Each time we travel with our trailer we learn a new skill. On this trip we learned how to build on sand and why that can be a good thing for RVers.
Good sites have at least some slope to keep rain from forming a large puddle under the steps from our home on wheels. While a little slope is useful, too much can adversely affect the refrigerator, air conditioner, TV antenna, and plumbing. Fortunately most of the sites we have visited are nearly level from left to right and any front to back slope was easily resolved by raising/lowering our tongue jack.
On our previous excursion we used for the first time a pair of large wedges to raise one side of our trailer. That campsite offered a large concrete pad that sloped down from a corner in the back to the opposite corner in the front. We quickly leveled our home on wheels by placing leveling wedges behind each of the wheels on one side of our trailer then slowly backing up until the trailer was level left to right. After unhitching, the tongue jack readily resolved the front to back level.
At Lake Griffin State Park I thought we could solve the left-right slope by again backing up on to our leveling wedges. Had I paid more attention to the Sunday School song about the foolish man building his house upon the sand I might not have been surprised. While the foolish man in the Sunday School song loses his house when the rains come down, our wedges immediately sank into the sand. While the tops of our wedges are merely dotted with nubs to provide traction for the wheels, the bottoms are mostly hollow. Thus when I backed the trailer onto those wedges, the sands shifted and the wedges sank.
A quick trip to the local building supply store provided a solution: a six-foot length of pressure treated decking. We reconnected the trailer, pulled it forward, removed the wedges from the sand, refilled the holes, placed the decking where the trailer would rest, then with the trailer halfway atop the board, inserted the leveling wedges between the wheels and finally leveled our home. We also use wedge chocks in front of each wheel to keep the trailer from rolling and X-chocks between the wheels to dampen vibrations inside.
Was all this extra work to build our house upon the sand worth while? Yes! While private RV parks we have visited have either a compacted if not a concrete pad, those sites tend to be much closer to each other with little if any trees or bushes around them. There, when we looked out a window we saw merely another RV. At Lake Griffin State Park we were surrounded by bushes and trees on three sides with only trees visible out our back window. From our site we had three nice trails nearby to explore. All for less than half of what we would have paid to stay in a private RV park. Site number 9 where we parked for five nights also provided us with ample electricity (30 A), fresh water, and sewage.
Should the opportunity arise, we are not better prepared should we return to this State Park or find ourselves building atop the sand.