A long long time ago, in a very different world, I began my camping journey. I was all of, maybe 14. Dad had an old hand made trailer, built out of a transaxle from a 40 Ford sedan or something, plus some iron bed rails and sheets of scrap airplane aluminum. Oh, and the hitch connection was a drive shaft, welded into the axle with a hitch welded to the front. This isn’t the actual trailer, but a close facsimile.

Into that trailer went a massive canvas tent.  (there were 10 of us), a camp stove, small table, sleeping bags – all the things one might need to spend a night in the woods.  An old tarp stretched across the top of the trailer.  It also held a spare tire, a participant in one of the more memorable incidents.  We were heading through the Chicago area on an interstate, in the left lane and blew the right trailer tire.  Dad pulled over as close to the Jersey-barriers as he could, then he and I changed that tire with cars and semi-trucks blasting by at 70+, literally a couple of feet away.  Exciting is an understatement.

On that same trip, we went into, I think it was a state park in Wisconsin, to camp.  We pulled into our spot, and right away noticed there were hundreds of “toothpicks” all over the ground.  Well not toothpicks but small slivers of wood that were very similar to toothpicks.  As we were setting up camp, I realized a large tree next to the camp site had a channel cut into its side.  It was 4 inches wide and about two inches deep.  It went from the ground all the way up the tree as far as we could see. Lightning.  Must have been quite a hit to shred that much wood like that.  Oh, and mom made up blueberry pancakes the next morning which dad fried on the camp stove and a griddle, likely he made from some more aircraft scrap parts.  They were amazing.

We only camped that way a couple of times.

Later, Married, with a couple of kids, we bought an old, worn out, pop-top camper that we took on several trips. One LONG trip out west to Tucson with Deb’s mother to retrieve some stuff she had left in storage for decades. We replaced ALL THREE TIRES on that trip. No, we never checked the age or condition of the tires before we left (rookie mistake). Another trip was to Wisconsin to a sort of family reunion. A tornado went over the campground that night, took down a massive tree, but no RVs were damaged. This isn’t the actual pop-top, but it was like this one.

Seeing a pattern here?  Eventually we sold the pop-top and forgot about camping for many years. 

Eight or nine years ago (I’d have to check the pictures), we bought a new F150 pickup truck.  Having satisfied that itch, a travel trailer would be a natural thing to follow it up, right?  We chose to 24ft travel trailer from Forest River (that same factory built Rockwoods, using almost the same materials, in the same shop using the same people).  The dealer told us time and again we could pull it with our truck, and that was, strictly speaking, true.  The trailer was ordered but not yet built, and we arranged to get a tour of the factory.  WOW!?!?  The picture above is as the dealer handed it over to us.  Look closely, you’ll see the truck is down in the rear and the trailer is also down in front, three+ inches lower.

They had each trailer frame roll into the building sideways on little wheel carts.  The tanks and floor were already installed.  The factory had room for about 18 trailers all rolling sideways.  They turned out approximately 24 trailers in one workday meaning trailers were finished in less than a day.  The tour guide showed us how they had a computer terminal on the line where the workers could see all the options for each trailer.  They could also see which trailer for that day that would be inspected……..  And last year, they had one trailer that was inspected that was perfect. One   So, workers knew in advance which trailer needed to be their best work, and despite their best efforts, most trailers had flaws (likely because of the time pressures).

So, we got our trailer, the dealer did the walk through, quickly, not testing everything.  They hooked it up to the truck – taking longer than expected.  I was watching the technician hooking up the trailer connector to the trailer with some diagnostic device and didn’t seem to be entirely happy.  Still eventually we it was all handed over, and we drove home and put the trailer in storage near our house.  We had a few modifications we needed to make.  But the more I looked over the trailer, the more things I found wrong.  We couldn’t connect our generator to the trailer, through the Energy Management System because it didn’t like the quality of power.  I found a loose wire on the backside of the outside power connector.  I was walking behind the trailer and notice the brake/turn signal lights were HALF FULL OF WATER!  I pulled them off and someone had installed them upside down, then reinstalled them right side up.  But in order to use the same holes, the wire was now out of place, pushing the back of the light out – so they ran another screw through the back cover, which warped how it sealed against the red lens, thus letting rainwater run down the wall and right into the lens, which by the way was nicely sealed on the bottom.  And so it went, dozens of problems to fix before the first trip.  The worst was when I checked the electrical box that connects to tow umbilical to the trailer wiring.  I pulled the cover off (not waterproof, outside below the trailer).  Too much wire was jammed into it – I started pulling some out to inspect and the wire nut that went to the umbilical brake wire, the emergency brake breakaway wire and the wire to the trailer brakes.  The wire nut fell off into my face.  They wires were NOT twisted together.  No wonder the technician was pondering the brake connection.  Along with all the repairs, we made a number of upgrades; better couch, SeeLevel tank monitors, etc.  We did use it a lot.  We used it enough that we decided that set up at every campsite was a bit of a hassle.  We also spent lots of money on a Propride hitch that was worth the price.  Instead of just slowing down sway, its design virtually eliminates it.  I did have trouble getting the proper amount of weight transfer to the truck front tires that should have been there.  During that process I bought a weight scale for the hitch and discovered that front of the trailer was way heavier than I was told.  We had a ¼ ton pickup.  The trailer tongue was over 750 pounds – not counting truck passengers and all the stuff we carried in the back of the truck.  Yes, we successfully towed that trailer, all around the west, through the mountains without crashing and burning.  But we were overloaded every single mile.

That led us to a Class C.  It solved many of the setup issues, and we towed the truck behind it.  We ordered this one too.  We toured that factory too, but by then Forest River was restricting where we could go and what we could see.  And it had problems – generally quality was less than the travel trailer we had.  There were too many problems to list here, though none we couldn’t fix on our own.  Except one.  It had a full-length (>20 ft) driver side slide – on a Schwintec mechanism.  Every time we hit the brakes just a little harder than usual, the slide would move forward a half an inch with a big SCREECH!  Then while driving, it would slowly bounce back, waiting for another hard brake.  I just had visions of this slide causing problems down the road.  We also didn’t like the huge hangover bunk and how much it blocked the driver/passenger view out the windshield.  What we did like about the class-C was that it let us find out how we like a motorized RV just not this one.

We started looking over Tiffin’s and Entegra’s.  We choose Tiffin because the quality of the units we toured seemed better and that we liked the layout of the Open Road 32SA.  We ordered one and picked it up, November 2019.  Let the fun begin.

We managed to arrange a factory tour the day it started to be built on the assembly line.  We took lots of pictures during the two days it was on the assembly line.  Then a week to get painted and final checks.  Once it arrived at our dealer, we took a detailed tour – finding several things that needed attention.  For example, the fridge door was hinged on the wrong side which would have meant walking around the door from the kitchen area.  Then, nearly every drawer in the RV was installed crooked.  Only some of them were corrected by the dealer.  Small things in the big picture of it.  We took it home to storage to get ready for our trip.  While packing, Deb called me and said, “Why is there light coming in under the back wall?”  We were about to leave on a trip and decided to head to Red Bay (where the Tiffin factory is located) as our first stop, scheduling some shop time.  They looked at the wall and decided that yes, was installed with the passenger lower side farther back than it should have been.  But all was bolted down, “all good”, etc. and they sealed up the gap.  The longer view of the issue became that when they cut the hole for the bedroom slide hole, they used the back wall as a guide, resulting in a trapezoid slide opening.  That resulted in the Schwintec slide mechanism being installed incorrectly, leading to some campground repairs (three times) to sort it all out.  Just try getting slide parts from Lippert in the middle of a pandemic.

There were a number of other problems, but we still love the RV.  The class A view out the front and side windows is amazing.  The layout works well for us.  We’ve made over a hundred small, medium and large mods over the years to customize our RV.  Everything from a paper towel rack to a full inverter+Lithium batteries+solar install.  Five plus years in, we are still happy with our Tiffin.  Over the years, we’ve been from Wisconsin to Texas, from Washington to Florida and everything in between – we even did a short trip into Canada.  Only the northeast has eluded us.  We’ve boondocked in the Badlands, in Quartzite, at Walmarts and Cracker Barrels.  We camped in national, state, Corps of Engineers, in resorts and countless mom and pop campgrounds over the years.  We’ve seen more of America with our RVs than we would ever have seen driving from hotel to hotel.

We’ve had our share of oopsies over the years.  There was that time, at a random dump station, that the hose jumped out of the hole, mid black tank empty….nuff said.  We damaged a storage door once on a hidden stump in Canada and damaged a front fender on one of those yellow gas pump posts that jumped out into our way.  The biggest one though, was a week out into a trip; after staying outside Estes Park, we spun a rod bearing.  No warning, 30 seconds from normal to knock, knock.  Fortunately, there was a pull-off area at a trailhead.  We called and called – no shop within a couple of hundred miles was willing to take and work on the RV.  The campground we just left wouldn’t let us be towed back there while we worked out a plan.  We called to our Ford shop back home – they said they could take it, so we reluctantly arranged to have it moved back to Illinois on a flatbed.  Two weeks after it sat outside our home Ford Dealer, they called to say they couldn’t work on it.  We then had it moved to a Ford Truck shop (like semi’s) in Indianapolis, and they put a new short block in it, thankfully, under warranty.  The original engine was in great condition, except for the one bearing.  A very unusual occurrence everyone said, but it does add just a bit of apprehension every time we plan a long drive.

We used to move a lot, spending no more than three weeks in a spot, often less.  There was always a bit of pressure to see how many national parks we could fit in and how many pictures we could take.  We spent more time working out itineraries and making reservations.  Now we tend to pick a campground early on a travel afternoon.  Over winter, we land in an area for months at a time.  We still own a home but are selling.  We do want a home base but haven’t yet decided where it would be.  We are in our third long stint of work camping.  The work isn’t difficult and we have opted for non-paid positions which still provide a campsite.  They offer fewer required hours and more flexibility which leaves more time to explore the area. 

We’ve experienced dust storms in Arizona and were in Conroe, Texas for the Big Freeze of 2022.  We spent several weeks in 14-degree temps in Wisconsin days out west where two air conditioners barely kept up.  We’ve hiked mountains and deserts and run our e-bikes hundreds of miles.  We have our hobbies, computers, guitar, telescope.  Life on the road for us, no matter the RV is Life on the Road.