New Podders and our Shakedown cruise

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   Hi everyone!
After months of lurking, reading and enjoying all of the information on this board I thought it time to finally post and introduce myself! Sorry in advance for the long post!

My beautiful wife Joni and I live in the Pacific NW, and we recently purchased a 181g. This is our first trailer of any kind and we've spent the last three weeks excited to take the Rpod out and put it through its paces! We planned our trip for last weekend (9/27 - 9/30) to Ocean City State Park on the WA coast. For anyone that lives in WA you'll note that those dates coincide with three bruising storms that came ashore Sat/Sun/Mon. Each storm contained at least 2+ inches of rain and 50+ MPH wind!

By the time we got to the campground on Friday afternoon it was too wet/windy to put up the R-Dome, which is probably a good thing since I've never done it before, so we hunkered down inside with our two furry children (Callie 60 lbs, Bear 35 lbs) and listened to the rain.

After a walk on the beach in Storm #1 on Saturday, we dried the kids off and spent time inside organizing. For dinner Joni made a pasta dish and we had wine and beer while watching Mad Men (Season 3).

Sunday we drove into Ocean Shores and spent some time on the beach watching the incredible surf that 60 mph winds kick up and learned that dogs don't care if it's stormy or not - they just want to run on the beach.

Sunday night we had soup and figured out how to use the convection microwave by making cookies. Joni then whipped me in Scrabble and we drank more wine and beer while we watched more Mad Men as Storm #2 really picked up speed.

Monday morning there was a brief break in the storms, so we dried out everything as much as possible, hooked up and headed back to Seattle.

On the way we ran into the teeth of Storm #3 that produced incredible amounts of rain/wind as we drove up I-5. I put an Andersen anti-sway hitch on my Pathfinder when we purchased the Rpod and I have to say THANK GOODNESS I DID. The amount of standing water I plowed through and the huge gusts of winds that hit us from the side made the pod wiggle, but then it would settle down and stay behind me. I am reticent to test the same conditions out without any type of WDH/anti-sway so to me the Andersen will always be the reason that drive wasn't as terrifying as it could've been. 

Only two downsides to the whole trip:

1) The furnace worked for about 5 min and then wouldn't come back on at all. Luckily I had thrown a ceramic heater in the pod before we left so we had good heat. I need someone to look at that because without that ceramic heater the trip would've been miserable. 

2) I hit the gate when we got back home pulling a little bit of the trim on the front up. I hammered it back into place, but I need to find caulk to reseal it. Anyone have any ideas on what kind of sealant FR uses? 

What did we learn?

1) The Rpod will never be any smaller than it is over three nights with no Rdome and standing water all around it. It was still perfectly comfortable for the four of us.

2) The Pathfinder is a perfect match for the 181g. 14.2 MPG over ~250 miles of towing in heavy wind/rain.

3) Every pod needs a name and we let the trip provide one for ours.

Our pod is now known as The Ark Pod! 

Chris and Joni