The trial run was definitely worth doing! We learned a lot and it was really quite successful. My setup and breakdown steps were mostly good and after trying them out I’ve only made a couple of small additions and slight re-arrangement of the steps. I now have a solid 21 point setup checklist and a 46 point breakdown checklist. As an example I’ve posted pictures of these below:
The Little Things
It’s amazing how many little things there are that if not done make things harder and if done make things so much easier. For example, the first few times I unhitched the trailer I struggled to know when I had raised the trailer high enough. It’s so easy to either not raise it high enough or raise it too high. If the former happens, when you pull the truck away from the trailer the truck raises up significantly and if severe enough could even collide with the trailer. If the latter happens, the trailer is actually lifting the truck up and again pulling away is not a very clean process. To make this easier I measured the distance between the top of the truck tires and the truck bed when the trailer was not connected (in my case it’s 12 inches). Now I know that as long as I have close to 12 inches of distance there then I’m good to unhitch. It makes the process a lot faster and easier with more peace of mind when unhitching. This is one example but there are at least a dozen little things like this that no one tells you that you just kind of figure out as you go.
The Trip
I was unfortunately not able to get the hot water heater working before our trial run because the threads that the anode rod screws into were so corroded that I was not able to get the anode rod in and thus had to leave the water system in bypass mode for the hot water heater and live without hot water. It wasn’t a big deal since we were only gone for two days but I’ll need to get that fixed before we leave for our big Northwest trip. Charity took, in her words, “the coldest shower of my life”. It was amazing how quick she was able to make it!
We went to Clifty Falls State Park in southern Indiana which is about a 2.5 hour drive from our house. We left Friday evening after I got off work. We tried really hard to get on the road soon enough to arrive at the campground while it was still light but completely failed in this area. By the time I gave up messing with the hot water heater, finished getting everything packed, and hitched up it was 8 p.m. Fortunately the trailer pulled like a dream and we made good time arriving at the campsite at 10:30 p.m. It was dark, but it only took two attempts to get the trailer backed into the site. It was really not that difficult. On the trip we averaged 9.1 MPG and confirmed we can completely pack up and be pulling out in 30 to 45 minutes start to finish and that time should get faster as we do it more.
In between spits of rain, we had a fabulous time hanging out at camp and hiking some of the trails. Here’s a few pictures of our fun.
Prior to the trip we noticed there was an odor problem with the black tank in the half bath off the bunk room so we had treated it at the beginning of the trip and as we left I spent quite a bit of time completely flushing the tanks twice and then we headed home. Because of all the time spent flushing the tanks it was again dark when we arrived home to back the RV into our driveway – we seem to be developing a disturbing trend on this “backing in at night thing”…….
In any case, we had a good time, learned a lot, and are glad we were able to get some practice.