The Shakedown Cruise (Anthony Chabot Family Campground) [230617-18]

Before taking the T42 too far from home, we wanted to test out as many of her systems as possible.  Some systems were easy to test from the comfort of our own driveway, while others . . . not so much.  Anthony Chabot Family Campground seemed to fit the bill nicely:  less than an hour from home (in case we forgot something vital, or things went tragically wrong and we needed to abort) with sites that have "full hookups" (30 amp power and sewer - things we can't test at home - in addition to water).

We originally booked a campsite for a weekend in April, but Mother Nature had other plans - storm damage kept the campground closed past our reservation date, and we had to reschedule for after our return from Japan.  The next date that was free was the weekend of the June 17th - which was a bit closer to our planned annual Yosemite trip than we would've liked (in case we found something wrong/missing that had to be resolved before that trip), but what can you do?

Tom was a little nervous about driving the oversized van through the Castro Valley hills, but it wasn't as bad as he feared.  The parking pad at the campsite was laughably large for the "little" T42 - obviously intended for RVs twice her size!

Among the (non-essential) items that we didn't think to bring on the trip: our selfie-stick.  So, we had to resort to trying a hand-held instead to get our "group photo" for the trip.

Then it was time to start hooking things up and trying things out, starting with power and water.

Our very first meal in our T consisted of breaded fish fillets, brown rice, and corn on the cob - which let us test using the air fryer, Instant Pot, and induction stovetop respectively.

By the time we left we had tested every system we could at least once (and dumped twice, just for the practice 😉).  We were feeling prepared to take on a "real trip" now.