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JMFP

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Everything posted by JMFP

  1. There a lot of pros and cons to having one. For us part of the justification was to have our own little mobile apartment. We usually go to 3 or 4 dance competitions a spring which usually means a two day hotel stay. On those trips instead we can the trailer for a four day weekend (my kids homeschool and I work a rotating shift with long weekends so we don't have to be back home by Monday morning) which gives us a day to play in whatever state park or spend a day in that city. And it's nice not having to eat out every meal. In reality those trips probably even out in actual cost but we get a lot more out of it. Plus it's really nice packing up at home (not that it's actually packing) and then not unpacking (or just bringing in dirty laundry) until we get back. And then just loading up to go camping is another plus. We like to stay in state parks, we don't boondock unless its just an overnight on the way somewhere. I got three daughters and a wife in the trailer, I need full hookups. I mean I can go without sewer because I've got the honeypot tank trailer thing but that sucks to use. Going with out water and electric though is not for us right now. I tell people that if they want a camper then buy one and go have fun. Yeah the trips themselves are cheaper but that upfront cost. At three years in I think I'm still way behind in the saving money part :). But it's not about that, it's about spending time with my kids while I can and the places we can go because of it.
  2. This thread got me to thinking about our personal dos and don'ts that we learned (and still learning). I think the most educational trip we took was in the spring of 2018. We came away with some hard rules after that one: 1.When planning or just looking for fuel stops actually look at satellite and street views of your planned pit stops to have an educated guess on being able to navigate the gas station/truck stop and to have a good idea where the diesel pumps are. 2. No kids inside the trailer until setup is done. 3. This is a big one to us now - Wheel chocks are in place before the trailer is unhitched and never, not ever removed before the trailer is re-hitched to the truck. Our trouble began in Kansas City. The girls had a dance competition in Excelsior Springs, MO so we booked an extended weekend at Watkins Woolen Mill State Park. The trip was fairly quiet and uneventful up to Kansas City. Now I have to tell you my wife can get a little anxious in heavy traffic especially when we're towing. She gets a little stressed and that can put her in a not so pleasant mood (tons of fun we we drive through Houston to visit my sister). Anyway, coming into KC the fuel gauge was between 1/4 and a 1/2, which should have been plenty to get us there. However we ran into heavy traffic on I35. I think there was a wreck, and after a long, long slow down we finally made it past the Missouri River. About this time I mentioned to her that we would need to stop for fuel soon as I was below a 1/4 tank now. She took this as we needed fuel now its an emergency! Googles up the closest place with diesel and makes me take the next exit. Really though what I meant was don't let me pass the next truck stop. But she is the navigator and I try not to argue too much because google is never wrong and if it is it's not her fault she steered me through the surface streets of North Kansas City pulling a 36 foot trailer to end up at a piss ant little corner gas station that did happen to have a diesel pump that even without a trailer I couldn't have gotten my dually in to anyway. So at this point I'm getting pretty aggravated because we are now at an 1/8 of a tank and finding fuel has become high on the priority list. We end up getting back to the highway and making it to the truck stop that was just a few miles from where we originally exited. That inspired rule 1. Rules 2 and 3 kind of came about at the same time. After our sightseeing trip of North Kansas City we finally make it to the state park. We stopped and spoke to the camp host. Really nice retired guy (most of them usually are), he pointed us towards our spot. That state park was really pretty, kind of hilly and all wooded. We back into our site and the host gave us our tag for our windshield. Dear wife and I, after the extended driving, well neither of us was in the best mood. We got the trailer positioned and started to set up without really talking a whole lot. We set the wheel chocks and unhooked. Wife started puling slides out and doing whatever she does inside while I hooked up the water and electric and my outside stuff. The kids get in the camper to square away their bunk room. Off to our left the next spot was about 100-150 feet away, there was a family there with a couple little kids and across the street from us was another couple (first timers) backing in their fifth wheel with the camp host giving them a hand and checking them in. I get just about done and she comes out, this is funny, and tells me it's not level we have to hook the truck back up so we can put the leveling board under the driver's side. So I take a deep breath and say ok. I unhooked everything I just installed. Our spot kind of sloped slightly downhill away from the street and then after the pad the land sloped down more off into the woods. When I parked I put a rubber chock behind the back wheels on both sides. But now that I was going to have to pull up and then back onto a board on this side I pulled the wheel chock on my way back to the truck to rehitch. It was going to be in the way and I knew there was a chock on the other side that would have held it just because it really wasn't that much of a slope. Well, dear wife already pulled the chock on the other side without me knowing. The kids were still in the trailer. So when I yanked out the wheel chock, for I mean like a nano second as slow motion just started, I thought "why was that stuck in there?" Then before I could shove it back in the trailer started rolling backwards. All I know now is I have to stop it. Because I'm superman I jumped in and bear hugged the tire and at the same time I somehow threw my leg behind it too. The trailer stopped rolling and when the dust settled I was standing there with my right foot squarely underneath the rear wheel of the camper. It hurt and would not budge at all. I tried slipping out of my shoe but that didn't work either. Lovely wife came around the corner to asses the damage (and probably chew my ass for screwing up). When she saw my face she got the message that I wasn't in a good spot. LOL, she screamed and the camp host and couple from across the street came running over. The family next to us saw the whole thing go down and was already running over. The camp host was able to get my truck jack under the axle and lift the wheel up high enough for me to finally slide my foot out. I sat down and pulled off my shoe and sock to see how fucked up my foot was, I mean there was a 10,000 lb trailer sitting on it for a good 2 minutes. Nothing, it was red and sore but otherwise fine. It hurt that night and some the next day but that was it. I was very lucky that I ended up way more embarrassed than hurt. Oh and my favorite part is that after we put the board under the left side to level the camper, it ends up more cockeyed than it was before we moved it.
  3. Fixing things usually isn't that hard. It's hardly ever as bad as it first seems.
  4. Yes. I like the smell of bacon as much as anyone but I don't want the inside of the trailer to smell like it for 3 days. We love having the extra refrigerator and a sink outside, ours has a microwave too but I think we've only used it to cook popcorn and the rest of the time it's just an extra cabinet. We don't tailgate but we're thinking about pulling the trailer into the front yard this year for a Halloween setup especially if we play ya'll in the evening. Halloween's big in my town, depending on weather/day of the week we'll have anywhere between 1000-2000 trick or treaters. Should be a good party.
  5. So the day I brought the trailer home... It was Friday Sept. 8 2017. I got it home that day and parked it into the back yard. I wired up an electric plug for it in my basement and ran the water line to it. I turned on the water and ran inside and made sure there were no leaks and then ran into the house to watch the OK State/South Alabama game. I enjoyed the first half then went back out to check on this new trailer. In the back there is an outdoor kitchen with a sink, kitchen, microwave, hot plate... When I came out at half time I saw water pouring out of the back of the trailer from underneath and out of the outdoor kitchen. My brand new, almost $30,000 trailer. Turns out that the faucet on the outdoor kitchen had been left on and being a rookie I didn't even think to check it. Turns out that the gray tank for the outdoor kitchen will only hold so much water before it backs up and overflows the sink and runs into the underbelly. So on my brand new $30,000 trailer, not even having possessed it for eight hours, I had to take a utility knife and cut a big section out of the coroplast underbelly and pull out gobs of soaking wet fiberglass insulation. I was legit depressed for like 3 days over that but it turned out not to be a big deal. I was able to get all the wet insulation out and after I let everything dry out I replaced the insulation and patched it up with a new sheet of coroplast.
  6. Brand new... And not necessarily with the trailer. Like the water hose springing a leak, the sidewinder sewer hose support breaking, I lost the outside cover off of the back of the fridge, I had the water line that connects the outside to the inside under the bathroom sink come loose, the water supply line to the toilet broke on our last trip, the wheel fell off of my honey pot one day, light covers fall off... Just little things but it is almost every trip.
  7. I gave up trying to read it all on page 12... Anyway, we bought our camper on Labor Day weekend in 2017, we've got an '18 Palomino Puma bumper pull. We talked about it for a long time and my nephew in Houston was about to get married so we thought we would just jump into RV'ing and take a two week road trip around the wedding. Just like troph I went out and bought a bigger truck immediately too. Our trailer dry weighs around 8900 lbs so that was a little much for my F150. The first truck was a '10 F-350 daully with the 6.4L diesel. I had it for 2 years. I loved the diesel torque and the stability of the duals but even though I live in a small rural town having a dually as a daily driver wasn't very practical. Plus maintenance on the diesel was beginning to strain the budget ($80 oil change, replacing the dual batteries, starter, oh and the fan clutch was a motherfucker.) So when it was time to replace the tires I just traded it in. Plus at the time I thought 10-11 MPG was bad. The truck I have now is a '15 Silverado 3500 with the 6.0L gas engine. It's my fist GM truck. It will probably be my last GM truck. It pulls the trailer OK I guess, but it is pretty gutless and any kind of up hill has it almost redlined. Oh and thirsty, with the trailer I get about 6 MPG. My plan is to just hang on to it though for a few years, I'd like to get one of those new F350's with the 7.3 gas engine next but I'm gonna have to wait a few years until the used ones drop down into my price range. Our trailer is a Palomino Puma 32 BHKS, its a 36 foot bumper pull with a bunkhouse. Our first big trip was my nephew's wedding trip. I live northeast of Tulsa and he was getting married in Houston. So I took two weeks off and we drove to New Mexico. We spent a couple days in Red River then spent a night in Roswell, then the next night we stayed in San Angelo on our way to Houston. Then Houston for a few days in a commercial park for the wedding. Then we went to New Orleans and stayed at Bayou Segnette for a couple days then headed back home, with a stop at Petit Jean State Park in Arkansas (this was probably my favorite). It was a handful of a trip for us as first timers. We've taken maybe 15 or so trips since and made some boring youtube videos of some of them (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCp_VFVVO_bMTtKx_WOSJ1BA/videos) 😃 My girls are in dance and it's been pretty handy to have for their competition trips, we usually try to stay in a state park nearby and take an extra day on those trips to enjoy camping. Haven't used it so much this year though, the competitions were all cancelled in person. We had planned a trip for early summer to Mt Rushmore but put it off because of the 'Rona. Haven't done much recently either because we are saving up for a trip to Telluride in January. I kinda love/hate the trailer though.... I really enjoy where it takes us and the time with the kids but I don't sleep very well in it. I have a few sleeping disorders that I have been able to kind of get under control in the last few years but the tiny bedroom in the trailer gives me trouble. We've been talking about upgrading to fifth wheel and right now this one is on the top of our wish list...
  8. Man I wish I found this thread sooner... I'm trying to get caught up but I had to stop at this post. It makes me laugh because I thought the same thing when we started (we bought our trailer 3 years ago almost to the day). Keeping it properly outfitted and fixing the daily breaks never end. Just part of it
  9. SMU should mark it down as a TCU forfeit on their record.
  10. JMFP

    delete thread

    Depends... What kind of belly tat do you have? I say totally OK if you have one like Lincoln.
  11. This but they have to keep the masks on...
  12. And then because this is Surly someone told them they were wrong.
  13. Colorado State and FSU players are accusing their coaches of shenanigans.
  14. I don't where he is but I hope and pray Thujone has fired up mspaint and is hard at work right now. We need him now more than ever.
  15. And, you know, doing the student part of student athlete
  16. Toby Keith probly already has an order in for 10000 cases for his bar and grill.
  17. https://time.com/5335799/soccer-word-origin-england/
  18. I think for most people its who dies, not how many.
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