Our successful initial week as full-time RVers!

It’s official: we have joined the club of full-time RVers! It was quite a process to get here, but we made it! We officially left our house for the last time a week and a day ago. Lots of emotions flying through that time but excited for all that is to come! We spent our first full week at a campground about 5 miles from home – Prouty Beach Campground, in Newport, VT.

I’d visited friends there camping growing up, but never camped there ourselves, and didn’t think we wanted to. As you’ve read in our other posts, we like to be in private sites and Prouty has the reputation of being an open field with tons of campers. And it was. However, it was quiet. There are many seasonal site campers there and in late September they were mostly empty.

There are a handful of sites behind the beach overlooking the water. While we had planned on booking one of these, we are glad that plan changed as it was quite windy as fall rolled in. The view looking at Newport across the lake was beautiful though.

A site is really what you make it. While we were close to the camper next to us, no one was in it the whole week. It was really a nice barricade. Behind us, our aunt and uncle joined us and we could hang with them and other visitors throughout the week. We really didn’t pay any attention to other campers that came and went.

We spent many a night visiting and telling stories by the campfire on this trip. There were s’mores, birthday cake, and some biscuit chocolate things the girls tried making (still a work in progress).

It was a great time just sharing stories and hanging out with friends and family. We really enjoyed our time there and will plan on returning there next summer when we return to VT with the camper.

One thing we did close to every day here was play Pickleball. We have been hooked ever since our trip to Old Orchard Beach Campground where we tried it. Here is the Pickleball set we bought. We all play it and we have family members that play it when they come over. It’s a great way to stay active!

Prouty has four full tennis courts on it but now they have added the lines in for the Pickleball court and has two nets that can be dragged out on the court. There were constantly local people out there playing – players of all ages! We had a great time playing and will continue to play as we travel. We look forward to watching the kids get better and better at it too.

Another popular attraction is the Newport Bike Path which now has a section near the beach of the campground. It is about a 2-mile loop if you take the Bluff road back, but you can also head in either direction and go quite a ways. Aliyah is a biking fool now, so we spent a lot of time on the path. She spent the better part of the week teaching herself to ride with no hands – frightening for her parents! But we admire her determination to want to learn and teach herself. She was doing quite well by the end of the week.

The water quality of Memphremagog is not ideal for swimming and really hasn’t been since I was a child. If you are looking for a campground for the kids to swim, I would not suggest it, nor is there a pool. This time the beach was all roped off by the water to control the geese. Still made for pretty views though!

We like stumbling on old games we haven’t seen in a while. At one campground this summer it was the washer game (an old favorite of Jesse’s). This campground had Triangle Solitaire (though I’d never heard it called that before). Two of these boards were screwed into a table outside of the laundry area. It was a great thing to do while waiting for a load of laundry to dry. And because there were two side by side, we were able to compete and see who could get less.

If you are staying here for long enough to need to do laundry, a washer load is $2.00 and the dryer is .25 cents for each five minutes. Seems to be cheaper than what we’ve seen at other campgrounds, however, we are just starting to have to do laundry while camping. We will see how it fluctuates!

This camping trip was our first with our new dog fencing and it was awesome! We are so glad we bought this fence. Our dogs were outside except to sleep at night. They wandered around and played and ate all within the fence. We went with the FXW Rollick Dog Playpen for Yard from Amazon. Check it out here. We bought 32 panels so we had plenty of room to go across the camper and out a ways so they had plenty of room. It’s great because it’s adjustable so you can angle it around tables or firepits, etc. We love them so far!

Our other new addition was the dog beds, cot style. With the exception of the below photo of Roxie, the dogs did not lay on them. We wanted them so they could be off the ground, and because we could just hose them off instead of having to wash them. We ended up finding these at TJ Maxx a few weeks ago for much cheaper than we’d seen elsewhere, and we have high hopes the dogs will start using them!

Again, what made this trip was the great company that we had and the time spent by the fires til the late hours of the night. There’s a lot that can be learned from a sit around the campfire. And the fact that what we thought was a full lunar eclipse ended up only being a 8% coverage – it makes for a great story for probably years to come!