Arrived in Netherlands... and the world's largest camping gear store!

It was only a 50 km (30 mile) drive from our RV dealer to the Netherlands border... and another 10 kms (6 miles) after that to the world's largest camping gear store.

I am calling it "the world's largest", although that has not been confirmed. But now that we've been there, we don't see how there could possibly be anything bigger! It is quite the place.

Here is our drive for the day...

76 kms (47 miles).

From right to left.

Scenery along the way.

Arrived in Netherlands.... country #44 for us!

At the border, as with most of Europe, there was no border procedure. There is simply a sign. 

In the Netherlands.

We arrived at the Obelink Camping Gear store at just before 12 noon. The store is huge, and so is the parking area. And, it was very busy. We decided to have some lunch before heading in for what we knew would be at least a couple of hours of shopping.

These are not for sale, nor is this a campground. 

These are all customers shopping in the store!

They have a big parking area for cars, and a couple more just for RV's.

You are not allowed to overnight here.

I noticed a sign on the entrance door saying that as of June 26th (yesterday) masks are no longer required inside the store.

There was also an official announcement by the Netherlands government regarding this.

Essentially, life is now pretty normal here in The Netherlands. Although, we kept our masks on, as did maybe 40% of other people in the store. The majority were not wearing masks, and I think they were pretty happy about that.

The store is huge. Like an Ikea, but with everything related to camping. It's hard to describe how big it is because there are sections that have up to three levels. I looked up the floor space and did the math, and it is 4.4 times the size of the average Walmart in the United States.

But although it's huge, it was also very busy. It kind of reminded us of the way shopping malls used to be the week before Christmas before online shopping arrived on the scene.

Yep.

Just a couple of random in store photos.

We were there for four items in particular... two outdoor chairs, an outdoor table, and an electrical inverter. But we knew that we would buy other things too.

The size of the chair section could have been a separate store all by itself.

Ruth, in the chair section.

We probably spent an hour shopping for chairs. Sitting in all the various styles, comparing the weight of the chairs, the different fabrics, which ones recline more than others. We ended up buying the lightest weight ones that could both recline and be used to sit at a table. We didn't want to go cheap, we wanted ones that would be comfortable and hopefully last the length of time we would own the motorhome. We ended up spending €60 ($88 CAD, $72 USD) each chair. (All prices include all taxes).

We also bought a lightweight height adjustable outdoor table that is small enough to be used as a side table, or is big enough to put a meal on. €40 ($59 CAD, $48 USD)

In the electrical section, they had a wide variety of inverters... everything except the one that I was looking for! It was a bit frustrating because we didn't need anything fancy. All I wanted was a basic 300 watt modified sine inverter with a 12 volt plug. I was certain they would have had that item, but they didn't. So now we were kind of stuck because we didn't have any way to charge the laptops over the weekend unless we went to a campground and paid for electricity. 

They were out of stock on the smallest (400 watt) modified sine model, and the next size up was 600 watts which was overkill. Having an inverter larger than your needs simply wastes electricity just by turning it on.

I ended up with a 300 watt pure sine inverter, but paid more money than I would have liked. Inverters in Europe are about 50% more expensive than North America to begin with, so shelling out €98 ($144 CAD, $117 USD) for something that was more than we wanted or needed was really frustrating.

In the lineup at the checkout.

Now to figure out where to put everything!

Besides the stuff we mentioned above, we also bought a small patio mat, three sizes of collapsible bowls, a hanging clothes drying carrousel, anti slip shelving liner, a wash bowl that fits the size of our sink, a laundry hamper, and a colander.

Spent a total of €318 ($467 CAD, $380 USD).

We had been in the store for almost three hours, and there were still areas we didn't see. But we were done. That was enough of that!

I had found a free camping area about 15 kms (9 miles) away that sounded nice. So we headed over there. It turns out it was back on the German side of the border... by less than one km! No services, just a nice grassy overnight parking spot for self contained motorhomes only.

Trying out our new chairs!

We moved to the other side to sit in the shade.

GPS 52.053945, 6.695076

There were maybe 16 rigs here last night, but we were lucky and didn't end up with anybody on either side of us.

There is a conservation area walking distance from here, and it's supposed to be a nice day so we are going to stay here a second night. 

Oh, one other thing! I know it's only based on 76 kms (47 miles) of driving, but our onboard trip computer tells us that we are getting 7.8 liters/100 kms fuel mileage. That is the equivalent of 30.2 miles per U.S. gallon! We knew Max would get good fuel mileage, but we didn't think it would be quite that good. Also, Max has that new "stop-start" technology where the engine stops as soon as you stop at a stop light, and restarts again as soon as you press the clutch pedal in. Neat stuff!

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