Full Timing in a Class C with a Crazy Parrot

[DanandElaine]

Hi everyone!  It's our hope that there are some of you out there that travel with their parrot.  It's not a conventional pet like a dog or cat, but it's our "last child to leave the nest" (pardon the pun) and after having Salsa for over 15 years, you just don't find another home for your child.  We plan to purchase a Class C as soon as possible and prepare it for full timing before September.  Our first journey will be to the Southwest where it will be rather HOT, as probably all of you know.  Since parrots can't hold and use their own mister bottle, and it's not a good idea to sit them in front of a fan, we're rather concerned about making sure Salsa is reasonably able to handle the heat.  He is a double yellowhead Amazon.  Soooo.......anyone out there traveling with their parrots, we would welcome and appreciate any and all tips, hints, tricks and advice that you have used while traveling in toasty climates.  Thanks in advance!  BTW...we plan to have a screen tent with us, so he would be able to sit out there with us and catch a breeze if there is one!

 

[jimindenver]

I use to have a Orange winged amazon and know how sensitive they are to temperature, especially sudden changes. I would suggest doing what most of us do and follow the acceptable temps around the southwest. We travel up and down in elevation, north and south to find the comfortable temperatures that fit us. Even then you will need to account for the occasional cold snap or heat wave. This means setting up your RV to be able to run a furnace at night because it is the desert and can really cool down at night and parrots will not do well with a Buddy heater or other such unvented heater. It means having a on board or portable generator for A/C because even in September the southwest is crazy hot. In one instance for me I had to rent a room for three days because a friend broke down where it was 105-110 F everyday and I just could not subject my puppy to that kind of heat.

A few things I do is always park with my awning side to the south so that the awning shields my trailer and the northern side provides shade to sit in. The shade of the trailer is much cooler than under the awning because the awning itself gets very hot in the sun. This allows me to turn on a powered vent one one end of the trailer pulling cooler air through a opened window on the shaded side on the opposite end. Having cooled air come in one end and the hot air pulled off the ceiling on the other can make it so I do not need my A/C in considerably warmer temperatures. Another thing is to keep the heat from coming into the windows by protecting the outside of them. You could put reflective or insulating material inside but that just means the heat turns the window into a hot box heating up the RV.

In the end going to where the temperatures are comfortable is the easiest thing you can do. It is limiting but having a pet always is.

 

[DanandElaine]

 You could put reflective or insulating material inside but that just means the heat turns the window into a hot box heating up the RV.  

In the end going to where the temperatures are comfortable is the easiest thing you can do. It is limiting but having a pet always is.

Thanks so much for your great advice.  The location issue has crossed our minds.  We will be new to full timing, and considered the southwest to be the "Mecca" for so many people in the winter, so perhaps we should head there as well.  BUT.  We got to thinking that maybe there are other areas that might be just a BIT cooler for Salsa's sake.  So we're exploring that theory right now...studying weather archives to determine where we might go for the winter that wouldn't be SOOO hot, but we wouldn't get snow either.  Or if there WAS snow, it would be a skiff--gone by noon.  We've listened to many, many of Bob Well's videos including the ones where he talks about keeping cool and what to do with windshield covers and shade cloth, so we have that information.  But we have a feeling that the BEST policy is to find boondocking locations that may provide an allover cool region, rather than try to stay reasonably cool in the deep southwest.  Thanks for the input!  It's so appreciated!  Dan and Elaine  BTW...we are more "tree and forest" people than desert people, so that plays into this, although it's not as big of a factor as Salsa's comfort!

 

[B and C]

If it is August before you get on the road, you will want to go way up in altitude. Bob released a video a couple of days ago about snowbirds. There will be updates to it for where to go when. I think the rule of thumb is every 1,000 feet in elevation gain gets you 3.5 degrees cooler.