Hi All,
Here's a longgggg trip report.
We took our first trip in our 1985
Scamp 13' over the week of the 4th, and it was spectacular. We stayed at the South Lake Tahoe KOA, and it was a great campground for
fiberglass RV-ing.
Our campsite was nestled in between tons of tall trees, and it was very quiet aside from a little road noise (which didn't bother us while we slept in the trailer). The campground bathrooms were very clean and always empty. My toddler and infant really enjoyed the campground pool and playground, and the campground seemed to cater to both young families and retired couples.
We didn't make it into North Lake Tahoe, but South Lake Tahoe was gorgeous. We spent some time on the beach areas around the lake, and we went on some short hikes (we had a jogging stroller, so we couldn't go on any of the really great hikes Tahoe has to offer). Although Tahoe is crowded, it doesn't feel crowded- maybe because it's a large place. So we really enjoyed it there.
Being our first time out in our trailer, we encountered a few glitches, but we overcame them pretty quickly.
One glitch was that we both stink at backing into a camping spot. My husband put some tiny new dents in the back of my tv and backed the trailer into a tree (fortunately not hurting the trailer). We tried to back into our campsite for about 45 minutes and then finally ended up parking the tv and wheeling the trailer into the campsite manually (hubby and I pushing it). Our campground neighbors, who all drove huge, monster RV's, got a good chuckle, watching us try to get our trailer situated.
Another glitch was that our fresh water hose was too short, and we didn't know that the grey water hose had to run downhill to the sewer line or the sink would not drain. After some moving of the trailer again, we finally got those things worked out. Also, I discovered that when I thought I screwed the faucet back on tightly after putting on a countertop cover sort of thing, I learned that I was wrong. We could not reach the assembly under the sink to tighten things, so we had to run the city water hose through the window over the would-be stove area. That was pretty rediculous looking but worked out okay.
Thanks to you wonderful forum people, I decided to bring our old camping screenroom along. That worked out wonderfully. We set it up right outside the trailer, so that we could leave our trailer door open and step right out into what we called our "living room." I put a swimming pool foam mattress down to act as a slide so that my infant daughter could crawl up and down from trailer to screenroom at her leisure. She loved that. We ended up buying some string
lights to hang out there, plus a workshop clip-light with a bug
light bulb inside, which made it very comfortable out in the screenroom at night.
Also, I ended up creating a bed on the floor of the trailer for my infant daughter by putting down the foam pool mattress and some bedding. I actually ended up sleeping there on the floor with her the entire week, because my toddler son insisted on sleeping in the dinette bed (he kept us up all night the first night, when we tried to make him sleep in the "scary" bunks by himself), and there wasn't room for me there. So consequently, I learned that there is indeed room for a 5'8 adult to sleep on a
Scamp 13' floor if they put their feet under the space under the bunks! I am planning to create a modification which will allow two people to sleep on the floor, by building a portable step that makes the floor level (gets rid of the step-down to the kitchen area), and putting down some foam on top of the flooring.
We took the
propane stove out of our trailer until our kids are older and not so touchy-feely, so a
microwave and an electric hot plate worked very well for our cooking needs.
Now that we're back home, we're planning out an exterior
paint job for our trailer (perhaps black with white above the bellyband or all silver??) and continuing with our interior overhaul.
Here are some pics:
http://usera.imagecave.com/zuekeepor/
Thanks to everyone on the forum- your advice and posts have helped us newbies so much!
Tirah