Being a curious person who
occasionally finds answers to questions I didn’t know I was asking,
I came across the odd fact we’ve towed our twenty-one foot travel
trailer over 21,357 miles in just a little over five years. Add that
to the 5300 miles we towed our first trailer, a thirteen foot Cikira, and you
find that nobody cares but me, and perhaps a few polite friends who
suddenly remember they left the kettle on.
Our first camper: Sleeps Two, a 13 foot Cikira |
Having a trailer instead of a
self-contained motor home means I don’t have to insure it or
register it as a motor vehicle, only as a trailer. But, let’s back
up. Why are you towing a trailer or driving a motor home in the first
place? Are you a traveler or a camper? Yes, there is a difference.
Travelers rarely stay in any campground more than a day or two,
usually as a respite from their journey from one place to another.
Campers, on the other hand, travel to get to the location they want
to spend time at, and once they’re there, their stay is usually as
long as possible.
Most of us fall somewhere in the
middle of being campers who travel or travelers who camp. There are
those extremists so enamored with the thought of real estate freedom
that they actually forsake a permanent residence altogether just to
be “free.” Selling a house, which normally is an appreciating
asset, for an RV, which is a depreciating asset, is a financial
decision that takes far more than just a belief you’ll one day win
the lottery or a rich relative will someday send you a check to make
up for your financial loss. Those who sell everything to shed the
shackles of noblesse oblige may be placing themselves at the mercy
of trailer assemblers somewhere in Indiana who really don’t care who buys their efficiently assembled masterpieces.
Worse yet are the self-contained RVs such as the Class A and popular Class C’s sitting in repair shops with blown transmissions, overheated engines, or dented front ends. So much for your pop-up fire place if you can’t get to it. Don’t forget to add hotel rooms to your emergency expenditures budget.
Worse yet are the self-contained RVs such as the Class A and popular Class C’s sitting in repair shops with blown transmissions, overheated engines, or dented front ends. So much for your pop-up fire place if you can’t get to it. Don’t forget to add hotel rooms to your emergency expenditures budget.
Do you like having your mail
picked up by a neighbor? Do you care if they forget to tell you there
is a jury duty summons that came three months ago? Then traveling
from campground to campground may be for you, hooking and unhooking
water hoses and power cords, raising and lowering jacks and pads,
emptying black and gray water holding tanks, and trying to remember
if the reservation for your next campsite starts on Sunday or Monday.
When, you ask, does the good part
start? It starts even before you pick up your first trailer. The
anticipation of what is ahead of you will cause wild dreams and
childish glee. Your first night in the Smoky Mountains with a
campfire with only you and yours is something you won’t forget, and
probably very close to what you envisioned. Kayaking in the streams
and lakes of Georgia with no one else in sight ranks right up there.
As the reality of those dreams come true, the joys of traveling in an
RV come to fruition. There is no other way to vacation or travel that
comes close. It is also the only way to take your pets with you, and most RVers we've met have either have their dogs or cats with them. Ours go with us every trip.
Privacy to us is paramount, and we
shy away from commercial campgrounds that find space utilization is
more important than solitude. Sardines in a can have more space
between them than given to most commercial campsites. We have slept
only three nights in commercial, private campgrounds of the 448
nights we’ve camped, and then only because we had no close-by
alternatives. All the other locations were lakeside at U.S. Army
Corps of Engineer campsites, or at state parks from Florida to New
York, or U.S. Forestry campgrounds in the Appalachian mountains. Or
in our daughter’s driveway, although we now have a perfect
designated camp site adjacent to the house.
We certainly have our favorite
campgrounds and there are several we’ve visited many times. There
are several we won’t return to as well, but the adventure of going
in the first place has always been worth the trip. We have grown to
our trailer size limit. People have told us every camper you buy will
be bigger and better than the one you owned before, but we maxed out
on our second unit. The thirteen footer we started with was just big
enough to get us hooked on camping, but having to convert our dining
area to a bed every night convinced us to go bigger. Twenty-one feet
has proven to be our size. We have looked at longer units, and those
with slide outs that increase width instead of length, but none offer
benefits to offset the cost of replacing our current unit.
We upgraded from our first tow
vehicle, a V-6 GMC Jimmy with a tow package, to a V-8 Toyota Sequoia,
also with a factory tow package, so we could handle the extra weight
of the bigger unit. Gas mileage remains the same, with an average of
about 9 miles to a gallon. We get from 10 to 11 miles a gallon under
good conditions, and around 7 miles a gallon in Florida on flat
roads, always doing less than the 65 mile per hour speed limit. I’m
convinced the ethanol added to Florida gas kills my mileage as it
always increases as soon as I get to Georgia and North Carolina. It
is a paradox my mileage goes up when I get to the mountains.
We don’t want a bigger trailer
because we don’t need a bigger trailer. Many state parks have size
limits, usually 24 or 26 feet, something we don’t have to worry
about, and it is far easier to tow a small trailer through a crowded
gas station. We’ve learned the limits of using our gray and black
water tanks, and have learned how to extend our setup to over two
weeks without unhooking and heading for a dump station. Those secrets
will not be shared here. Let’s say utilization of available
facilities becomes paramount.
I’ve only scratched the surface
of the experience here, and if you’re interested, I’ll post the
next installment of the narrative for the benefit of all. Well, for
the benefit of those interested in watching a black bear drop out of
a nearby pear tree, or having to coast in a kayak while a twelve foot
alligator swims lazily across your bow. How about
waking up to a fog covered Florida prairie being watched by a Black Crested Caraca?
It isn’t for everybody, but it
is for us.
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