So, my wife and I took the plunge and bought us a pull-behind travel trailer. This is very new to us, although we have camped many times in the past, both tent camping and with a popup camper, but never with a full-size self contained unit.
We will start with short local trips and then expand out. Our goal is when I retire (probably in 2024 or 2025) to take 3 months off and head across the USA and into Canada and even to Alaska and back. We should have enough experience by that time to just enjoy the ride, so to speak
We got a lightly used 2017 Keystone Bullet Premier 34BHPR. Here is a walk around video I did of the trailer. This will let us take out dogs with us (they get their own room, at least when it's just me and my wife), but plenty of room for others to join us over time.
Our maiden trip is locally this weekend to Big Lagoon State Park, which is about 20 minutes from our house.
Thanks, Steve! I was amazed that although we don't really need it, the guy we bought it from put in three more TV's to supplement the one in the main room.
I'll that you will like that out side kitchen when you start grilling on a hot day. You will be able to do all of your cooking and grilling outside. I would love to have something like that here.
If you or any other of my forum friends are ever in this area please let me know so we can get together. We are only an 1.5 hours from Niagara Falls, an hour from Letchworth State Park that is simply beautiful in the fall and five minutes from Hamlin Beach State Park. Note that both state parks have camping facilities, as do many state parks. Once my wife gets better we can also drive to many areas in New York State.
Thanks Mario. That is ultimately one of the things we want to do...reconnect with folks we haven't seen in awhile without imposing a schedule on anyone, just for good fellowship, maybe a nice glass of wine, some music, and (as we jokingly call it at our house) a lot of simulated (stimulating) conversation.
I would definitely like to touch base with more forumites. So far, I've met Pat Marr and Matt Finley.
Looks like a well thought out purchase that fits into your retirement plan, John. I know you are going to enjoy it. I really thought I was going to hate being retire, but you couldn't put a gun to my head and make me go back to work.
Damn nice rig John. You're probably already aware of it but there are tons of Bluegrass and Americana festivals all around the country that are camper friendly.
Just load up your family, your instruments, bicycles, kayaks and canoes and you're bound to have memories that will last a lifetime.
We've done some camping with a 12' teardrop camper -- just enough to cook and sleep in. When the springs finally went, we gave it to a hunter who used it as his lodge.
Definitely not for long-haul camping like you are planning. For more than a weekend, a shower and toilet are a necessity!!!
Good luck with it, I hope you all (including the dogs) are overjoyed with it and have many happy experiences on the road.
Trevor, for now I'll be towing it with the 2016 Ford F-150 XLT 4-door crew cab we just bought for a very nice price, with a 5.0 Liter V-8 equipped with the towing package, the trailer brake assist, 4 wheel drive, trailer backup assist, extended 36 gallon gas tank (regular tank is 23 gallons), and a whole bunch of other very nice amenities that have nothing to do with towing.
So far, at least around town, it seems to pull the rig nicely. The real test will be when we get into hillier country.
So far, at least around town, it seems to pull the rig nicely. The real test will be when we get into hillier country.
Many years ago I was pulling a 12' teardrop trailer with a Ford V8 Econoline van. I was in the Saguaro National Monument and I stopped on a steep incline to photograph an usually shaped cactus.
When I went to go, the van wouldn't pull the trailer so I had to back down the hill and start over again.
Later I was going through San Francisco on a hill just as steep, in traffic, with a red traffic light on the top. There would be no way to back down in traffic, so I climbed as slowly as possible hoping the light would change before I had to stop. Fortunately it changed just in time.
Very nice. I think you'll like it. Also sounds like a cool plan for retirement.
Our family started with tent camping. We soon moved to a used popup camper and did that for a number of years. When the children came along, my wife didn't like having to carry the 2 girls to the public restrooms at the campgrounds. So we sold the popup and bought one of the Mallard brand RV campers. It was decked out with heat and air conditioning, a refrigerator/freezer (we could have ice and icecream), stove, microwave, bathroom with a shower/tub and hot water, bunkbeds for the girls, and a nice queen sized bed for us. Our outdoor kitchen is the grill. It's not been used much since the girls have grown up and left the home. I started to get it fixed up, cleaned out, check for water leaks, etc, to go camping this summer just passed but we ended up renting a house at the beach and never pulled the camper out. We mostly have used it to go to the lake at a local state park about an hour away.
A buddy has a small one and is retired. He and his wife are in colorado at this very moment on a several week trip. Perhaps when my wife retires next year, we will contemplate a similar venture.
Have fun out there in the woods. Nothing like setting around a campfire, enjoying a cold one with good friends, and watching the sun go down.
Bob - I will definitely find out; hopefully, it will be a positive experience.
We are planning a trip sometime (maybe next year) to the Florida Peninsula as well, as we've never been to that part of Florida. I'll let you know when that happens.
My word that looks very nice, I am sure you will enjoy every moment. Don’t think we could manage to tow that size around the UK country roads, lol Done a fair bit of camping in my time though, and enjoyed that. The closest I have been to that sort of luxury was when we rented a converted Narrow cannel boat for 2weeks , You might like a look at the 2, 15 min, videos I made on the trip. Have lots of fun and good luck. Mike
That was pretty cool, Mike. I loved that you could get off the boat to take video from the shoreline for a completely different perspective. Navigating locks, underpasses, and tunnels kept you on your toes, I would imagine.
We are out this weekend on our maiden voyage. Just locally at Big Lagoon State Park. We got everything set up in an hour, then enjoyed a nice beer, grilled burgers for dinner, took a walk with the pups down to watch sunset along the water, and then called it a day. We'll stay at the campground until tomorrow evening.
I've been to 49 US States, and camped all over the west and Alaska. You are going to have a great time.
At some time in your travels, I recommend Alaska. Early spring when the days are long and before the black flies and mosquitoes emerge. Plan your gas as there could be 200 miles between gas stations.
We tried to stay every other night in a park so we could dump the black/grey water tanks. The other nights in a pull-off on a deserted road in the woods. We woke up once to a huge bull-moose grazing about 15 feet away from our camper window. We also saw a white wolf (supposedly good-luck) and a black bear outside the camper.
Watch out for big trucks on the paved roads if you go. Stay well back. They pick up gravel in their tire treads and then spit them out. We got a cracked windshield for a lesson.
Keep in touch and tell us about all your travels so we can be both green with envy and happy for you.
Thanks for the the tip. We are definitely planning on doing Alaska, but probably in about 5 years when I retire. That way we can take as much time as we need to make the trip. We're hoping our other trips will help build up to that trip (can't go too much farther than from Florida to Alaska).
When you do Alaska, take a day trip to Point Barrow, the northernmost point on the continent. You can't drive there, but it's worth the hop on a plane. We took a small tour with an Inuit guide and even gave out samples of his favorite food, raw whale blubber marinated in its own blood in the permafrost for over a year. Leilani tasted it, I declined.
Barrow has 35 miles of road that don't leave town, a great Mexican restaurant, and looking north to the Arctic ocean it changes color from dark blue to the lightest pastel blue as the sun goes around in the spring and never sets.
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When you get to Florida, the Everglades National Park is nice but only in the dry season. Besides for few mosquitoes, the 'glades is a 50 mile wide, 2" deep river. During the dry season it dries up except for the deeper areas (sloughs, pronounced slews). Where the water is, the fish are, and where the fish are the gators, birds and other wildlife are.
I like February and March best. Long Pine Key in the National Park has some nice campgrounds, Flamingo has some more. Near Flamingo if you are lucky you can spot an American Crocodile. They are making a comeback from about 300 in the 1980s to thousands today. For gators go to Royal Palm - almost guaranteed. In the northern part of the park are the gators. The difference is salt, the fresh/brackish in the north is where the gators are and the salt in the very south is where the crocs are.
On the way in stop at "Robert Is Here", a fresh fruit stand where they sell the best fresh fruit milkshakes this side of heaven.
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The Florida Keys are nice. Key West has gotten 'touristy' since the cruise ships started docking there, but it's still worth a visit. Park your camper in one of the keys north of Key West and drive in. Stock Island might have an RV park, and Bahia Honda has a State Park.
Oh, I could go on and on. I love traveling. We live in a 900 square ft cottage with no kids, no pool, no pets, no debt and spend all our money on experience rather than possessions. No Cable TV, no jewelry, buy moderate cars and run them until they are unreliable, and don't even run the AC. That's not for everybody, but it works for us.
Thanks for the tips, Bob. This is all good stuff. We're in a similar situation - we own out house outright (it was a foreclosure that we got for a steal and then I did a lot of the work to make it perfect for us). Our credit cards are paid off every month (in fact, we've been doing that for 25 years). We have internet through the cable company, but not cable TV. I've got an antenna on the roof that pulls in more content than I could ever watch in the little time we have to watch anyway. And we have NetFlix, so lots of content there. But we're even happy reliving the old shows through channels like MeTV. We've got an Over-The-Air TIVO (which was a one time purchase with no monthly fees that gives us a two week TV guide look ahead and the ability to program our favorite shows to watch when we want).
We love being outdoors and enjoying nature, but we're at the point that we just can't really sleep on the ground anymore (age catches up with you). So the trailer more than meets that need, and lets us travel with our dogs (since many hotels disallow pets, and those that do charge an arm and a leg).
We are going out again in October to a campground in Navarre to test the boondocking features, and then will plan on lengthier trips after that. My wife and I are all in. I will pack one of my arranger keyboards in the trailer, so I'll even be able to play a little music while out and about.
I try to travel every year. Last year I spent 5 weeks in Australia in a camping van (tiny Toyota van with the motor between the front seats, a tiny kitchen, bed that could turn into a table but never did). It was a rental of course. I had to use campgrounds because there was no toilet in the camper.
But it was a great vacation. From Brisbane to Cairns to the Great Barrier Reef to the northeastern point, over to Darwin (top center) down the middle to Kangaroo Island, and finally to Sydney via Adelaide, Melbourne and Mallacoota. We saw platypus, cassowary, kangaroos, wallabies, koalas, echidna, emus, dingo, 2 ton man-eating crocs (from a safe distance) and more birds than we could find in the the guide book.
The Australian people are some of the most civilized, good-natured, polite, and kind folks I've ever encountered. And they do a lot of camping down there.
This year I went to Vienna and surrounding Austria taking public transportation and staying in a hotel.
Good luck with your first adventure. I'm confident everything will be just fine.
When I was in the Army stationed in Germany in the early '80s, we went down to the local (German) Avis rental places and rented a relatively small Mitsubishi RV (looked a lot like picture below, but big enough to hold four of us) and headed south to tour Switzerland. It was a five speed manual transmission with the gear shifter on the column, and you had to be careful not to push it down to reverse when going for 5th gear.
We camped in the foothills of the alps, were able to walk into town for fondue and other great food, got sunburned (didn't realize until too late), but just had a blast. That was a wonderful experience.
That's a good sized camper for a vacation. Small enough to park in a city or a shopping mall for supplies, probably gets decent fuel efficiency, and big enough for two people to be comfortable in
I like the bed over the cab feature, as you can keep the bed made all day and still have sitting room in the back.
My father-in-law had one like this only it was over a Ford Econoline van. We borrowed it a few times.
I rented a slightly bigger one for a month in Alaska, again with the bed over the cab and it was perfect. The slightly bigger one was large enough for a toilet.
I hope you have tons of fun on your future adventure.
