Over time and repeated usage a handful of gadgets have really jumped to the top of the pack in the best-of-the-best challenge.  Some we use every single day, and some only once a week or a few times a month, but work so well and make life so much easier that it would be a true bummer to have to go back to what was before.

• 5) Hose Quick Connects

I have 6 different hose connections that need to be hand threaded and tightened every single time we set up somewhere, or even just to take on water and/or dump.  Over time, this became an annoyingly repetitive time wasting chore.  It took me an embarrassingly long time to think of hose quick connects.  Now, it’s just snap, snap, snap, done.  In the words of Ferris Bueller, If you have the means, I highly recommend you pick one (or a bunch) up.   I’m putting an Amazon link here so you know what they look like if you’re unfamiliar, but I picked up mine from Walmart.  At about $4 for a set, they were the best price I’ve found, and work really well.  Based on the reviews, these Amazon sets they might be a bit iffy.

• 4) Air Compressor

This air compressor is so smooth and quiet, so punchy that what used to be a 20 minute job per tire, at best, is now done in maybe 10 minutes total.  With 8 17″ tires that need 80 psi it was becoming a major hassle with my old, anemic compressor trying to keep the tires aired up correctly.  Even a number of service stations that I’ve stopped at didn’t have air compressors with enough uumph to get up there without sitting there for 10 minutes a tire.  Now, a couple minutes per tire at most (more often less than a minute) and I’m on to the next thing.  Plus, it’s far quieter than the crappy ones.  Just a nice, smooth purr.   So nice.

• 3) Generator

Now we’re getting to the good stuff.  Not just a vital piece of our power system, but maybe my best buy in the lead up to the getaway.  Not only was I using Craigslist to offload many of the higher dollar items we were giving up, but I was also actively looking for some of the key items on my acquisition list.  We were definitely in the market for one of the Honda/Yamaha style low db RV generators when I stumbled on this.  The seller was asking $350, and at the time this same brand and model was selling at Costco and on Amazon for over $600.  It started perfectly, first pull.  Ran smooth and very quite and the inverter worked, but it was fairly beat up, and had clearly seen some use. So, I mentioned that and we went around a bit and settled on $275, and it’s been running like a top for us ever since.  I can plug the whole RV in and it runs everything but the AC and the  big microwave.  (It does kinda run it, but we don’t push it for long runs)  Charges the batteries for top-ups on top of the solar, (when we’re using the entertainment center late at night) and basically lets us run the whole rig normally if we so choose.  And I can run it all day and into the night on a tank of gas.  A single tank will last several days if we’re just a doing a couple/few hours a day.  One of my favorite purchases.

• 2) Ice-maker

We are ice users. Always. Kathy in particular is far more likely to have a glass of ice with a liquid, (tea, soda, water, adult, etc…) in it than the other way around.  I mean, I like ice and it’s in all of my drinks, but I’m fairly certain I’ve caught her out of the corner of my eye just waving a random liquid over a glass of ice and calling it done.  An RV sized freezer makes ice cube trays or buying ice impractical.  Not big enough for trays, or to store a quantity that doesn’t necessitate an ice run every other day.  Did I mention we use a bunch of ice?   This ice maker fits the bill.  More than enough ice to keep up with our demand, and we can run it on the generator if/when we need to.  The only way it could be better is if it made the drinks for us.

• 1) Gel/Foam 10in Memory Foam Mattress

Number one with a bullet.  It cannot be understated how bad many RV mattresses are.  Ours was pretty much unbearable, and we put up with it for a couple months anyway, and then… it had to go.  These gel-infused memory foam mattresses had been highly recommended to us early on in our planning stages — before we understood just how bad it was going to be — so I started checking around and found this one that included Amazon Prime free two day shipping — not all of them do — and made it so.  Now, I get to say that they are every bit as good as advertised.  Be warned, they are heavy and big.  The kind of big that makes heavy especially hard to maneuver in a tight on space RV.  Once you open the box and the tight shrink-wrap that keeps the mattress really compressed for shipping, out it pops.  It takes a little longer for it to completely expand out to full size, but once you finally get to test it out… ahhhhh.  All your lying down problems just melt away.  Over the long haul, none of the potential issues I was worried about with a memory foam mattress have developed.  It’s been almost 2 years and it’s still an exceptionally nice sleeping experience.

Honorable Mentions — Yes, of course I have a couple honorable mentions.  Honestly, there are probably more, but then it’s a list of our top 10 and I was really working towards a tight 5, but these two in particular come in handy almost every day.  It’s a bonus, really.

• Peplink Pepwave Surf On-The-Go Wi-Fi Router

We have upwards of a dozen devices that need to have an unchanging, on demand WiFi connection with an always on router.  (Two Roku’s, an Xbox One, a Raspberry Pi media center/server, multiple WiFi pads and e-readers, a laptop and two-not always setup-desktop computer systems.)  It be much more than a pain to have to change connections and passwords for all of the above every time we change available public WiFi or hot-spot connections.  (we have two different cell signal hot-spot creating devices)   It’s very convenient in our RV — just like in a home — to have a router setup that all those devices always look to for connectivity.  This gizmo it the gateway that converts either our cell signal hot-spots or public WiFi and feeds it to our router so it can make that WiFi available to our rig.  I only needed to setup the cell service hot-spots once, and do a one-time password setup for new public WiFi locations and our router is servicing all our WiFi needs.  In the interest of full disclosure, there is a router built into the Pepwave Surf On-The-Go, (as the full name indicates) but I found it to intermittently drop service a bit too often for my liking and it’s not as fully functional as a top-shelf dedicated router.  My real-world Netgear router is flawlessly smooth with nary a hiccup.

• Pizza Stone

Propane ovens are notoriously uneven heat distributors.  This was clear on the first couple uses.  Google-fu to the rescue.  The easy and affordable, set it and forget it answer is a simple pizza stone.  This one fits our oven almost perfectly, and now all the cooking things are good.  Such a simple and effective fix for what could have been a long-term, continuing irritant deserves a mention here.

No doubt there are many dozens of various bits of tech, gadgets and hardware that make life in a full time traveling RV easier, functional and livable.  I’m also confident that this list might be entirely different in 6 months to a year.  (Well, except for the mattress.  That’s gonna be hard to beat)  Two months ago the quick connects wouldn’t be on the list and 4 months ago neither would the air compressor.  Bottom line; in a few months I get to make a new list of the various toys I’ll be playing with then, and that works for me.