Two weeks after driving our new RV home we had to get acquainted with it so we headed to the Portage Lake campground at Waterloo State Park. This was a short 60 miles away park that had asphalt pads with plenty of space. Out site #23 was 50 by 50 with a view of the lake. The park was virtually empty with 4 other sites occupied in the "North" loop. There we a handful of campers in scattered about in the 2 other loops.

The weather on Friday and Saturday peaked around 50 degrees Fahrenheit with gusty winds near 40 mph on Friday and somewhat calmer on Saturday. Due to the chilly conditions we didn't hang outside but did get in 4 or 5 walks while watching the Masters.

Hot Water & TV Issues

The first "issue" we had was the hot water didn't work. The control panel has 2 switches to heat the water with electric and/or LP. I reviewed the watch-through video we had and verified the 2 switches are UP for on. There wasn't any labels indicating on or off which would have been nice. The LP could be heard turning on so we though we had it. Saturday morning the hot water was still cold so I started poking around. Under the kitchen cabinet I found the hot water bypass value which was set to "Bypass". Ah ha that must be it. I turned it to normal and the water pump started working so I figured it was just filling up the hot water tank. It ran for a few minutes and we could hear water running outside so I looked out the door and water was pouring out of the hot water heater. The water plug was not installed so replacing that with the bypass switch got the hot water back. It would have been nice if that was communicated to us when we picked up the RV.

Since this was Masters weekend we were excited to watch it but the reception was spotty and kept cutting in and out. The RV was outfitted with a satellite dish and 2 receivers and were shown the setup screen during our walk-through. But with the multitude of options between the TV sources, the TV switch over box, and remotes I spent a couple of hours trying to figure it out. Finally I got the right combination setting the TV's to HDMI2 with SAT2 on the TV switch box and had the Dish setup screen. A half hour call to Dish and we had crystal clear reception. I should shoot a video on this.

Park Impression

The park was absolutely beautiful and we found the sites that we're excited to book during the 2019 season. Portage lake looks big enough for numerous boats and the park has a launch site. Disc golf is also available and depending on the cost maybe we'll be a set of discs.