Nothing ever goes as planned. We were going to do our first outing in our driveway one night a week ago. We decided not to after some of our cabinets came crashing down after a short outing to get propane (separate thread) and I needed to spend time repairing them. Between this and a few other things we simply were not ready a week ago.
This weekend past, we were going to spend the first night near our home and the second night in Seward. We were still repairing the cabinets Friday night ( I work at least full time every week, I need 5 days to do a 10 hour job at home) and had barely loaded the trailer. Saturday morning I reinstalled the microwave and flushed, sanitized and filled the fresh water tank and helped my dear wife load the trailer and pack the kids into the TV. We left about noon to drive 170 miles over the mountains and thru the woods to Seward, AK.
Everything was nearly great on the drive. The TV handled the trailer very well. I did have to pull over about an hour out and close an emergency window that was flapping open (saw it in the mirror, maybe a kid was playing with it before, who knows it did not happen again). When I pulled over for this I checked the cabinets, everything was great.
I did, however, push a small stool in place on the counter behind the stove and braced under the range-hood and microwave (just in case).
Got to Seward and started unhooking and setting up camp. Once I went inside I realized the only reason the microwave part of the cabinets and the cabinet over the sink had not crashed again was the stool I placed there.
The other cabinets over the couch were rock solid.
We were missing a few items. Like hand-soap, toothbrushes, toothpaste, and a few other sundries like that. Easy enough to replace. Everything went well except for cabinets and the missing items. We camped right next to the bay, right next to the rocky beach.
Sometimes it is better to be lucky than smart. I would not suggest such a 3 hour drive over the mountains and thru the woods for your first outing..... We had pulled the trailer two times before and we have a newer tow vehicle so I was not worried maybe as much as I should have been. I also tested the systems in the trailer before we left (though somehow I had never tested the hot water heater) and replaced the battery. I still have never tried to run the hot water heater on electric, I really need to do that.
All in all..... Great. I need to solve the cabinet issue once and for all. And I still need to install the water filtration I bought two weeks ago, but everything else was completed before our first outing.
It will be 2-3 weeks before we do this again. Good times.