First Trip in our New Trailer

I decided to go take care of my fasting blood test in the morning to get that over with but when I arrived at the test center the line was out the door.  I waited over an hour to have blood drawn which put us behind in packing up to pick up the trailer.

Luckily I had started packing items for our weekend trip but still had to pull it all together quickly before heading to the dealership.

We arrived a little after our scheduled time.  We handed over our truck keys so they could install the brake controller and a new hitch.  In the meantime, Neal did the orientation of our trailer walking us through all the systems.  The truck came back and we hooked up the trailer.  Then we waited to talk to the finance guy.  Once he was available we signed all the necessary documents.  This all took about four hours.

Finally, it was time to leave the lot and head out on our first trip.  We hit so much traffic on the 91 coming from Fountain Valley.  Since there was so much traffic the brakes heated up and then came the warning message on the truck console.  Uh oh!  We had no truck brakes.  Al was able to stop the truck and trailer using the trailer brake controller.  That made for a very stressful trip.  We pulled off the freeway and there ended up being a Camping World so we pulled in to their parking lot.  The wheels on the truck were very hot so we let the truck sit for an hour to cool down and we went to McDonald's to get dinner.

After an hour we were back on the road as traffic was moving better.  It was still very stressful for the rest of the ride to the campground.  It ended up taking us about five hours from Fountain Valley to Dessert Hot Springs including the hour pit stop.  This trip should take around two hours.  We arrived at 7PM just about dusk.

 


Upon arrival at the KOA in Dessert Hot Springs, we were met by Rhonda who hopped in her golf cart and showed us to our site #28.  Now what did we learn during our orientation earlier that day?  We were so wiped out that we hooked up just the electricity and called it a night for hook ups.  Luckily we had a full tank of fresh water.  This would do for the first night.  We got the bed set up with our sleeping bags and tried to relax.

The next morning we hooked up our water and sewer and organized more of our stuff inside.  We ventured out to Costco to fill up the truck with gas and the brake warning message was gone.  We mostly just hung out in the trailer.  It was a very, very windy day so sitting outside was hard.  We had so much dust inside the trailer!  We did manage a few laps around the campground to get some exercise.  Our meals consisted of sandwiches for lunch and salad with chicken for dinner.  Easy stuff.  We have great TV reception over the air with our trailer antennae that we're able to watch the free channels.  We also watched a couple of movies.

Saturday night was wine and painting night in the clubhouse.  For $5 Cindy walked us through painting this picture.

On Sunday, a lot of people left so it was mostly empty.  We practiced hooking up the trailer and then practiced parking the trailer in various different sites.  Of course Al does better than I do.  I can't get a sense of where the end of the trailer is to know when to start turning.  It will come with practice.  After our practice we went to the pool.  It was empty compared to yesterday.  The main pool was around 90 degrees and lovely!  We got to talking with a nice couple from Texas.  This campground also had three natural spring fed hot tubs which were nice.  Sunday night was another movie night but the wind was not a problem so we could keep all the windows open and get fresh air.

Al practicing his retirement shuffleboarding

Our celebration bottle!

Nice easy dinner for our first trip

Monday morning we woke up and got moving since we didn't know how long it would take to break down.  It really wasn't that bad and we were on the road sooner then I expected.  We drove to the storage lot in Chino by the airport to store the trailer.  This was our first time visiting the lot and we were very pleased.  All of the reservation and research was done on the internet so we weren't sure how it would meet our expectations.  A girl at the front desk showed us to our spot and Al backed in the trailer like an expert.  Funny thing is there is another trailer exactly like ours parked right next to us.  We got the trailer all settled and drove home.  Ah, the trailer made it through our first trip with no problems.  The truck is another story.

We drove home and emptied all our gear from the truck.  Al had made an appointment at the Chevy dealer to get the brakes checked out since this is the second time we had this issue.  The other was towing our boat when we also were stuck in traffic.

So we survived our first weekend trip with the trailer.  Besides the truck brakes it was a good trip.  Glad we had the opportunity to do this shakedown trip before we head to an RV Rally in NV at the end of the month.

The only issue we found with the trailer is the driver's side tail light and turning signal are not working.  Al will be taking the trailer in for service on Friday.

One trip down!  We're loving the trailer!