A forward-facing dash camera is one of those items you may not think as being necessary. We were firmly in that camp, annoyed at cars that cut a little too close when changing lanes in front of us. We can’t stop on a dime.
I cringed when stupid drivers that were obviously not paying attention, swerved into our lane. Like, HEY THERE, we are huge. How can you not see us?
It was then we decided we needed a dash cam. Heaven forbid an idiot drift into our lane and hits us. Worse yet, if that driver cut way too close and actually hit us while trying to get in front of us, we needed it for protection.
And a cool lightning show.
Researching which would work best was actually pretty easy. Our research kept coming back to the Rove Model R2-4K.
It mounts with a suction cup and is compact to not interfere with your field of vision. We mount ours at the bottom of the windshield.
The screen shows you exactly what is being filmed including the date, time, speed and GPS location.
The chord is long enough to plug into your 12v no matter where it is on your dash. Remember to unplug it when you arrive at your campsite. Otherwise, you’re going to have lots of boring campground footage. Ask me how I know.
You can upload videos to your phone using the ROVE app with the built-in WIFI. It’s also very easy to upload to your laptop using the included USB cable. If you choose not to move it all over to your computer, it will record over itself every 24 hours.
It has an incredible microphone. I imagine the microphone will come in handy in an accident. Be conscious of bad singing here. We learned that with the lightning show. Wow, we are bad.
Back to the lightning show. We were driving west from Texas making our way home from Mark’s Hotter than Hell 100-mile bike race. Our goal was Tucumcari for the night. We could see clouds ahead; radar didn’t show much of anything. As we got closer, the storm got stronger and the lightning show started. It was impressive, filling our vision field across the sky.
Would we make it to the KOA before the rain? That was the big question. The Tucumcari KOA is a great stopover spot when trekking across I-40, we’ve stayed there many times.
The rain started around San Jon, NM. The storm really got going a few miles before the KOA. The lightning was amazing. Bolts streaked across the sky almost continuously. I hoped out of the coach to get our paperwork when we arrived and looked like I’d walked out of the pool fully clothed when I returned. We found our spot and Mark plugged us in. We kept the drivers’ side slides closed because that’s the direction the storm was coming. That’s when we noticed the AC didn’t come on and realized the park had lost power. Uh oh. We saw the park lights on as we drove to our spot. Were they really out or did we have a bad power pedestal?
Let’s check the tape! I plugged the dash cam into my laptop to check.
The camera records in 3-minute snippets so I downloaded the last ten minutes so we could see the best of the lightning as well as the power situation.
The park lost power right as we got level. You can see the lightning quickly followed by loud thunder and the light across from our site go out.
We had an eventful night watching the lightning show and hearing just how bad we sing.
We were so impressed with the video quality; we bought one for his mom and stepdad and our son and daughter in law for Christmas. It’s the perfect gift for every RVer in your life. We’ve talked about getting one for each of our cars as well. Wouldn’t it be funny if we gave this to each other?
Important note: Mark sure you mount your dash cam where it does not obstruct your field of vision. Click this link is a good source for state by state information regarding placement. Always mount it in a place where you can see safely.