How did you begin this hobby?
I started a blog to write articles about our adventures and decided to start back at the beginning. The beginning is always a good place to start. Attached is my article on how we got started. ...
Forum Discussion
As a kid we went tent camping 2 or 3 times. I hated it. No restrooms, cold, rain, lots of work. My father had a utility trailer that he made it himself. We had to assemble and disassemble it every trip. And we had to set up the tents. I just hated it. I swore off camping and any kind of trailers from then on. I hated it so much that as an adult I would always make sure the car I was buying didn’t have a hitch at all just in case.
After we moved to Washington our kids started hanging out with friends that would go camping every weekend – imagine that! All of them had travel trailers. And they wanted to be there as well. We let them go a few times by themselves.
We decided to try tent camping once more – it couldn’t be as bad as I remembered, time has changed, tents are easier to assemble, etc. So we got a tent and tried it twice. Assembling the tent, moving everything inside, etc., was as bad as I remembered. And one time there was a guy skyping at 1:00am in the tent next to ours for an hour. And it was freaking cold. We would wake up at 5:30-6:00am while our friends would sleep in in their trailers until 9:00 or 10:00am.
One time we decided to leave the kids in the campground and we would stay in a hotel during the night (the kids would stay in the campground with their friends). That actually worked great and we had a great time. But we couldn’t keep leaving our kids like that, that wasn’t fair to our friends. Our friends would tell us that you just park your trailer and you’re good to go, there’s almost no work, it’s heaven! So we decided to buy a TT and a TV.
(It turns out my friends were omitting some stuff. I realized that it takes 30-40 minutes to deploy and 30-40 minutes to leave. We have to clean it up, empty the tanks, stow the stuff, hook up, set up the WDH, the works. We also need a place to park the trailer. And you have to plan ahead to drive with a TT otherwise you get stuck.)
Anyway, I had heard all the stories of people starting with a pop-up, moving to a hybrid, then to a 26’ trailer. I wanted none of that. I bought a 26’ (31’ actually) trailer from the get go. People though I was crazy. I also bought the biggest SUV I was told that could tow – a Sequoia.
As I said I had never wanted to pull a trailer in my life and had no experience. My first trips were awful. I didn’t understand the WDH system very well so we would jump all over the place. The rig felt very unstable (and that’s when I decided to change to a ProPride which made them way better). In one trip I forgot to put the hitch pin in and somehow it didn’t fell off the TV (I think the WDH wasn’t set correctly so the weight kept it there). In another trip I had no breaks because the jack foot was pulling the cord when I was driving. This was the same trip we drove through a forest fire, the smoke was so thick that I was driving with tears in my eyes. The campground we stopped was the base camp for the firefighters. Also, I hit both sides of my trailer in my first year.
But everything went well after that. I even assembled my own ProPride hitch, a great feat for me considering that I’m all thumbs. This is our fourth year and we camp around 30 days a year as well and I really love doing it. We’ll be going to Vancouver Island this year.
Of course, I wish I knew better – we should have bought a 3/4 ton vehicle. We should have learned about payload and everything. Now I know better, next time – in 10 years or so? – I’ll do it right.
After we moved to Washington our kids started hanging out with friends that would go camping every weekend – imagine that! All of them had travel trailers. And they wanted to be there as well. We let them go a few times by themselves.
We decided to try tent camping once more – it couldn’t be as bad as I remembered, time has changed, tents are easier to assemble, etc. So we got a tent and tried it twice. Assembling the tent, moving everything inside, etc., was as bad as I remembered. And one time there was a guy skyping at 1:00am in the tent next to ours for an hour. And it was freaking cold. We would wake up at 5:30-6:00am while our friends would sleep in in their trailers until 9:00 or 10:00am.
One time we decided to leave the kids in the campground and we would stay in a hotel during the night (the kids would stay in the campground with their friends). That actually worked great and we had a great time. But we couldn’t keep leaving our kids like that, that wasn’t fair to our friends. Our friends would tell us that you just park your trailer and you’re good to go, there’s almost no work, it’s heaven! So we decided to buy a TT and a TV.
(It turns out my friends were omitting some stuff. I realized that it takes 30-40 minutes to deploy and 30-40 minutes to leave. We have to clean it up, empty the tanks, stow the stuff, hook up, set up the WDH, the works. We also need a place to park the trailer. And you have to plan ahead to drive with a TT otherwise you get stuck.)
Anyway, I had heard all the stories of people starting with a pop-up, moving to a hybrid, then to a 26’ trailer. I wanted none of that. I bought a 26’ (31’ actually) trailer from the get go. People though I was crazy. I also bought the biggest SUV I was told that could tow – a Sequoia.
As I said I had never wanted to pull a trailer in my life and had no experience. My first trips were awful. I didn’t understand the WDH system very well so we would jump all over the place. The rig felt very unstable (and that’s when I decided to change to a ProPride which made them way better). In one trip I forgot to put the hitch pin in and somehow it didn’t fell off the TV (I think the WDH wasn’t set correctly so the weight kept it there). In another trip I had no breaks because the jack foot was pulling the cord when I was driving. This was the same trip we drove through a forest fire, the smoke was so thick that I was driving with tears in my eyes. The campground we stopped was the base camp for the firefighters. Also, I hit both sides of my trailer in my first year.
But everything went well after that. I even assembled my own ProPride hitch, a great feat for me considering that I’m all thumbs. This is our fourth year and we camp around 30 days a year as well and I really love doing it. We’ll be going to Vancouver Island this year.
Of course, I wish I knew better – we should have bought a 3/4 ton vehicle. We should have learned about payload and everything. Now I know better, next time – in 10 years or so? – I’ll do it right.
