We're Nathan and Fabiola, a married couple (Michigan and Brazil) living full-time in a Brinkley Model Z 3515 fifth wheel that we tow with a Ford F-350 dually. We travel the US with our cat and film the whole thing for our Nomads Amor YouTube channel. This is our first RV, and we've learned most of what we know the hard way, on camera.
Over the past couple of years we've bought a lot of gear. Some of it lives in a basement bin and never comes out. This list is the other kind: the ten things we reach for constantly, whether it's a travel day, a boondocking stretch, or a regular Tuesday at a campground. If we lost the rig tomorrow and started over, we'd buy every one of these again.
Each item below gets a short version here. Where we've written a full article on that part of our setup, we link it so you can go deeper.
Some links on this page are affiliate links, including Amazon links. As Amazon Associates we earn from qualifying purchases, at no extra cost to you. We only list gear we actually own and use.
Towing and travel days
GEN-Y Hitch GH-8045AL Executive Torsion-Flex
This is the gooseneck hitch that connects our 40-foot Brinkley to the F-350. The torsion-flex design takes a lot of the chucking and bounce out of the ride, which matters when you're pulling a rig this size through mountains. The first time we hitched up with it, we barely knew what we were doing, and you can watch that whole ordeal in our first hauling day post. These days hitching takes us a few minutes.
It's on Amazon here, and our full towing, hitching and setup gear article covers the rest of what's in the truck bed.
ETENWOLF T300 tire pressure gauge
Tire pressure is the least glamorous thing we check and probably the most important. The T300 is a digital gauge that reads up to 200 PSI, which you need for dually truck tires, and it gives the same number every time you press it on the valve stem. Cheap gauges don't. We check all ten tires (six truck, four trailer) before every travel day.
You can grab it on Amazon. We go through our whole pre-departure routine in the safety and monitoring gear article.
VIAIR 400P portable compressor
The gauge tells you a tire is low. The VIAIR fixes it without hunting for a truck stop with a working air pump. It clips to the truck battery, handles tires up to 35 inches, and has topped off our tires in campgrounds and parking lots more times than we can count. It showed up alongside the T300 in our undercarriage maintenance video post.
Find it on Amazon here.
Water, in and out
Blu Tech AR3 water filter
We went a year and a half of full-timing without real water filtration, and we consider that the biggest mistake we've made in this lifestyle. One campground actually posted a lead warning on our door. The AR3 is a three-stage system made in Kalamazoo, Michigan (Nathan's home state, which we enjoy), and it filters down to 0.2 micron. After installing it, the taste difference was obvious, and the water pressure was actually better than before. We documented the unboxing and install including the midnight leak that flooded our basement the same week.
You can get the AR3 Essential Bundle for 7% off through our Blu Tech partner link. Our water filtration and water gear article walks through the rest of our water setup.
Camco RhinoEXTREME 20' sewer hose kit
We started with a cheap sewer hose and it leaked. That is not a category where you want to learn things the hard way, so take our word for it and skip ahead. The RhinoEXTREME is crush-resistant, comes pre-assembled with swivel fittings and a clear elbow, and the 20 feet of reach has saved us at awkwardly placed dump stations. We swapped to it during our tank dumping adventures and haven't had a leak since.
It's on Amazon, and the full rundown of totes, valves and macerator gear is in our sewer and tank gear article.
Power
SOK batteries and Victron electronics
Our electrical system is the most expensive thing on this list and the one we'd least want to give up. SOK lithium batteries store the power, and Victron components (inverter, solar charge controllers, and a shunt) manage it. The whole system got put to the test during our 15-day boondocking challenge, running everything from the air fryer to our work computers with no hookups.
SOK sells direct through our partner link. If you want to see battery percentage down to the decimal on your phone, the Victron SmartShunt is the piece we check most. The full component list, and why we chose each piece, is in our solar and battery setup article. For how it all works together off-grid, read our boondocking setup.
Around the campsite
Blackstone 17" griddle
Cooking outside keeps heat and grease smell out of the rig, and the 17-inch Blackstone is the right size for two people in a fifth wheel. Ours got three rounds of oil seasoning before its first meal of burgers, bacon, eggs and fries, all of which you can see in our first Blackstone cook. It stores flat in the basement and sets up on a folding table in about two minutes.
The griddle is on Amazon here. Accessories, storage and what we actually cook on it are in our Blackstone and camp kitchen article.
RV SnapPad
SnapPads are rubber feet that snap permanently onto the landing gear and leveling jacks. No more crouching to place plastic blocks at every site, and no more driving off without one because you forgot it in the grass. They also keep the jacks from sinking into soft ground as fast, which we appreciated after a muddy site or two.
They're a partner of ours: order through this link and the code NOMADSAMOR takes 10% off.
Safety and staying connected
GasStop propane gauge with leak detector
The GasStop screws on between the propane tank and the regulator. It gives you a pressure reading at a glance, so you get some warning before a tank runs dry, and it shuts off the flow automatically if it detects a major leak. For something that sits in a compartment with our fridge and furnace lines, that automatic shutoff is worth the price on its own.
It's on Amazon, and it's part of the bigger picture in our safety and monitoring gear article.
Starlink Gen 3 Standard Kit
We both work from the rig, so internet is not optional. Starlink has worked at nearly every site we've parked at, including places with zero cell signal. On one double travel day it earned its keep from the passenger seat: our planned overnight stop fell through mid-drive, and we used Starlink from the passenger seat to find somewhere to park a 40-foot Brinkley near Louisville while we were still rolling.
The Gen 3 kit is on Amazon. Our full connectivity and camera setup is in how we film our videos and stay online.
Where to find everything
Every product above, plus the smaller stuff that didn't make the top ten, lives on our Amazon storefront. The RV Must Haves idea list is the closest match to this article.
One more tool deserves a mention even though it isn't gear you can hold: we plan every route with RV Life Trip Wizard. It knows our rig height and weight and routes us around low bridges, which matters more than you'd think. A campground once emailed us specifically to warn us about a 10-foot bridge near their entrance, and Trip Wizard already had us going the other way.
If you're setting up a rig of your own, start with the deeper dives that match your situation: our boondocking setup if you want to get off-grid, or small-space living gear for making the inside of a fifth wheel actually livable. And our weekly newsletter is where we share what we're testing before it ends up in articles like this one.