Hello, everybody. Welcome to RV podcast
episode
511.
I'm Mike Wendland, and this is my lifelong
traveling companion and my bride, Jennifer.
And we're tired.
It's been a busy 5 weeks. It has
been. I think today has been
a little bit of a challenging day. Yes.
We'll talk about it in a, you know,
in a bit, but we are back in
the USA.
Mhmm. We, have been,
spending the last 5 weeks
in Canada with the, fantasy RV tour of
the Maritimes,
and what an awesome time we had. I
hope you've been looking at YouTube, at our
videos. We've got one up on the Fundy
Bay in New Brunswick, and then one up,
just this past weekend
on Nova Scotia. We've got one coming on
Prince Edward Island.
But
just
a one sentence summation of of our, of
our Maritimes tour. I'm so glad that I
had the opportunity to go. Yeah. We haven't.
We had some questions we'll answer at the
end of this podcast on it. But we
are back in Maine. We have just, the
tour just ended, and,
we are in a little town called Canaan,
Maine. It's a little south of
Bangor, and,
we are overnighting here as we begin
1,015
miles from here back to our home in
Michigan.
But we had a had a wonderful time.
And I,
just can't say how nice it is traveling
with a group of of kindred spirits.
Wasn't that fun? Yeah. We're going to miss
them right now. We have one couple that
we're still traveling with. They're right next door.
The Wilsons are still with us. Yep. And
last night, we had another couple that by
chance Yep. We all had dinner together. And
everyone enjoyed this. Yep.
And,
it's really been fun. It's gonna be hard
to be just, the 2 of us and
Beau.
Now speaking of Beau,
we are going to have our conversation of
the week about a topic that has gendered
a lot engendered a lot of of great
controversy,
and that is the CDC's
very confusing rules on, bringing your pet back
from Canada. They took effect August 1st.
We're gonna talk about what happened to us
when we brought Bo back from Canada.
I'll just say, we're back. Bo is with
us. So, obviously, it worked.
But I will say we were very surprised.
And we'll talk about that in the, in
the conversation of the week in just a
moment.
But first of all, we want to,
tell you, have you checked out our books,
our travel guides? We have updated so many
of them now, and this is the time
of year if you're thinking of Arizona in
the winter, if you're thinking of Florida in
the winter, if you're thinking of a fall
RV trip out west
or in Michigan,
you need our travel guides. You can find
them at rvlifestyle.com/books.
We've got all sorts of
bundles built so you can save money if
you like, for example, we have, 3,
travel guides for Florida. If you wanna get
all of them, you can save some money
there.
In, Michigan, we've got upper peninsula and lower
peninsula. Just go check them out. And before
you go, these are travel guides,
that get right to what you need to
know as an RVer, and we urge you
to check them out. All have been updated
recently, and,
we think you'll find, lots of helpful information.
Alright.
Speaking of helpful information, one of the best
places to find it is on our social
media.
We've got,
Facebook group. How many members we have? 400
and?
430.
430?
432.
It's growing like crazy.
And our very exciting RV lifestyle community, which
is off Facebook, and that's at community.rvlifestyle.com.
Wendy Boyer is the one who keeps track
of all the stuff that's going on in
our RV lifestyle social media channels,
and she does for us every week a
program, a little segment called the social media
buzz about RVing.
And here's Wendy. Hi, everybody.
Over in our RV lifestyle communities,
mods and DIY Tweak Space, we recently asked
everyone
if there was a personal design or storage
solution that they had made in their RVs
that they would like to share.
And this was a great thread. A couple,
I think, things that were shared included one
from Brian. Now Brian built a sewer hose
storage under his 5th wheel. He shared a
picture of what he did. It looked like
2 square hollow,
maybe
aluminum,
tubes that he put underneath his rig, and
now his hoses can go there. It was
neat. It looked very efficient.
Now Paul, he also shared something he did.
He added a
shelf in his bathroom cabinet
for his 2017
Leisure Travel Van Unity. That looked like a
great way to add a little more space
in that bathroom area. And Bert, he and
his wife, well, they had this issue. They
had command hooks in their bathroom to hang
their bath towels to dry, and the command
hooks were pulling the wallpaper off the wall.
So what to do? They got a shower
rod, put it right next to their shower
door, made it the same color. It was
black, and then they got those s hooks,
and they put their towel on the s
hooks that they hung from their shower rod.
It looked professional like it was supposed to
be there. It was super sharp and great
storage saving idea from them. So if you're
looking for a few ideas like this, make
sure you check out that thread.
Also in our community, another great discussion was
in our general discussion space, and it was
from Greg. Greg said that he had recently
heard not to sit on a closed slide,
and he was concerned because he and his
wife on travel days, they would sit at
the kitchen table and eat their lunch, and
they did this while the slide was in.
So he asked the group what to do.
Is is this dangerous to do for his
rig? And there tended to be 2 streams
of thought on this. The first was from
Suzanne. Now Suzanne, she said when she asked
Alliance
about partly opening her slide so that she
could get to the refrigerator, she was told
that she did this to be sure not
to step on the slide because the slide
is elevated a little bit, and it could
be damaged.
Now Suzanne, she had a rack and pinion
slide, and it sounds like that is the
same type of slide that Greg has.
So that was one train of thought. The
other was from people like Randy. Now Randy,
his rig is a super c, and he
said the seat belts on the seats
are in the living room are on a
slide. Now, obviously, if there's seat belts on
these seats, the dealer's thinking you're gonna sit
on them while in motion.
And so they have been sitting on these
seats no damage at all, but his slide
was different. It's on a hydraulic slide extender.
So the bottom line seemed to be to
find out from your manufacturer what your slide
is built, how it's built, and then determine
from there whether or not it's safe to
use. So great discussion.
And then over in our RV lifestyle
Facebook group, we had a post that got
hundreds of responses, and it was from John.
John wrote, hi, friends. Any advice for staying
at a Walmart for the night? Now John
sounds like he's a new RVer, never stayed
before overnight in a Walmart,
and so he asked the group for some
suggestions. And I love this because that's the
purpose of these groups, not only to form
community and share our enthusiasm, but to help
one another. And there are always newbies coming
in, and there are always experienced campers who
are friendly and willing to share some help.
And that's what happened in this post.
Many, like Leah said, John, make sure you
check with the manager because some city ordinances
do not allow
parking,
overnight in Walmart lots. And Leah, she also
said, you know, this is what I do.
My husband and I, we go in the
store. We buy a few items. We go
to the customer service desk. We ask if
it's okay to overnight,
and then we go to the back of
the parking lot. We park under a light.
They go to the back to keep those
spots in the front available for customers. And
then, of course, they don't set up camp.
They don't bring out their grill, for instance,
or their lawn chairs. They just are good
guests, kinda staying in their rig, getting their
sleep, and going on their way. And many
agreed with that. Helen, she added in the
morning, you know, just just get up and
go. Don't stay too long. You know, don't
make this your 24 hour camping spot.
And Bill, he was the man who suggested
John get an app like RV parky so
he could see even while he's on the
road. You're getting tired. You know you gotta
pull over soon, and you can see whether
or not the Walmart coming up even allows
this sort of thing.
Great tip. And there were, again, lots of
great tips, and we have written extensively about
this subject on our blog and our YouTube
channel. So if you're looking for more tips
about camping or overnighting, I should say, in
a Walmart,
Make sure you check those things out as
well. And I'm Wendy Boyer, and I'll see
you next time in the RV lifestyle community
or Facebook group.
Thank you, Wendy. I think everybody
looks forward to, what you have to say
and what you've
learned and what you share with everybody. So
thank you from all of us. Yep. And,
all the people who, benefit from you and
your team of moderators. Hats off to all
those moderators
who, particularly in Facebook, keep things going. On
our community,
it's nothing but niceness.
And, we invite you if you haven't already
joined. If you're tired of the nastiness of
Facebook that comes, you know, with so many
people on Facebook,
come on over and try. Community.rvlifestyle.com.
You'll be very pleasantly surprised. Many different RV
interest groups are right there, and we'd love
to have you be a part of it.
Community.rvlifestyle.com.
Alright. We're gonna have our RV conversation of
the week.
And, this is one that,
has kept us thinking all summer long.
Back when the CDC, the Centers For Disease
Control,
seemingly out of nowhere,
announced some sweeping changes for what happens if
you take your dog,
out of the country.
In particularly,
particular of interest to our viewers is what
happens if you take your dog out of
the country to Mexico for a vacation
or,
more commonly,
Canada as we just did.
On August 1st, new rules came into being.
But before that, there was so much confusion.
Wasn't there? There really was. You had
to have your dog chipped. Micro chipped? Do
you I don't think anybody really minded doing
that to their pet. Well, it costs money.
It it does cost money.
And the second thing was your dog had
to have a rabies shot
after being chipped. After. So
so in our case, for example, we had
Bo Bo gets his annual rabies vaccination
on the January. In January, and he did.
But with these new laws, we had to
get it microchipped,
and then that rabies vaccination had to be
listed after the microchip was in. And that
rabies vaccine couldn't be a 1 year. It
had to be a 3 year. So
we complied.
We did that with Beau, and it cost
us a bunch of money,
for the vaccination, the veterinary fees. But then
under the original rules that they put the
for us, we had our vet had to
send in a form to the USDA, Department
of Agriculture.
They had to look at all that information
and then file it back and say that,
yep, they approved all that. And then we
had to have that to submit to bring
Bo back from the border
along with sending a picture of Bo. And
we couldn't do it except 1 or 2
days before we came back, and we had
to do it at the border. And you
had to choose. Yeah. You had to tell
ahead of time what because we weren't sure
which which border crossing we were gonna
do. Well, just, before those rules took effect
on August 1st, they backed off because I
heard so many complaints from veterinarians
and from,
dog dog clubs and people who travel with
their pets into Canada.
And they modified those so that you simply
had to fill out a form online
and then,
have proof that the dog
came from a low,
like Canada, which is a a a low
risk rabies country,
and that that they had a vaccination
and a microchip.
So that changed a lot. And we found
out all of this when we were We
found out the changes The day before we
were we were
in Maine, and we were ready to cross
over to Canada the next day. That evening
at the welcome dinner
is when we found out you didn't need
all this. But I think That they changed
their policy. They backed it off a little.
They're still pretty strict, though. I think what
was hard was all the stress that it
caused by the vets didn't know anything about
it, trying to get this all organized so
that Beau would be street legal.
And for me, I just said, I don't
wanna go. You know? And I was that
well, you know, got this trip or plan.
I I don't wanna vaccinate my dog. I
don't want more rabies vaccine in him. He
was just vaccinated, a 3 year vaccine. Had
to do that? I don't wanna do this
to my dog. I don't know what kind
of effect this is going to have on
him. And when you contacted the CDC,
they just were very that's the procedure
and followed. It's all online. It was very
confusing.
Alright. So they backed off. They changed that.
And it was too late for us because
we complied to what they said because we
were leaving July 22nd
and coming back after August 1st. In fact,
this fantasy trip that we went on, one
person didn't go. Canceled. Because they didn't wanna
subject their dog. I presume they had one
dog. To more vaccinations
Yeah. They already had. Right. So,
what is it like? Well, it's now after
August 1st, and we've come back with Beau.
Now I have been carefully monitoring it. Our
Wendy has been monitoring it, and our social
media team, Jen's been reading all the comments,
and several people have reported that that they
were able to do so. Sometimes they asked
for the papers. Sometimes they didn't. Where is
your dog's papers?
Now we've never been asked. We've always keep
Bose records up to date. We've never been
asked in
dozens and dozens of crossings into Canada over
the past 12 years, but we were ready
for this one. So we had all this
stuff.
The night before,
I went online. And you do have to
do this. Remember, this is still effective. You
have to go to the CDC site. Just
search CDC
dog import form. CDC dog
import form. It'll take you there.
And you have to go online, and you
have to,
identify your dog,
certify that he's healthy,
and that you're bringing them him back. And
you have to have, a description of him,
his breed, and his color. It's it's actually
very simple form to do. You send that
in electronically,
and then,
within just a couple of minutes, the,
the CDC sends you back a form saying,
okay. Here's a receipt that you sent that
form in.
You should print that out. In our case,
I didn't have a printer accessible.
But they accept, just show the email that
confirmed the receipt. So I had that. It's
on my phone. All ready to go.
And, I had the proof of his vaccination
for rabies, which I'm supposed to have. You're
still supposed to have that. And we had
his microchip number, which I was supposed to
have.
So we came across the border.
We crossed at the same place we entered
Calais, Maine. It's a small little town. Northern
Maine is on the gateway to,
New Brunswick and, and some of the maritime
provinces that we visited,
and we came right back that way.
We were in an RV line, and, boy,
they were,
like, 8, 10 RVs ahead of us. Right?
Quite a few. Yeah. I mean, they were
a lot. And,
everybody, of course, was coming back from Canadian
vacations. I did. And, we had Beau prominently
in the back seat.
We came up to the,
up the up to the, count the, you
know, the booth there that the customs border
patrol guy's in. Hello?
Y'all coming from? Then we we're on a
tour. We've been up to Prince Edward Island
and then back on. Coming in with you
that you didn't leave the US food food
plant stage in the border?
No. No? Nothing. Any other back on? Nope.
Have a camper or firewood? None. Oh, no.
Anyone open the camper for me? Sure.
We handed him our passport IDs.
He asked us, you know, what we were
bringing back, standard questions, and,
and then,
he asked if he could go in the
RV.
I'm like, well, well, sure. And we noticed
he'd been going in every RV in the
line. So I got up, and I opened
the the door, brought the stairs down, had
to put out the slide a little bit
so he could go look throughout, make sure,
I guess, there wasn't anybody in the RV.
And then he looked in the refrigerator
for fruits and vegetables, which we had gotten
rid of. You're not supposed to bring those
in from Canada.
We put the slide back in, put the
lock back in the refrigerator,
and he said, thanks. Here's your ID. And
we drove off, and we said, but wait.
He didn't even ask about Beau.
So we were really surprised.
Not a word.
And as we have looked at other people's
experience,
it was typical.
These guys, they're already overworked. These border patrol
customs guys. This is our first line of
defense in our country.
And up here in Canada, they have been
you know, they're they don't have enough people.
They're working really hard.
Nobody said this to us, but I suspect
this is not a real popular rule that
the CDC met with the customs and border
patrol folks.
He didn't even ask. Just as every other
time we've gone into Canada and brought Babak,
they don't ever ask. We always have his
records if they do, but and you should
too.
But we want you to know that the
biggest surprise after all the work we did,
all the expenses we spent, all the hours
we spent trying to figure out these changing
CDC laws,
he didn't even ask about Beau, whether he'd
been microchipped, whether he had a rabies vaccination,
whether he was healthy.
So we're back. He was some stray that
we picked up along the road. Yeah. He
was.
So,
I don't know how it'll be for you,
but,
the stress level, you know, because you're always
worried. Because if they the CDC said, if
you don't have all of this done, you
can't bring your dog back. Well,
I I mean, does the border patrol have
a bunch of cages now ready to keep
these poor dogs? You know?
So, none of that happened with us. And
the reports that we have seen,
from many different other RVers now who have
come back after August 1st with pets is
that it was a similar thing. Some of
them just handed them with their passports, those
papers. And one of the one of the
persons,
who did that said the passport guy looked
at it says, oh, you really went and
got all these forms, Didn't even look at
them and handed them back to them and
sent them through.
So they do go in your RV, and
they're looking basically for fruits and vegetables or
anybody hiding in there, which is more than
understandable.
The guy could not have been nicer.
The the hardest part about the whole crossing
is waiting about a half hour. It took
us waiting in this line behind all these
other folks who were 45 minutes. 45 minutes.
Yeah. From start to finish.
So we're back.
Beau is back, and, there was just no
hassle at all.
And that was the surprise.
After all the talk, all the controversy, all
the concerns,
one even asked about it. Well, I am
just so grateful that I
went because I didn't wanna subject Beau to
getting vaccinated. We always canceled ourselves because he's
lost. Was already vaccinated for rabies. I thought
that can't be good for him.
But,
I love the trip. I would recommend the
Maritimes to anybody. Yep. And don't worry about
coming back to Canada,
from Canada.
It was it was it was great. Now,
again, you should have all these papers, so
do it alright. Don't you know, because they
may change it. You know? Don't leave home
without all the papers for your pet. Yep.
And, and when you leave, thank the border
patrol and customs guys. They have a really
tough job, and we really appreciate their service
out there for us, and be nice to
them.
They don't like to hold people up either
as they're as they're trying to get, done
back home from their vacations, and,
we couldn't have had a better experience.
So we're back as is both. Now
if you have questions or, you go to
that CDC line, just just again search the
CD just search online. Go to Google and
search
dog import
rules from CDC and you'll find all you
wanna know and probably more.
If you have a different experience, if you
had a different one, please send us an
email or put that in the comments,
below.
Thank you guys for,
watching all this. And I hope that this
helps. And if you've been anxious about bringing
your pet, from our experience, you'll be surprised
too how easy it went.
Alright.
RV questions of the week, and we got
a couple.
This one is from Robert, and he wants
to know how have the campgrounds
been in camp
They they were all clean and tidy, and,
we enjoyed all of the campgrounds that we
were at.
A lot of them didn't have the 50
amp. They only had 30, but we got
along just fine with 30. That meant we
ran 1 air conditioner at a time, not
both, or we didn't run any air conditioners
when I was running the washing machine.
We had to be energy aware, which is
probably good for anybody to be energy aware.
So if you have the 50 amp unit,
make sure you take that dog bone that
adapts the 50 amp to 30 amp.
Several of the campgrounds we stayed in 10
different campgrounds now Mhmm. In the Maritimes.
Several of them did have 50 amps, and
that was great. But,
most were 30 amp, and they were fine.
Several were
crowded,
close together, yet and others were very spacious.
You had lots of room.
But they were really good campgrounds, and we
had great experiences in all of them, really.
No issues at all.
One of them,
there was,
someone who was rather authoritarian
in the rules that she prescribed,
but the campground was so drop dead gorgeous
that,
we all forgot about that.
And, actually, she was so kind and nice
to us. She was really nice to us.
To park. I mean, because
you needed help because we had a new
truck and backing in, and we got a
big rig. And,
she made it, and there was just this
little space we could get into. She was
excellent. Yep. Now some of the other people
objected, but, and the and the reviews on
the campground were kinda spotty, but
we didn't think they were they were warranted
because it was such a great clean campground,
and it was just great on the Bay
of Fundy. The other question is, how has
your Internet been?
And it's been awesome. Yeah. No problems whatsoever.
As you know, we have Starlink. We used
it, every day. We kept in touch. We
did our videos. They were all up, and
it was awesome.
So we had great great coverage with Starlink,
and, we look forward to continuing that
as we now head back to Michigan.
And then one final question is, will you
guys be doing another fantasy RV tour?
And the answer to that is
maybe.
I can't believe we both said that at
the same time. Yeah. I wasn't sure what
you're gonna say. Yeah. Maybe. We don't know
yet.
We will probably look at some and talk
with them, but,
I guess if you ask us, do we
recommend them,
We can say we recommend them wholeheartedly.
Will we be doing another one like we
did this, opening it up to our supporters?
I think it's sold out in a day,
day and a half, something like that.
I don't know. They they're booking out well
into 2026,
and, and that's a long time out. But,
they have some great tours.
And we'll we're gonna think about it. We're
gonna give ourselves some time, some space away
from this after we finish the edits, and
we've got some other things we'll move on
to. And then we'll we'll make a decision,
but we'll let you know. So you got
a question? We'd love to hear from you.
Mikeandjen@rvlifestyle.com.
And that is the podcast for this week.
Wish us luck getting home, and, we'll,
look forward to seeing you guys on Ask
Us Anything,
next Sunday night. See you then. Happy trails.