About
About Camp & Chock
A gear guide for a first camper season, written from the side of the fence that watches people arrive.
Why this site exists
Every weekend, travel trailers pull into RV sites at a lodge run by Janet Media Group. A good number of them are being set up for the first or second time ever, and the same small set of problems comes up again and again: blocks sinking into soft ground, a sewer hose four feet too short, a pedestal nobody checked before plugging in, someone driving off with the steps still down.
None of those are difficult problems. They are all first-time problems, and they persist because the available advice is written by people ten years into the hobby for other people ten years into the hobby. Ask a beginner question on an RV forum and you get an answer about a product that solves a problem you will not have until 2029.
So Camp & Chock is deliberately narrow: the first season. What you need before Saturday, in what order, and just as importantly what you can skip for a year or two without consequence.
Who writes it
Every article on this site carries that byline, and the bio above is the whole of it. There is no panel of experts, no anonymous contributor pool, and no credential we have not named. If you want the professional-qualifications version of an author bio, this is not that site — what is here instead is a specific vantage point: hosting RV sites, week after week, and seeing what people actually brought and what they wished they had.
Where the judgments come from
This is the part most gear sites are vague about, so here it is plainly. We do not run a test lab and we do not claim to. Nothing on this site says “in our testing” about a product we do not own, because that would be a lie and it is also the easiest kind of lie for a reader to catch.
Recommendations here are built from three things:
- Published manufacturer specifications — cited, with a link, on every product where a specification is doing the work of the argument.
- What we observe at the lodge’s RV sites — which gear gets used, which stays in the box, and which fails on the same gravel pad every season.
- Whether a beginner can use it correctly without reading a forum thread first — which is a real criterion here, weighted heavily, and is why the “best” pick on several pages is not the most capable product.
The full version, including what each criterion means and where it runs out, is on how we choose.
What this site will not do
Four commitments, all of them visible in the pages themselves:
- No star ratings, review counts or scores out of ten. We have no honest data to build one from, and a number implies a measurement someone took. The per-product criteria are published as words we can defend instead.
- No customer testimonials. We have no verified reviews for this site, so there is no testimonials section anywhere on it. An empty space is better than a fabricated quote.
- No published prices. They change constantly and a stale figure is worse than none, so every buy button goes to the live listing where you see today’s price.
- No invented urgency. No countdowns, no “only 3 left”, no fake deadlines. If something is worth buying it will still be worth buying next week.
How it is funded
Affiliate links. Camp & Chock participates in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, and when you buy through a link here we may earn a commission at no extra cost to you.
The thing worth being concrete about is what that does not change. Commission rates do not decide the order of a list. Where a cheaper option is the better buy, the cheaper option is the recommendation — several pages here recommend a supermarket product over an RV-branded one for exactly that reason. The full statement is on our affiliate disclosure page.
The site as it stands
51 guides covering 58 products across five categories. Every page is dated with a real last-updated date, and when something goes out of date we would genuinely like to know — tell us and we will fix it.
Where to start
First-Season Starter Kit
Everything a new travel trailer owner needs, ordered by when you need it: leaving the dealer lot, pulling into the site, hooking up, the first night, the first dump.
Leveling & Chocks
Getting the trailer level and getting it to stop moving are two different jobs needing two different products. This is which is which, and what to buy for each.
Power & Surge Protection
A campground pedestal is an unknown piece of wiring you plug your home into. This is how to check it, what protects you, and what a cheap device will not catch.
Sewer & Water
The part of RVing nobody demonstrates at the dealership. Done right it takes ten minutes and you never think about it. Done wrong it is the story you tell for years.
Towing & Security
The gear that matters between the dealer lot and the campsite: seeing behind you, keeping the trailer attached, knowing about a tire before it fails, and still owning it in the morning.