Occupation of Independence

An Epilogue follows at the bottom, since I originally wrote this post when I had a double axle travel trailer (4500 pound GVWR), and was thinking of going to a single. I have indeed gone to a single axle trailer since writing this post. Thus an epilogue is added at the bottom. _______________________________________ This isn't an RV "how to" blog. I avoid practical discussions because 1) it should be left to people who make a few nickels and dimes from Google ads, and 2) practical details are terribly boring to read, because they don't carry over well to somebody else in slightly different circumstances. (Which is true 9 5 % of the time.) But safety is special. Recently I had the wheel bearings repacked with grease and the brakes inspected/adjusted, on my 4000 pound travel trailer, with tandem a xles .  The wires to the electrical brake were broken on one of my four wheels. (And it wasn't the first time.) No wonder I had noticed the rear end wiggling when

My head hurts. There are few things that will cause brain-pain as easily as reading discussion forums on the internet. Grim determination is indispensable. With enough patience you can actually learn a few things. But most of the contributors seem to want to make you suffer first. These days I read some of the pickup truck and tow vehicle forums. Let's hope the next generation is learning in school how to write on a discussion forum, the same way that my generation learned how to write a business letter or how to type. Until then, the forum reader will have to endure dumb jokes, habitual contradiction, sidetracking, ad hominem trollishness, misspellings, and the worst written English imaginable. Can any of those forum-mongers write two sentences without obtruding abbr. & acronyms? And don't even get me started on that LOL/IMHO crap ... because those people R the biggest PITA!!!! (LOL!!!!) Th e fr ustrated comedians are even worse. For one thing, they are hardly ever fu

Note that the title did not say " Looking for a Tow Vehicle with better fuel e conomy ." For t he most part, this post is about a tow vehicle pulling a travel trailer. How does an RVer escape a full-sized van or pickup truck, with its length, large turning radius, 6000 pounds of weight, and thirsty V8 engine? The simple answer is: don't. Stick with a brontosaurus and then drive it fewer miles per year. My current brontosaurus is a 3/4 ton Ford Econoline 250 van, used to pull a 4000 pound travel trailer. The original engine and transmission still work well at 225,000 miles. What if I had purchased a lighter-duty vehicle at the beginning of my RV career, got slightly better fuel economy, but then needed to replace the transmission or engine at 150,000 miles? Would that have 'saved money?' I used to drive about 15,000 miles per year. These days I've managed to cut that in half. I feel really good about that, because it's also beneficial from a safety an

Wh en a meme on the internet coasts along, year a fter ye ar, without ever being challenged or tested, it is only natural for it to get flabby and to load up with blarney. So take the following post in the spirit of sportive iconoclasm. It's not aimed to hurt t he feelings of any individual. There is a persistent meme out there in the travel blogosphere that needs to be debunked and de-gla morized for no other reason than it could misl ead RV wannabees and newbies. I'm referring to the "go anywhere, camp anywhere for free" meme. It is over-rated.  It is usually an advertisement for van-camping on a street or in a parking lot, casi no, or Walmart . (I s hould probably add that I like vans, have owned one for the last 16 years, and might be buying another one next year, for pulling a small travel trailer.) A small rig might allow you to park overnight on more streets and parking lots -- without being booted out -- than larger rigs. But so what?! It won't mea

Oh sure, when you go shopping for a truck or van and a trailer, there are plenty of things that could discourage you. But w ith some effort you can see them as grimly humorous. Or you could put on your optimist-hat and say, with some irony, that the shopping experience confirms that Dr. Pangloss (aka, Leibniz) was right: we really do live in the best of all possible worlds. I said 'ironic' because the average product made by the vehicle industry is probably better than what the average customer deserves. Most customers only care about the vehicle or RV as a fashion statement, a sex object, or a status symbol. Although they buy -- or rather, they borrow -- on that basis, they later come to regret on the basis of engineering trade-offs, those sober and grown-up issues that would be too boring or nerdish to consider at the point of sale. These have been my prejudices for years, and they were confirmed by a day of shopping for a new trailer and van or pickup in Tucson. My fi

Hey, I'm excited about what I read this morning about lead-carbon batterie s. I've never heard of them before. So far, an RVer has only had two choices: good ol' flooded lead-acid batteries, and expensive AGM batteries. But it's really nice to read about a third choice. This is an investment article  -- we're not talking about a science lab show-and-tell project here. Do you know of anybody who uses the new lead-carbon batteries in their RV?

Just think, my current rig (Ford Econoline van pulling a 21 nominal foot travel trailer) has given me shelter (and massive amounts of storage) 365 days per year for 15 years and for 200,000 miles. The combined cost was $26,000. I would say that I got my money's worth. Call it beginner's luck: I bought these units despite never having slept in an RV before, and despite doing very little homework. But their respective careers are winding down. Now that I'm only a year-and-a-half away from robbing the piggy bank (IRA withdrawals), it's time to knock the ball out of the park when buying new rigs. And this gives me a chance to play RV Wannabee, instead of RV know-it-all. This time around, homework will be done; I demand significant improvement from myself. Once again I will be looking for a low cost rig intended for dispersed camping near the desert-grassland/forest interface . This is usually where you can still get an internet signal, have the most variety in the scen

When your RV rig gets old you might as well start window shopping early, since finding something might take a long time. Of course, that problem is worse when the shopper is stubborn about camping in quiet and interesting places and avoiding unnecessary expenses and luxuries. You would make it easier on yourself, during the shopping process, if you thought like a mainstream RVer, but then the negative payoff would come later when you end up with a rig that is expensive and troublesome to repair, and you can't camp where you really want to camp.  Here's my most recent heart-throb: It's made by Tiger RV, circa 1990. What a nice camping experience these lucky people must have had! They had gotten to a campsite that big or "overhang-ey" rigs couldn't get to. They could walk right out of their rig to dozens of mountain bike/multi-purpose trails. Here is RV camping at its finest: the perfect balance of outdoor flavor combined with realistic and hard-she

As much as I like having solar panels on my RV it has always seemed strange that they should be so over-praised by many RV bloggers. I always thought it was just the emotional gratification of feeling Green, and look forward to going to heaven and sitting on the right-hand side of Thoreau or Gandhi. The other reason for over-promoting solar panels is ad income of course. Now that the monsoons are hitting the Southwest, you need a generator to boondock camp. Oh sure, it's easy to say that you "just" need to try harder to conserve electricity; but rainy and muddy days are the very times when you spend most of the day indoors and need the most electricity.   While considering the camping location of a nearby camper who was out in the open, I suddenly had a "new" thought about solar panels -- new to me, that is. He had a large and prominent satellite TV dish on his small rig. Ahh, no wonder he needs to stay out in the open -- his boob toob wouldn't w

This is a followup to a post a couple days back about getting a group of RVers to design the perfect rig.  Like baseball, real RV-camping (boondocking) is a 'game of inches.'   Too bad I didn't photograph the inch or two of clearance yesterday when I almost pinned my travel trailer between two ponderosa pines.  It could have been worse: I could have bought my travel trailer a few years later, after the RV industry had "progressed" from the old 7-foot-wide standard (mine) to 8 foot. (For comparison, a Ford Econoline van is 6.5 feet wide.) Once again I have benefited from traveling with a group and getting a chance to weigh the pro-s and con-s of a group of rigs. One of our party has the standard 8 foot width in his travel trailer. Bad news! The greater width will make life more comfortable when winter-camping in the desert, or on a casino or Walmart parking lot, but 8-foot is terrible in canyons, mountains, or forests. 'Nothing exceeds like excess,

Although there are boondockers who praise Solitude for the sake of itself, I disagree. Solitary camping for me is largely the result of two things:  1) most men are paired with a woman who thinks boondocking is uncomfortable and unsafe, as well as boring since it's a 5 hour drive to the nearest Coach or Nieman-Marcus.  2) most rigs are not designed for, or well adapted to, the needs of boondocking. (Point 2 is partly the result of Point 1.) Therefore if you want to boondock, young man, my advice is to stay single and get a good dog. Hence I usually had to camp alone, by necessity. But if we do manage to found a core group of boondocking outdoorsmen, it would make a great group project to "design" a suitable rig for our lifestyle. The RV industry builds rigs for a typical customer whose desires are very different from ours. There are two basic approaches: 1) Select and combine a system of mass-produced rigs/vehicles/appliances that are readily available and repairabl