Although my wife and I have towed several hundred trailers as RV transporters, this was our trip with our own trailer (Jayco 17C). We live in north central Illinois and decided we needed some heat and picked out a campground in Panama City Beach Florida.
We have (had) a 2010 Jeep Wrangler four door. We were pretty nervous attempting to pull the trailer with the Jeep. We added a Prodigy P2 brake controller, an aux transmission cooler and Firestone Coil Rite helper air bags in the rear to level the Jeep while hooked up.
Sunday February 20 greeted us with an on going ice storm. Just about everything had already been packed so we loaded up the last items and took off.
The Jeep pulled the Jayco excellently with the exception of little or no power. We have added a Reese dual cam weight distributing hitch and even driving straight into a winds gusting to 30+ mph, the Jeep and trailer remained very steady.
Steady and really slow. The Wrangler struggled deserately at any type of hill, even overpasses on the Interstate. We often could only do 45 mph and gas mileage through Illinois was only 5 mpg. It took three fill ups just to get out of Illinois.
We arrived in our first campground just south of Nashville after dark. That made the first time we had ever set up more difficult but we actually had no problem at all. We left the Jeep hooked up and I slept on the converted dinette. That wasn't at all comfortable as I spent the entire night trying to keep the cushions from sliding off on the floor.
Next morning, we were able to unhook everything without any problems and were soon on our way.
Slowly on our way. Even though the wind had slowed down, we now had some decent hills to go up and down and the Jeep continued to struggle.
My RV transport rig was a Ford F350 dually with a 6.0L turbo diesel so this was even more frustrating.
But we eventually got to the campground and once again set up in the dark. We were helped by the camp host who was already at the site waiting for us as we were backing in. Set up went quickly and smoothly and this time I got to sleep in one of the beds. I was shocked in the morning to realize how well I had actually slept. We have a Temurpedic bed at home and I wasn't looking forward to sleeping in the trailer but I was mistaken, the bed was quite comfortable.
Temps were 78-82 degrees every day with clear skies so we had a really good time. We left on Friday and staggered home, this time with the wind behinds us which helped.
Total gas cost was $699.11 for a total of 2,380 miles so it turned out to be very expensive.
After getting home, we talked about options for several days and finally traded the Jeep in on a new Ford F150 with the max tow packlage.
The difficulties with the Jeep were just not worth doing it again and since we had a good time with the trailer we're looking forward to our next trip.