Mistakes I learned from last weekend

[okieinalaska]

This last weekend I took my brother and his daughter camping with us and we had a great time. (that was not a mistake)

My dad and brother felt compelled to help me hook up and that was fine. But it's almost better if I do it all myself. That way if something goes wrong I only have myself to blame, LOL.

They were putting my equalizer hitch on and couldn't find the little j brackets that keep the bars from popping off. We looked for 30 minutes and then my dad was going to jury rig some bolts or something when low and behold, in the grass under the steps are the little j shaped doodads. I was ready to just go without them, I mean I have a 3/4 ton truck. Dad's bolt and nut set up was scarier to me, LOL . No one knows how they got in the grass. (to many chefs in the kitchen, LOL) You can imagine the "conversations" we had while doing all this.

We didn't make it to the campground till after dark. I made the mistake of driving through a little circle drive with cars in the way, concrete picnic table practically in the road, narrow trees. ugh. Luckily a neighbor helped guide me through all that. On the map it looked like a real road. It really wasn't. I should have got out and walked it first. I did get backed in and managed to miss the neighbors car. (who walked up after I was done and said "I would have moved my car")

Then after coming back home my dad went to lower the electric jack and he went the wrong way and the bar went past the warning mark and flipped the fuse and shut off. That is when I learned how to hand crank the jack and change the fuse.

The trip before when I did it all my self I was a lot faster and only had my own opinion to listen to, LOL. BUt we really had a great time and it's nice to be back home with family after living out of state for the last 23 years.

Here we are right on the water with 3 kayaks. The wooden stand I built to hold the kayaks in the toyhauler, all strapped down. It worked great.

[Country_Mouse]

Those are the stories that are fun to tell AFTER it's all over. We rented a trailer last fall and have a similar story. We pulled into a campground at night. No map at the entrance. No map online of campground. We were forced to navigate ourselves around. First, we got on a gravel road that ended up being a dead end. No place to turn around. That' right. We are sitting there at Midnight...with a 27 ft. trailer....and no where to turn around. This was only my husband's 2nd time pulling a trailer. He learned how to back up and do a 3 point turn (or 100 of them) in the dark that fateful night, lol. I was not laughing then, believe me. Kids in car whining and crying didn't help the tension. Then we finally get turned around and start driving through other part of campground. Turns out there were very narrow roads and sharp turns for a trailer that size. Found a spot to park it for the night.

Next leg of trip made same mistake. Pulled into campground as sun was going down. Decided we wanted to look at non hookup sites that were more secluded. Ended up getting stuck again at a dead end only this time there was a cliff on the other side. Lovely, right? Managed to back up and pull into a spot that we could not get ourselves out of. Trailer was too big for our car and we couldn't back it up a hill. Had to have tow company come pull it out for us next day.

What did we learn? We will avoid at all costs pulling into a campground at night from now on and we are buying a trailer that is much smaller and lighter! I would rather stop at a rest stop then go through all that again.

The icing on the cake is we ended up having to pay for repairs to the trailer from low hanging trees that we couldn't see in the dark.

[okieinalaska]

Oh no Country Mouse! My trip didn't involve a tow truck or repairs so I totally count it as a success. It definitely is a learning experience though. I just hope not to learn to many the hard way, LOL.