In my mind, my RVing started back in the early 1979 when I purchased my first tent trailer.
Thing was, this tent trailer was made for towing behind the big touring motorcycles of the day like my 1975 Honda 1000 Gold Wing. The Time Out Trailer was a 5 foot long by 3 foot wide by 1 foot tall box that opened up to make a 5 foot by 7 foot by 6 and a half foot tall, off the ground, tent.
It was great to pull up on the parking pad at a national park campground or any other camping facility and camping on the pavement leaving all the rest of the campsite open for relaxing around and still being comfortable off the ground on a nice flat deck. No hidden rocks there!
I camped a lot back then with several friends that also towed motorcycle tent trailers, they were a big thing back then! We'd set up two or three motorcycles and towed tent trailers to a campsite or in a parking lot at places like the Motorcycle Jamboree when it was at the Ventura County Fairgrounds in the early 1980's.
Back in those days, pretty much EVERYTHING was motorcycles and airplanes in my life, from day trips to cross country trips, any out of the area trip was almost always going to be via motorcycles.
That original brand new 2 sleeper "Time Out" trailer was sold, a mistake, and for a short time I thought I could adjust to a bigger tent space, but with on the ground camping, wrong!
I never could adjust to sleeping comfortably on the ground, it just never worked no matter what I used to cushion the sleeping bag
As the kids got older and were going more and more on motorcycle adventures we found another used 2 sleeper Time Out and then just a few years later we even bought a Time Out that could sleep 4 people from a friend that was selling his. And even that 4 sleeper was still towed by my then owned Honda 1500 Gold Wing. At this time both Stacy and I had 1500 Honda's and we each rode so the old 2 sleeper became a good sized cargo trailer by taking out the tent assembly, when we traveled as a family to all points.
Three photos from our 1995, over 8,000 mile cross county, and Canada too, family trip. Our last family motorcycle long vacation. The photo above is Stacy with Sean on the back towing the 4 sleeper Time Out trailer on the 1989 GL1500 and below is my 1993 Gold Wing, with the 2 sleeper Time Out being used as a large cargo trailer for that trip.
Basically the same design just enlarged, the 4 sleeper opened up to a 14 foot by 8 foot by 6 1/2 foot at the tallest part, tent trailer. Very clever too!
Below is how the Time Out looked all opened up at a campground in Canada. Sean and Laura slept out on the extension with myself and Stacy in the taller part which was the main 'room' of the trailer. There were, and still are, tables and chairs one could use for those days you don't want to go outside and get eaten by bugs or rained on. It was always really nice sleeping off the ground, and also nice with the four of us in one tent as previous trips before getting the 4 sleeper had me and Stacy in the 2 sleeper trailer and the kids in a small dome tent nearby. But no matter what we did it was still about an hour to get the camp set up or take everything down to get back on the road. And we seldom stayed more than one night at most campgrounds, so it was an every day thing.
By 1996, Stacy's father was by then full time RVing for a few years and we thought we'd like to see what real RVing was like, and we got a used 1979 Ford "Roll-A-Long" class 'C' motor home. A big 460 Ford V-8 van conversion to motor home, it was 24 foot long with a rear bathroom and 2 bunk beds to go with the over cab sleeper main bed and with a dinette that could also be a sleeper, it could sleep all 5 of us on a trip. It even had a built in generator so we could have electricity anywhere we went, IF we could live with the noise!
Above, the "Roll-A-Long" taken when Stacy and I went on a long weekend trip to Bryce Canyon in the fall of 1997. We FROZE at the campground near Bryce as the heater in the RV couldn't keep up with the temps in the 20's at night. The motor home didn't do well whether too hot or too cold. Too hot and we cooked as the dash A/C couldn't cool the interior even with the generator running to be able to run the roof A/C to help out. It had to be 'just right' to be most comfortable with it. We went on quite a few trips with it actually from 1996 to 1998. Trips of long weekends, and a long trip in June to Wyoming for the 150th anniversary of Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show at Cody Wyoming, then to Canada as well as towing our motorcycles in September to Ruidoso, New Mexico, for the Golden Aspen Rally. I even went on a trip with just the kids to visit some people we knew in Weaverville, in Northern California and some family in Eureka, California, on one trip. And we caravaned with Stacy's father to Kansas with his old class 'C' he'd bought, and then with her brother Scott's family to their property in Idaho, which was the first time we were at the area we'd ultimately move to in less than 10 years.
Above, is a photo of Stacy the morning of the Bryce trip to show some of the 'compact' interior. She's at the bathroom door (and we were still freezing!) in the rear of the unit, the bunks on the left side of the photo and fridge also at left with the kitchen sink at the lower right of the photo. Yes, compact! Although the "unit" was 24 feet, the actual living space taking away the drivers area was, we measured, about 18 feet. Not very big!
What killed the motor home for us was a California smog check! I hated and always stressed those every 2 year smog checks with every vehicle. The motor home became a real problem. It failed and I replaced the carburetor, much of the smog equipment but it still wouldn't pass. At a smog repair station the tech found a vacuum line that had been plugged off by a BB stuffed in a line. I couldn't believe it, the RV dealer we'd bought it from had to have been the place that "doctored" the smog equipment to help it pass smog when we bought it, but with all that was done to it I couldn't find any way to get it smogged without spending considerably more than the old motor home was worth.
So it got parked on the property and was ultimately sold for $1000.00 to a person in our area that wanted it for a guest house on their property. A better death than a scrap yard!
So in late 1998 we bought our first travel trailer. A 1998 'Terry' 24 foot travel trailer. Unfortunately, I can not find any photos of that trailer anywhere.
It was used on a few trips but with no slide out it was very compact for all of us to travel with it. I remember it being used on a trip to Las Vegas, Nevada, often a destination due to it only being about 4 hours away. And for two, me and Stacy, it was an OK size, but for a family of five it was just too small. Plus when we first had bought the Terry it was 'supposed' to be lite enough to be "easily" towed by a mini-van. We had a Chevy Astro Van then and while we did tow it a few times with the van, terrifying was the word!!!
The Astro Van barely made it up the Cajon pass when we towed it up once. About 10 miles an hour, even the slow big rigs were passing us and the engine was over heating from the strain. And stopping, even with electric brakes, was a harrowing experience. Just too much weight for the Van to safely tow it, no matter what the "sales pitch" was.
Shortly after we got the trailer we traded in the Astro Van and bought our 1998, Dodge Ram Diesel 3/4 ton truck. THAT truck pulled the trailer perfectly! Stacy's also father used the Dodge and took the trailer to spend over a month at Stacy's brothers place in Kansas.
After he was back from that trip I finally got Stacy to consider a slide out in a trailer. We went shopping at the local RV dealers in the High Desert and came across our next RV, a 30 foot, 1999 Tahoe, 5th wheel trailer with a large slide out. Stacy loved the extra room, I did too, a slide out gives and she wanted a 5th wheel for the extra stability a combination like that has when towing.
The photo above is of the winter of 2007 and the 5th wheel sits in the snow with the Dodge right next to it. One thing about that trailer, the Tahoe has a lot of storage! We traded in the '98 Terry for the '99 Tahoe, and used the Tahoe on many trips and it has been a very good trailer, well built. Now, in 2014, all the autos are parked under parking structures and the trailers are kept covered to help keep snow and tree droppings off the roofs.
In 2009, Stacy and I decided to get a really nice trailer that we would have when we traveled and then retired could use it and maybe do some 'snow birding'. We shopped and shopped at various RV dealers in our area, not too many this far north but a lot of them in the Coeur 'd Alene and Spokane areas. We were coming back from such a shopping trip in CDA and decided to stop at a small RV dealer near Sandpoint, Idaho, called "North Idaho RV."
It was there we found what we thought would be that 'last new and nice' trailer. It was a 2009 Fleetwood, Wilderness 29 foot trailer. It was the nicest trailer we'd ever been in back in June of 2009 when we bought it. All fiberglass sides, no more sheet metal, and all kinds of upgrades like surround sound speakers, all weather insulation and covered underside to help in wintry weather.
We picked it up on June 19th, 2009 and our first trip with it was the 4th of July holiday. US Independence Day and where did we go? Fort Steele, Canada! Photo above is when we stopped in Cranbrook, Canada, to buy some food and supplies for the next few days. And below is our campsite at the Fort Steele, RV Park, just across and down a bit from the Fort Steele site. We were not the only Americans there either! There were 3 other fellow travelers units trying to beat the crowds of the US holiday by camping in Canada.
Fort Steele is a original and rebuilt town full of 'reinactors' that populate the town in late 1800's period clothes and technology. We really enjoyed it and would recommend it if you ever get up that way in Alberta, Canada.
Back at home, this is a good side view of the Wilderness. The trailer was very nice, but............
Shortly after we bought it we found out that Fleetwood's Trailer Division went out of business a few months earlier, a fact the dealer didn't bother to mention, so no manufacturer warranty was possible even though it was supposed to be basically end to end for a year.
Then less than a year after we bought the trailer, North Idaho RV went belly up so no dealer anymore if any problems. The extended warranty we'd bought was basically useless since it seemed like every issue we wanted repaired under the 'warranty' wasn't covered. And most all the little things done wrong during the trailers manufacture, like plumbing hooked up backwards and such, I did.
The biggest issue we ever had with the Wilderness was the very small bathroom. For the sake of style the bathroom had too large a cabinet for the sink, which pushed the toilet out too close to the bathroom door which made it very uncomfortable to sit and close the bathroom door! Tall people like me and Stacy had to sit a little sideways on the seat to close the door, not comfortable!
We still used the trailer and thought we could live with the bathroom shortcomings for the next however many years.
The final straw began on a trip to California to visit for a week with Sandy and family. First day of the trip at a fuel stop I noticed pink insulation poking out from the roof of the trailer. That's not supposed to be there I told Stacy so I climb up on the roof and find that there is a good sized gap between the front cap and the rubber roofing. It's in place but not attached like it should be so the vacuum of the airflow over the trailer is sucking out the insulation. At two RV dealers along the way we get material to fix it for the trip but it is in such a bad spot that pretty much everything gets blown or pulled loose from the gap.
Long story slightly shorter, this past summer we took it to an RV repair shop in Sandpoint and they discover that an integral metal "bow" that helps attach the roof to the front cap has been "left out" during construction causing all the roofing problems. It took almost 2 months to get a replacement part since Fleetwood is out of business.
Last Spring, Stacy, with some downtime on a trip to Boise, was looking at an RV dealer in that area and first saw the model trailer we would eventually buy just about a month ago. She came back home and showed me the floor plan and kept taking about all the nice features the trailers had now. So we did a lot of number crunching and online and in person shopping and we finally decided to go for it!
So we did a "deal" and traded in the 2009 for a 2015 Wildcat Maxx 33 foot long trailer.
It is a beautiful trailer inside. About as much storage as a 5th wheel trailer, it can carry, 2 tons of cargo! We'll never carry that much, ever, but it is nice to know it overbuilt for the application!
Stacy loves the kitchen counter space, the Wilderness really didn't have any counter space so this is great! We've never done like so many RV's we see on trips, have a great kitchen in the RV then eat at restaurants all the time. Nope, that's not us when we travel with an RV!
The small slide out at the front is some bedroom closet and some bathroom storage. It frees up space in the bathroom and bedroom which is really nice. All fiberglass with aluminum framework on the sides, THIS trailer should last!
And the bathroom? Very large and we don't have to open the slide out to use it like we did with the wilderness trailer, another annoying problem with the bathroom with that trailer. Just like the Tahoe 5th wheel, we can stop and use the restroom, sleep, and eat in the Wildcat with the slide outs all closed which is good at times when traveling or sleeping at say a roadside rest where you can sleep but not really 'camp'.
The large slide out has all windows that open which the Wilderness did not have, so better ventilation is assured. Where the spare tire is located is a heavy duty fold down rack for putting equipment. Our large generator will probably go there when we snow bird. Bikes or other things on other trips.
Yes, now Stacy and I do have a very nice and comfortable trailer for the next however many years we RV it on vacations. Can't wait for more RV memories!!!
So there you have it a long but short history of some of our RV adventures!
Till next time, Tad
Thing was, this tent trailer was made for towing behind the big touring motorcycles of the day like my 1975 Honda 1000 Gold Wing. The Time Out Trailer was a 5 foot long by 3 foot wide by 1 foot tall box that opened up to make a 5 foot by 7 foot by 6 and a half foot tall, off the ground, tent.
It was great to pull up on the parking pad at a national park campground or any other camping facility and camping on the pavement leaving all the rest of the campsite open for relaxing around and still being comfortable off the ground on a nice flat deck. No hidden rocks there!
I camped a lot back then with several friends that also towed motorcycle tent trailers, they were a big thing back then! We'd set up two or three motorcycles and towed tent trailers to a campsite or in a parking lot at places like the Motorcycle Jamboree when it was at the Ventura County Fairgrounds in the early 1980's.
Back in those days, pretty much EVERYTHING was motorcycles and airplanes in my life, from day trips to cross country trips, any out of the area trip was almost always going to be via motorcycles.
That original brand new 2 sleeper "Time Out" trailer was sold, a mistake, and for a short time I thought I could adjust to a bigger tent space, but with on the ground camping, wrong!
I never could adjust to sleeping comfortably on the ground, it just never worked no matter what I used to cushion the sleeping bag
As the kids got older and were going more and more on motorcycle adventures we found another used 2 sleeper Time Out and then just a few years later we even bought a Time Out that could sleep 4 people from a friend that was selling his. And even that 4 sleeper was still towed by my then owned Honda 1500 Gold Wing. At this time both Stacy and I had 1500 Honda's and we each rode so the old 2 sleeper became a good sized cargo trailer by taking out the tent assembly, when we traveled as a family to all points.
Basically the same design just enlarged, the 4 sleeper opened up to a 14 foot by 8 foot by 6 1/2 foot at the tallest part, tent trailer. Very clever too!
Below is how the Time Out looked all opened up at a campground in Canada. Sean and Laura slept out on the extension with myself and Stacy in the taller part which was the main 'room' of the trailer. There were, and still are, tables and chairs one could use for those days you don't want to go outside and get eaten by bugs or rained on. It was always really nice sleeping off the ground, and also nice with the four of us in one tent as previous trips before getting the 4 sleeper had me and Stacy in the 2 sleeper trailer and the kids in a small dome tent nearby. But no matter what we did it was still about an hour to get the camp set up or take everything down to get back on the road. And we seldom stayed more than one night at most campgrounds, so it was an every day thing.
By 1996, Stacy's father was by then full time RVing for a few years and we thought we'd like to see what real RVing was like, and we got a used 1979 Ford "Roll-A-Long" class 'C' motor home. A big 460 Ford V-8 van conversion to motor home, it was 24 foot long with a rear bathroom and 2 bunk beds to go with the over cab sleeper main bed and with a dinette that could also be a sleeper, it could sleep all 5 of us on a trip. It even had a built in generator so we could have electricity anywhere we went, IF we could live with the noise!
What killed the motor home for us was a California smog check! I hated and always stressed those every 2 year smog checks with every vehicle. The motor home became a real problem. It failed and I replaced the carburetor, much of the smog equipment but it still wouldn't pass. At a smog repair station the tech found a vacuum line that had been plugged off by a BB stuffed in a line. I couldn't believe it, the RV dealer we'd bought it from had to have been the place that "doctored" the smog equipment to help it pass smog when we bought it, but with all that was done to it I couldn't find any way to get it smogged without spending considerably more than the old motor home was worth.
So it got parked on the property and was ultimately sold for $1000.00 to a person in our area that wanted it for a guest house on their property. A better death than a scrap yard!
So in late 1998 we bought our first travel trailer. A 1998 'Terry' 24 foot travel trailer. Unfortunately, I can not find any photos of that trailer anywhere.
It was used on a few trips but with no slide out it was very compact for all of us to travel with it. I remember it being used on a trip to Las Vegas, Nevada, often a destination due to it only being about 4 hours away. And for two, me and Stacy, it was an OK size, but for a family of five it was just too small. Plus when we first had bought the Terry it was 'supposed' to be lite enough to be "easily" towed by a mini-van. We had a Chevy Astro Van then and while we did tow it a few times with the van, terrifying was the word!!!
The Astro Van barely made it up the Cajon pass when we towed it up once. About 10 miles an hour, even the slow big rigs were passing us and the engine was over heating from the strain. And stopping, even with electric brakes, was a harrowing experience. Just too much weight for the Van to safely tow it, no matter what the "sales pitch" was.
Shortly after we got the trailer we traded in the Astro Van and bought our 1998, Dodge Ram Diesel 3/4 ton truck. THAT truck pulled the trailer perfectly! Stacy's also father used the Dodge and took the trailer to spend over a month at Stacy's brothers place in Kansas.
After he was back from that trip I finally got Stacy to consider a slide out in a trailer. We went shopping at the local RV dealers in the High Desert and came across our next RV, a 30 foot, 1999 Tahoe, 5th wheel trailer with a large slide out. Stacy loved the extra room, I did too, a slide out gives and she wanted a 5th wheel for the extra stability a combination like that has when towing.
In 2009, Stacy and I decided to get a really nice trailer that we would have when we traveled and then retired could use it and maybe do some 'snow birding'. We shopped and shopped at various RV dealers in our area, not too many this far north but a lot of them in the Coeur 'd Alene and Spokane areas. We were coming back from such a shopping trip in CDA and decided to stop at a small RV dealer near Sandpoint, Idaho, called "North Idaho RV."
It was there we found what we thought would be that 'last new and nice' trailer. It was a 2009 Fleetwood, Wilderness 29 foot trailer. It was the nicest trailer we'd ever been in back in June of 2009 when we bought it. All fiberglass sides, no more sheet metal, and all kinds of upgrades like surround sound speakers, all weather insulation and covered underside to help in wintry weather.
Shortly after we bought it we found out that Fleetwood's Trailer Division went out of business a few months earlier, a fact the dealer didn't bother to mention, so no manufacturer warranty was possible even though it was supposed to be basically end to end for a year.
Then less than a year after we bought the trailer, North Idaho RV went belly up so no dealer anymore if any problems. The extended warranty we'd bought was basically useless since it seemed like every issue we wanted repaired under the 'warranty' wasn't covered. And most all the little things done wrong during the trailers manufacture, like plumbing hooked up backwards and such, I did.
The biggest issue we ever had with the Wilderness was the very small bathroom. For the sake of style the bathroom had too large a cabinet for the sink, which pushed the toilet out too close to the bathroom door which made it very uncomfortable to sit and close the bathroom door! Tall people like me and Stacy had to sit a little sideways on the seat to close the door, not comfortable!
We still used the trailer and thought we could live with the bathroom shortcomings for the next however many years.
The final straw began on a trip to California to visit for a week with Sandy and family. First day of the trip at a fuel stop I noticed pink insulation poking out from the roof of the trailer. That's not supposed to be there I told Stacy so I climb up on the roof and find that there is a good sized gap between the front cap and the rubber roofing. It's in place but not attached like it should be so the vacuum of the airflow over the trailer is sucking out the insulation. At two RV dealers along the way we get material to fix it for the trip but it is in such a bad spot that pretty much everything gets blown or pulled loose from the gap.
Long story slightly shorter, this past summer we took it to an RV repair shop in Sandpoint and they discover that an integral metal "bow" that helps attach the roof to the front cap has been "left out" during construction causing all the roofing problems. It took almost 2 months to get a replacement part since Fleetwood is out of business.
Last Spring, Stacy, with some downtime on a trip to Boise, was looking at an RV dealer in that area and first saw the model trailer we would eventually buy just about a month ago. She came back home and showed me the floor plan and kept taking about all the nice features the trailers had now. So we did a lot of number crunching and online and in person shopping and we finally decided to go for it!
So we did a "deal" and traded in the 2009 for a 2015 Wildcat Maxx 33 foot long trailer.
And the bathroom? Very large and we don't have to open the slide out to use it like we did with the wilderness trailer, another annoying problem with the bathroom with that trailer. Just like the Tahoe 5th wheel, we can stop and use the restroom, sleep, and eat in the Wildcat with the slide outs all closed which is good at times when traveling or sleeping at say a roadside rest where you can sleep but not really 'camp'.
Yes, now Stacy and I do have a very nice and comfortable trailer for the next however many years we RV it on vacations. Can't wait for more RV memories!!!
So there you have it a long but short history of some of our RV adventures!
Till next time, Tad
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