Can you legally carry an open container of alcohol while traveling in your motorhome?

by Russ and Tina De Maris

Here's a question that can trip up an RVer in a hurry: Is it OK to have an "open container" of alcohol in your motorhome while traveling down America's byways?

A frequent comment made by the fireside and in Internet RV chat rooms is, "Sure, no problem!" In some places you'd be right and, in others, legally wrong. Here's the scoop:

Open container laws are generally written to keep a driver from having too easy an access to liquor while keeping his vehicle safely on the road. And those laws are not a federal mandate, but a state's rights matter. Hence, making a blanket statement could lead to a traffic ticket -- and some of them are pretty steep indeed.

In California, a passenger in a motorhome in possession of an open alcohol container is not a problem; neither is a situation like this "citation-able" in Maine, nor Montana. It gets trickier in Florida -- how big is your motorhome? If you've got a 20-foot motorhome, an open container is a violation.

Bottom line: If having an open container of alcohol while on the road is important to you, you're highly advised to check out the laws of any state you plan on RVing through before you get there. Here's a website with some guidelines.

How to keep items secured to dressers and counters when your RV is moving

Sandy Burns of RVtravel.com has a tip about a very handy way to keep items secured on your RV's dressers and counters while your RV is moving.

Learn your RV's "tail swing" factor.

"Tail swing" is the term used to describe the effects of the length of a motorhome or trailer's overhang beyond the rear axle. Many an RVer has learned the hard way that pulling a sharp turn away from a fuel pump (or other object close to the side of the rig) that tail swing is a reality to be reckoned with. Repair bills for crunched corners are not fun.

Not sure how much tail swing your rig has? Find an empty parking lot and pull your rig's right side parallel to a paint stripe. With a spotter, turn your steering wheel to a hard left, and slowly pull forward. Have the spotter stop you when your right rear corner reaches the farthest distance "over" the line. This is your tail swing distance, and it can be much more than you expect. 

Rain-X de-icer keeps windshield clear during winter

By Chris Dougherty
Certified RV Technician
Winter driving can be very messy, and freezing rain can make your windshield impossible to see through.

Rain-x, long known for its glass treatment products which repel water, has a product which I have used for years with great success -- a windshield washer fluid with de-icer.

What this product does is pretty simple. Not only does it clean your windshield effectively, it applies Rain-x beading protection and acts as a very effective de-icer. If your windshield gets a coating of ice, this will get rid of it.

A couple of points... I like to make sure that the washer fluid reservoir is empty of other fluid before adding the Rain-x. When it's diluted with another fluid it becomes less or ineffective in my experience. Second, make sure if you take your vehicle to a shop for oil changes that you tell them not to fill the washer fluid. It's a good idea to tape down the reservoir cap with a label to help ensure that you don't accidentally end up with the wrong stuff.

Rain-x de-icer can be found at many auto parts and accessories retailers.

Is age slowing you down?

We are not as young and quick-witted as we once were. Our responses start to slow down, even as young as after the age of 30. And we don't think or process information as efficiently when we reach middle age and beyond.

As much as you think you can perform certain functions just as fast now as you ever could, statistics would dispute that. One area that it doesn't pay to take chances or cling to old beliefs about our abilities is regarding you and your spouse's safety.

For instance, how fast do you think you could react to a sudden galley fire? Fast enough to stop it before it spread to the rest of your RV? Don't guess. Try a timed practice drill.

Have your spouse shout fire (don't do this in a crowded campground). Jump from your chair, rush to free the fire extinguisher from its wall mount (while your wife screams (not too loud) and reacts with feigned panic to create an atmosphere of chaos (which will likely be the case in a real emergency and will affect your thinking and efficiency), release the trigger, and--here, just pretend--pull the trigger while aiming the extinguisher at the virtual blaze. Call out to your spouse to stop the stopwatch.

Now do it again. And again. After a few times--admit it, your reaction time from start to finish decreased, didn't it?--it will be planted more firmly into your hippocampus, or hippopotamus, whatever that part of your brain is called that stores memories.

This means that if the real thing happens, your chances are now much better of getting the fire out before it's too late.