so rush hour was in full-swing, but the construction made everything 100x worse. Then, to add to our terror, it started to rain and visibility depleted. By the time we got onto the bridge, we could barely see off of it. Perhaps that's a good thing because no one needs to be looking off the bridge during a time like this. We shook, rattled, and rolled our way over the upper bridge deck and thought we made it unscathed. It wasn't until we arrived at our campground in Delaware that we noticed our backup sewer hose was missing. We had also lost our sewer port cover, and secondary valve. As far as we know, we didn't knock into anything. We think the roads were just that bumpy. As much as we earned some major bragging rights for towing over the GW, we made a pact then and there that we'd never tow to Long Island again. The Vicaris will just have to meet us down in Florida.

#3. Encountering 80mph winds and dust storms on I-10 in New Mexico

Traveling through Texas and New Mexico, the winds are no joke. The RV community is always posting warnings that you literally cannot get through the states without encountering high winds. We had already made our way through all of Texas and most of New Mexico and certainly had our fair share of gnarly gusts, but nothing beats our drive from Las Cruces. We woke up that morning to a forecast of winds up to 50mph. Those are winds that we had towed through before in Texas without issue. We also looked at wind direction, and most of our drive would be into the wind - much safer than if the winds are lateral, coming at our side. We decided to hit the road and see how things played out. Well, they played out far worse than any weather app was predicting. The 50mph wind gusts became 70+. Tumbleweeds flew back and forth across the interstate. Dust clouds formed alongside the road. We had a handle on our rig, but every time a truck passed us, the buffeting was extremely strong. We were white knuckling it, for sure. We kept our speed slow, putting our hazards on and reviewing in our minds the tips for dust storms: Shut all entry vents from the outside into the vehicle so dust doesn't get in. That means no AC and keep the recirculate button on. If you need to pull over, pull off as far as possible and shut off your lights so your tail lights aren't illuminated. And, in the spirit of pulling over, do what the emergency alert said: "Pull aside, stay alive."

We were already off the highway when we got that emergency alert, thanks to some foresight on our part. We exited just so we could pull over, but like a beacon of hope in the night, right off that exit was an RV park. We went into the office, desperate for an available site where we could park ourselves, and while we were registering, the alert came in, letting us know that visibility could drop to zero. Once to our site, we stayed hitched to keep extra weight on our rig, but the trailer still shook back and forth. A little while later, the campground lost power. We had a plan in place to run over to one of the nearby hotels if we felt like our trailer was unsafe, but luckily it never came to that point. Instead, we settled ourselves in and went live to celebrate our 1-year travelversary. And what a travelversary it was!

#2. Getting struck by lightning

When this happened, we never thought anything could ever beat the level of scary, but lo and behold, the lightning strike lands at #2 on our list. Holy moly. Not that we really need to recap the whole story again because we have ample posts and videos about it, but last summer, we were stationed at our home-base: Nicole's parents' house. We weren't actually even supposed to be there, but things didn't quite work out at our campground. One day, Nicole was in the trailer with the pets and Anthony was inside the house with Nicole's dad. Suddenly, a severe thunderstorm came out of nowhere. The thunder booms were like nothing we had ever heard before, but then came the loud explosion. There was debris strewn all across the driveway, and a tree about 3 feet away had scarring. The trailer's generator shut off and the house lost power. Suddenly, the scarred tree started smoking, and several minutes of panic later, it burst into flames. If there was any moment during our RV life where we felt like we were in the middle of a video game, it was when we needed to grab a bunch of our belongings and run, avoiding blasts of lightning and tree branches falling on us, to get inside the house before the tree caught on fire, thus potentially falling on our rig. We called the fire department and they came to douse the flames, and then we kept our fingers crossed that the tree wouldn't fall overnight. The next day, we had tree surgeons come and take it down, as well as the tree next to it, which had also been compromised. We needed to move the trailer in order to make room for the tree cutting. After that started a long journey of repairing all our equipment, and Nicole's parents' restoring all that had been damaged in their house. We didn't have any damage to our internal electrical system, but we needed a new cord, new adapters, a new surge protector, and a new transfer switch. All this despite not even being plugged in when the lightning struck! Those bolts travel with a vengeance. To this day, the lightning strike story is still our go-to disaster story from the road. It certainly packs a lot of voltage!

#1. Our RV gets stuck as we evacuate our flooded campground

For most RVers, the state of Utah brings mindboggling beauty with its state parks, caves, mountains, and Mighty 5 national parks. For us, Utah brings up memories that are a tad more traumatic. This past spring, we arrived to a county park in Spanish Fork, well aware of the ongoing flood watch. A few areas had puddles, and the camphost gave us a website where we could monitor the nearby river levels. Two measurements are necessary for monitoring: Water levels and current. As our stay wore on, estimates were showing that floods might occur around Wednesday the following week. We were supposed to leave that Tuesday, but as the weekend came around, we decided to do our due diligence and leave Monday instead. Only, Monday wasn't soon enough. The soil on the banks of the Spanish Fork River is very soft, so the levels that the river would need to reach to be "actionable" were actually too high. The water broke through and came rushing into the campground on Sunday night. We had literal minutes to pack up and get out of our site. By the time we left, the water was already up past our ankles and higher in some places. We made it to higher ground, where we decided to pull over to finish packing. Big mistake. Our trailer sunk into the ground and got stuck. Mind you, this ground wasn't even wet yet; that just shows how soft the soil was! We tried to get the trailer out, but the wheels kept spinning, digging it even deeper. If we had any chance of making it out with the truck, we had to try to unhitch at a very sharp angle and gun the truck out of there. It was a race against the rising water levels, but we made it out, leaving Buggy behind and finding a hotel that would let us check in at midnight.

The aftermath was long. The trailer suffered damage when we got it winched out of the ground, some of which we didn't get repaired for months. The campground was closed for a long time and it was devastating seeing the flood damage. There were lots of silver linings, though. Everyone who helped us with evacuating and repairs was wonderful. And, because we were getting so many repairs anyway, we took it as an opportunity to upgrade lots of parts of our rig, including the axles and tires. Natural disasters are tough. We hear similar stories when people need to decide when to evacuate because of wildfires. You can leave early or you can wait and see. You can listen to the expert forecasts or you can make your own choices. Sometimes you can choose what you think is the best, smartest choice, but nature has other plans. While we don't think we did anything wrong in the moment, we learned some valuable lessons. 1, when the soil is soft enough to get broken by the river, don't trust pulling a 12,000lb trailer onto it. 2, Don't put all your eggs in the basket of flood watch websites. And 3, dire situations such as this are the times when people band together to help each other out, so be kind to your neighbors.

Supplemental posts:
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4

Honorable mentions:

Flood evacuation #1

Two months before our Utah evacuation, we needed to leave our campground outside of New Orleans due to floods. It was a little less traumatic, mainly because we got our whole rig out and also had a place to go, but it also wasn't smooth sailing. We were getting conflicting info from the park rangers, and because of this, we ended up needing to leave after dark, and we had no gas. When we arrived to our next campground, we didn't know where we could go, and we ended up needing to switch sites the next morning. Though this campground wasn't under flood watch, it was a wet and muddy mess and we just did not want to be there. Oh, and did we mention that we both had COVID during this evacuation?

Running out of gas in California

Lesson learned: Never skip a gas station just because it's busy. Thankfully, we had reserves and were able to (barely) make it to the next station, but Anthony trying to fill our truck with a gas can on the side of the freeway? Just a little scary.

The Ditch Sitch

We can't count this in our main list because technically we weren't living in our RV yet, but just a few days after picking up our trailer, we wound up in a ditch in upstate NY. And then we got stuck in soft ground. And then we came a centimeter away from tilting into a utility pole. Is this the Universe telling us to not camp in upstate NY? On day 3 of owning an RV, it was hard to hear when everyone told us "Don't worry, these things happen to all RVers!" But it is true. If you RV long enough, you're bound to run into some precarious situations, or worse. We just got a head start!

The mentally taxing two months before launch

This was scary in a different sense. We didn't get into any accidents, nor did we have any traumatic natural disasters to escape. But for us, gearing up to hit the road full-time was one of the most emotionally draining situations of our lives. We ended up stuck in Massachusetts through the dead of winter, dealing with snowstorms, cold, and the annoying shakedown period of our rig. But the scariest part of all was wondering if we would be brave enough to leave. We've heard stories from RVers who went through the same thing, while others were so excited and couldn't wait to embark on this new life. We wondered if our reluctance meant we weren't cut out for this lifestyle. Safe to say, almost 2 years later, that it doesn't. Taking that first leap was really hard, but once we did it, we felt assured that we made the right decision. Nomadic life isn't for everyone, but it's helped us gain a whole new perspective on our country. Every day, there is a new lesson to learn, a new adventure to be had, and a new memory to be made. Whenever we return to Massachusetts for the holidays, we're reminded of how far we've come since those dark days after selling our house. It seems like a different lifetime. So, whatever your dream is and however scary it may seem, ask yourself to envision what could be waiting for you if you just seize that dream. Some parts might be really scary, but take it from us. We just shared 9 scary stories, but that's out of hundreds of amazing experiences we've had over the past two years. That kind of math is what drives us - over 25,000 miles and counting!