I hate it when I'm stupid

[Fred Bell]

I'm still kind of new to trailer camping so, fortunately, there haven't been any disasters. But one thing that I have discovered about towing a trailer is that it's good to be certain of where you're going.
Late one night, I pulled into a forest service campground that I had only visited once several years ago. I thought that the campground road looped to the left and took the first left that I saw. After driving about a hundred yards the ashpalt turned to dirt and it became apparant that I had picked some kind of side road instead of the campground loop. I tried to back up the road but almost ditched my trailer after reversing only a few yards. Deciding to continue driving forward. I thought, "There must be a turn-around point down here somewhere." After driving what seemed like a mile into the woods, I encountered a turn-off wide enough to make a 100-point turn and get my tralier pointed in the opposite direction.
Next time, if there is doubt, I'll walk the campground road first. And yes, my current egg-project is adding a bright back-up light.

[CharlynnT]

Thanks, Jaye, for sharing! The pouring rain, the mom yelling, the yorkie yapping, the motel-dwellers watching, the clerk using binoculars, the cops refusing to believe a little fgrv can be manually adjusted... and then the wrecker laughing so hard at the jack-knifed duo!

And the illustration made me laugh even harder!

Phew! Now my stomach muscles hurt, what a great work-out.

[David and Nancy]

While living in Anchorage a few years ago, I bought my first travel trailer, a 1989 16' Scamp. Shortly thereafter, my wife Nancy and I took it on an epic trip up the Haul Road to the Arctic. On the way up I used the 12 volt to keep the fridge cold while driving. For some reason the truck alternator failed to re-charge the battery so it died the second day of the trip. It didn't matter much because I had an ice chest and it never got dark enough to need the lights anyway. The Haul Road was 400 miles of gravel. The northern half was severely washboarded. We started to notice that the trailer was filling with flour-fine dust whenever we hauled it even a short way. We also noticed that the mosquitos were coming in somewhere no matter what we stuffed in the door cracks. The dust got so bad that the highway department started spraying water on the road to hold it down. This completely coated the truck and trailer with layers of mud. I spent a couple of days cleaning the trailer inside and out when we got back to Anchorage. When vacuuming under the front bunk I found a one inch gap in the carpet. Upon further inspection I discovered that the plywood floor was separated. When I crawled under the trailer to see why the floor separated, I found that the frame had broken clear through on one side. Assuming the frame broke on the north half of the Haul Road, I probably pulled the trailer as much as a thousand miles with a broken frame. I also found out (from my RV repair guy) that my truck hadn't been properly wired to recharge my trailer battery.

The frame was re-welded, the wiring was easily fixed, the mud came off. I am not sure if we ever got all the dust out of that trailer.

[Roy in TO]

Our first trip camping with our newly aquired Boler was at Bolerama in Emily this year. With both the trailer and truck packed all that was left to do was hitch up, check the lights and hit the road.

Not one of the many new keys we had seemed to fit the new hitch lock so our last option was to cut through the lock. Spent a 1/2 hour of hacksawing through the lock and we were on our way. Sometime in the next week, I checked all my keys again and found that I did have the key on my keychain. Never occured to me that a new lock with a new key is a very precise fit and had to go in perfectly aligned. So I slightly rounded off the end of the key and found it worked much easier. Then had to get the U Bolt of the lock welded together.





Hitch lock on sale - saved $15
Getting the lock welded - $15
Memory Priceless

[Carol Ann in TO]

Attachment 4128


Hitch lock on sale - saved $15
Getting the lock welded - $15
Memory Priceless

The best part of this for me was when we finally arrived at Emily and were checking in.
I was telling the tale and the first response was ... "Oh, we've done that"

[jaye580]

quote name='Roy in TO' date='Jul 23 2006, 06:23 AM' post='193795']
Our first trip camping with our newly aquired Boler was at Bolerama in Emily this year. With both the trailer and truck packed all that was left to do was hitch up, check the lights and hit the road.

Not one of the many new keys we had seemed to fit the new hitch lock so our last option was to cut through the lock. Spent a 1/2 hour of hacksawing through the lock and we were on our way. Sometime in the next week, I checked all my keys again and found that I did have the key on my keychain. Never occured to me that a new lock with a new key is a very precise fit and had to go in perfectly aligned. So I slightly rounded off the end of the key and found it worked much easier. Then had to get the U Bolt of the lock welded together.


Attachment 4128


Hitch lock on sale - saved $15
Getting the lock welded - $15
Memory Priceless
[/quote]




[size=7] D'OH !!!!!