Things Don’t Always Go To Plan

The plan was to collect the van (Dethleffs Trend 7057DBL) this morning, pack up with our gear from home and then head across to the Eastern Bay of Plenty.

That was the plan.

What really happened was loading our bikes (in the bike drawer Alan had made) took longer than anticipated to temporarily secure everything in the back of the van.

Why? Because – surprisingly – this van has a spare tyre – which is unusual! Most motorhomes we’ve looked at (so far) have had those emergency panda-type things – not spare tyres (because they’re weighty and in a motorhome keeping your weight down is important).

Instead of being on the road by 16:00, it was about 18:30 or so – twilight was starting to appear and, by this time, all campsites were closed for business.

Off-Grid at Moana Roa Recreational Reserve -Lake Karapiro

Having never gone off-grid before, we decided our first night would be our test run in a campsite with the ability to power-up if we needed it.

Haaaaah!!

With Alan driving and me checking out the NZMCA app for somewhere to stay, our first port of call was the New World supermarket in Cambridge for dinner.

Not too far along SHW1 near Lake Karapiro and Maungatautari Mountain is the Moana Roa Recreational Reserve. It’s tagged as a freedom camping site.

Yes – we’re now one of those people – who freedom camp!

We arrived in the dark; I was relieved to see that we weren’t going to be there all by ourselves. A caravan – complete with its own generator – was bedded in for the night.

An Early Night

After dinner – easy-do rotisserie chicken and salad – we called it a day reasonably early.

The traffic noise from SHW 1 (above us) was a constant low level rumble in the background – certainly not enough to keep us awake. Having said that, Alan said he was quite aware of the noise.

I was looking forward to tomorrow – to see just where we’d camped for the night but also proud of the fact that we’d had our first night 100% off-grid.

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Here’s to a successful – albeit unplanned – first night off-grid…

Here’s to the first day of testing out whether the Dethleffs Trend 7057 DBL is the motorhome for us…

Here’s to Alan’s Bike Drawer being a raging success to store our bikes.

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Here’s to SmilingOnTheInside!