I Love you posts as I have a 2018 Four Winds 28Z just like yours and love Ouray too. Been going to SW Colorado since I was three.Found your post when I was searching towing a Jeep with a E450. We order the Four Winn’s new. Took it to Colorado in 2018 from Ohio. Love it but don’t like the tranny shifting and high rev for any hill. I tow a boat to lakes near us and a enclosed car trailer with antique cars and don’t know its back there but have not towed in real hilly areas yet. Will find out this fall as we are taking my 1912 McLaughlin Buick to PA for a tour hopefully and will be in some steep grades towing. I plan on retiring in a year or two and want to flat tow a 4wd truck or Jeep so I can spend a few weeks in Ouray, Silverton 4 wheeling. My parents got interested in area in 1957 when they drove a new Ford T Bird to Colorado from Ohio on Route 36. By the way, I now own that car with only 25000 miles and never in rain after the 57 trip to Co. They tried some dirt roads but soon figured out they needed 4wd drive. Dad restored an old Jeep in 1961 and we towed it out when I was three. We continued to spend several summer vacations hiking or rents Jeeps in the San Juans exploring Ghost Towns sometimes with the Colorado Ghost town Club. After my parents retired in the 1990’s they spent the summers in Colorado and mostly Southwestern with some Ghost town Club members. They helped restore a water tower in Eureka near Silverton always camping in their Motorhome in the old townsite with other Ghost town members that had 4wd vehicles. I have taken my family a few times to the area too. My parents passed a few years ago but in 2018 we stayed in Eureka with one couple they were great friends with on their last camping trip to the Southwest as they are both pass 80. Had great time riding in their Ford Expedition that did well on some of the trails. I had no problems with Red Mountain Pass in the Four Winds but was not towing. Eureka is great for dry camping and a base for 4 wheeling. It is just ten miles up a well maintained gravel road from Silverton. It is very popular with the ATV crowd as they can stay their or drive to Silverton in an ATV. Their is a couple campgrounds in Silverton that you can get water and dump for a fee. Eureka camping is not free anymore but not much. The current owners of the town want to keep it the same and have not developed it. They only have small store a couple electric sites but mostly dry camping. No electric is needed in my opinion as it does not get much above 70 in the summer. We love to stay in Silverton Too and downtown Ouray by the hot springs pool. Yes that campground is just a gravel parking lot but near downtown and the pool. We also love Ridgway State Park. In 1968 we were in traveling through Ridgeway which was just a semi Ghost Town and they were fixing up the buildings for a movie. That was True Grit in which stared John Wayne, Glenn Campbell and Robert Duval. Wayne won his only Academy Award. It is a fantastic movie that was filmed all over the area that is a must see for you. The original not the remake. There is a web site done by Jeepster Gal that tells you were all the scenes were shot. We went to most of them in 2018. The best is Deb’s Meadow near Ridgeway where the big shoot out scene occurred. Plan to get back to the area in 2022 with a Jeep or other 4WD in tow with the Motorhome. Also like all of your tips on yours. Maybe some day we can meet up in the San Juans.

Tom

 

I'm glad you are getting something from my thread! And it does sure seem like Ouray has devoted followers. People who start going there keep going back!

 

... and another short trip. This one was about a month ago, right at the peak of a particularly vivid fall color season in Minnesota. We drove up to the North Shore and spent a long weekend in and around Grand Marais. We towed the Bronco up there so we'd have a car to drive around. No fourwheeling on this trip though (in fact the narrowest, roughest road we took was in the motorhome on a fall colors detour on the way home).

Although the leaf colors were phenomenal, the weather wasn't. It was foggy almost the whole time we were up there. But the fog finally cleared out on the last morning, so we got a lot of good pictures as we got ready and headed home.

The first tank was only 6.8 mpg, not the worst mileage we've ever got, but close. So likely the 9.2 mpg on the last tank was too good to be true. We averaged 7.1 mpg on this trip (~65 mph max, but towing the Bronco).

This was our view of the colors and of Lake Superior the first few days:


But even with the fog there were some great views on some fun hikes:


Eventually the fog lifted and we could see this great big lake that everyone said was there!



Not fourwheeling, but it felt pretty tight in a motorhome!


And just some nice colors a couple miles inland:

 

It was time to take the motorhome on another trip! Prep required was pretty minimal. The van battery wasn't holding a charge. It'd died a couple of times over the past couple of years, so I knew it was on borrowed time and decided to replace it now. Otherwise just checking the tires and fluids.

We towed the Bronco out to Moab Utah for some fourwheeling and being tourists. The drive out was pretty uneventful until we got west of Denver. Signs said the Eisenhower Tunnel was closed due to "police activity" (turned out to be a bomb threat!) so traffic was backed up for the detour over Loveland Pass. I like Loveland, but wasn't looking forward to driving it in the snow and fog on this mid-May afternoon!



Fortunately they cleared and opened the tunnel just as we were getting to the exit for Loveland Pass, so we did get to use the tunnel.

Then as we went over Vail Pass, just west of the tunnel the snow started getting serious! Fortunately it never was accumulating on the road, but I wasn't expecting this in mid May!



Fortunately the weather improved as we lost elevation west of the divide. This is a nice rest stop (without much room for larger vehicles) in Glenwood Canyon where we were able to spend the night.



It continued to warm up as we got to a rest stop in Utah where we were able to get out and take a short hike.



We stayed at the KOA just south of Moab. I neglected to get any pictures of our camp site, but here are a couple showing the view from our site.




Lots of really good and really unusual scenery in the Moab area:




Anyone wonder why they call it "Canyonlands" National Park?





This thread is about the motorhome, not the Bronco, but the point of the trip was to use the Bronco, so here are a couple pictures of it in use:




The biggest adventure on the way home was getting gas in Glenwood City Colorado. I knew it was going to be tight getting in and out. As I pulled in I realized there was one side of one island I could use, so I had to stop, blocking one of the two entrances to the station, with the Bronco still hanging out on the street until a car moved. Then when I was able to pull up and start fueling, a tanker truck pulled in the other entrance and completely blocked it! I still had the one entrance pretty jammed up, so not many people were able to get in or our for a few minutes. Then I had to back out onto the street. Not fun when flat-towing behind a motorhome! Fortunately it worked, and no one took out any road rage against us. I'll try to remember not to get gas in Glenwood City on future trips!

That's about it. No real problems with the motorhome. The generator didn't want to start on top of Vail Pass in the snow at 10,666', but it did eventually, and worked fine the rest of the time, and that was really it!

 

Another smaller trip. We liked our trip to Grand Marais last fall so much that we decided to try it again in the summer, hoping for better weather (but knowing we wouldn't get the fall colors). We didn't have the rain or fog we saw last fall, but it was a little hazy every day, so we didn't get the endless views of Lake Superior stretching to the horizon.

Here's Brighton Beach park in Duluth. It was a good place for lunch (and probably the least haze of the entire trip).


As you can see, we towed the Bronco again, but no fourwheeling on this trip. In fact, after pulling the rear driveshaft to tow it home from Moab three weeks before this trip I didn't bother putting it back in until we were home from Grand Marais. I just locked the hubs and drove around in front wheel drive.

Here's a camp site shot. We stayed in the Grand Marais city park and campground again. It's a nice enough campground, and nicely located near the southern edge of town for heading out to go hiking, but near "downtown" for when you want to get a pizza from Sven and Ole's, or get The World's Best Donuts for breakfast!


There were some nice views of a hazy Lake Superior...


... and we headed out each day to hike along some of the many rivers that fall down to the lake.


We spent 3 days there, and then headed back home. So not a big trip, but a nice thing to be able to do!

 

We just got back from a week-long trip to Walt Disney World in Florida. This is our motorhome's third trip to Disney World (and we have another planned for this fall). We like Disney. A lot. Our motorhome decorations are HEAVILY Disney-inspired as well.

This trip was pretty spontaneous by Fort Wilderness standards. Fort Wilderness is the on-property campground at Disney World and it fills up a long time in advance. But a month or two ago we were able to get reservations for Monday night through Thursday night. Weekends nights weren't available, but that worked pretty well for us driving from Minnesota. We left Friday after work and got home around noon on Sunday. With parts of four days to drive down and almost three full days to drive home we could take an easier pace and not burn me out so much (my wife doesn't drive the motorhome). Plus we got to spend Saturday evening and Sunday morning on the drive down with her brother in Nashville, which was nice.

We tow the Bronco on a lot of our motorhome trips, but not this one. We've found no need to have a car when we're staying on property at Disney World. Instead we just brought our bikes so we could ride around the campground. We could take Disney buses as well.

Here's our first "camp site." Being able to park a motorhome in a rest area makes it so much easier and quicker to stop for the night than checking into a motel. But rest stops in the eastern US are a lot easier than those in the west. The western ones are a lot smaller and it can be hard to find a space.


On this trip we decided to keep it a little slower paced. Along with the 4 and 3 day drives (we've usually done it in 2 days each way) we didn't go to any of the Disney parks on this trip. Mini golfing has been a popular family vacation event for us for us since our kids were little. Or should I say "Minnie" golfing in this case? Anyway, we've never taken the time to do that on a Disney World trip before, but we got a couple rounds in this time.


This gives you a little idea of what the campground is like, as well as a glimpse of our motorhome decorations. Fort Wilderness Campground is 50 years old, and campers today are a lot bigger than they were 50 years ago. Our motorhome isn't that big (nominally 28') but some bigger rigs have a hard time getting in and out. And the characters in the windshield represent our family. Mickey and Minnie are me and my wife, Chip and Dale are our sons, Lady and Stitch are our son's wife and girlfriend (one per son!) and the two Plutos are our dogs. (Olaf and Sven don't represent anyone, but they're too darn cute to leave out.)


While we didn't go to any Disney parks, we did go to Universal Studios to see the Wizarding World of Harry Potter one day. That's something that I've been wanting to do for a long time (I'm a pretty big Harry Potter fan too) and this seemed like a good time to fit it in. So here's Hogwarts castle.


While Harry Potter fit into the schedule well, the weather didn't make it a great fit. Temps were actually about the same in Orlando as they were in Minnesota, with highs in the low 90s. But while Minnesota had dew points ranging from the 40s to the 60s, Orlando had 80 degree dew points, giving heat indexes over 100. It was hot! So we had to consume a few Butterbeers to keep our fluids up while at Hogwarts. And yes, that's a Disney T-shirt and hat. But nowhere near as flagrant as many were wearing there.


We didn't bring our dogs, but since Pluto is my favorite Disney character Lesley had to take this picture. This T-shirt is worth mentioning too. I bought it on the first trip we took to Disney World in October of 1999. They were starting to sell "2000" merchandise by then, and Lesley thought we should buy that. But I told her that "2000" would be really cool for a few months, but having merch from the previous millennium would get even cooler as years went by! I don't wear white T-shirts much (they don't go well with working on trucks) so this one is lasting.


Then it was time to head home. "Camping" in a rest stop in northern Georgia required running the generator all night so we could use the AC (first time we've done that, although we do use the AC when we're plugged in). And if anyone wonders why they're called the Smoky Mountains...


So that was our trip. Even though we stretched out the driving there were still some long days: 294, 614, 491 and 206 miles per day driving down and 512, 768 and 313 heading home. If 768 doesn't sound like it's taking things easy, we got going when we woke up (no setting an alarm and hurrying), I mostly set the speed control at about 65 (going a little slower than most traffic makes it easier instead of constantly changing lanes in a vehicle with big blind spots) and I quit when I wanted to quit (instead of NEEDING to get to a certain point to make it possible to get home the next day). So even though it was a long day, it wasn't stressful, so it wasn't hard to cover a lot of ground. Hey, I can sit in the driver's seat as easily as I can sit on the couch!

We had no issues with the motorhome (typical, but not always the case). We averaged 8.5 mpg on this trip, which is the best we've done if you don't count a couple of trips that were less than one tank of gas so probably can't be trusted. Not towing the Bronco and not pushing the speed limit since we had more time both helped there. Previous trips have been as low as 6.5 mpg, and our overall average since getting this motorhome in 2017 is 7.6.

 

Very cool Motorhome thread !
I can relate from having owned a '71 Winnebago 24-foot Chiefton for 27-years. It had the 413 Dodge engine and 727 auto with 4:56 gearing. Was a super fun rv, and my sweetie and i drug our cj-7 jeep over hill and dale to the Rubicon Jeep Trail near Lake Tahoe, California. We also drug our 21-6 Willie predator boat up over the Sierra Nevada mountains often. Like you are experiencing, our gas mileage was near yours !
You had some long driving days getting there and back. Nice photos too ! _ _ yes, and that Bronco.

 

Thanks!

We only got into motorhoming recently. As a kid my family had a cabin, and used motels for road trips. In college I started tent camping on backcountry trips (backpacking, canoeing and what's now called overlanding). After getting married we did a little tent camping. mostly out of a car. But after borrowing a pop-up tent trailer for our first trip to Disney World with our kids we decided that we didn't need to sleep in a tent ever again, at least as long as we were in places we could bring a camper. Since I had a 1975 Jeep CJ5 at the time we couldn't use a trailer so I got a small slide-in camper for my F-150. That was really just a much more comfortable tent, with no kitchen, bathroom, furnace or A/C. We used that for about 16 years (and 4 trucks), but as we were approaching empty-nest status we started thinking about upgrading and upsizing. We're really liking the current approach!

 

A couple of nothing maintenance items from last summer. With about 60K miles it was time to service the transmission. I just took it in to a local Ford truck dealer for that, so no project.

And the seal in the toilet was leaking so the bowl wouldn't hold water (it just leaked into the black tank, so it wasn't a BIG problem). The seal is available as a maintenance part, and pulling the toilt and replacing the seal wasn't much worse than replacing a wax ring on a home toilet.

 

... and then it was time for another motorhome trip. And another Walt Disney World trip. I wrote above about the trip we took to Walt Disney World in Feb 2020, a couple weeks before everything closed down. Right after that trip (I think still before everything closed down) we booked this one. My wife had wanted to see Walt Disney World decorated for Christmas, but after driving down and back in February I wasn't real eager to take another winter motorhome trip. Fortunately Christmas starts on November 1 at Disney, so we were able to make a fall Christmas trip! We hadn't thought about this when we booked this trip, but Walt Disney World turned 50 on October 1. So we got a double bonus being there during the 50th anniversary celebration.

The 4 days to drive down / 3 days to drive back we did in July worked well, so we did the same thing on this trip. But with spending 7 nights at Fort Wilderness Campground, this ended up being almost a 2 week trip (which was kinda nice!).

Our daily mileage on the way down was 370 (to northern Illinois), 541 (to Nashville), 503 (to the Florida state line) and 203 (to Disney). We started day 1 after I got off work, finished day 2 early and started day 3 late to spend time with Lesley's brother, and arrived at Disney about 10:00 AM, giving us most of that first day to get set up and still do a bunch of sightseeing and shopping.

We didn't have great weather, but it wasn't terrible either. We got a LOT of rain the last part of the drive down, but it stopped just before we got to Disney. That first day was pretty cool (temp around 60, it was actually warmer in Minnesota that day, in the upper 60s!) and we ran the furnace that first night. But it warmed up as the week went on. It rained a few hours one day, and for maybe an hour or so a couple others, but we wore ponchos and we were fine.

Anyway, here's the Magic Kingdom decorated for Christmas...


... and here is one of the 50th anniversary decorations...


... and here's our campsite decorated for Christmas.



The drive home went a little different than last time due to a detour. The first day (590 miles to southern Tennessee) was about the same. And the 620 miles on day 2 was pretty similar. But rather than day 2 leaving us in northern Illinois with about 300 miles to go to get home, instead we were near Kansas City, leaving 497 miles for day 3. The Kansas City detour was to stop at a junk yard to get a "new" tailgate for my pickup.

Temps were going below freezing that first night back in Minnesota, so I had to winterize the motorhome right away after we got home, but at least I didn't have to winterize it before we left for home like I had on the February trip. Traveling in a motorhome has some pluses and minuses, and not being able to use the toilet or shower on the trip negates some of the biggest pluses, so being able to keep water in it for the entire trip was a lot nicer!

Average mileage for the trip was 8.0 mpg, not quite as good as the 8.5 from last summer, but still a little above our 7.6 mpg overall average.

Anyway, that was that trip. No adventure (if you don't count the trip to the junk yard!), but not all vacations have to be an adventure! The motorhome is now parked for the winter, and we don't have any definite plans for any future motorhome trips at this point. But we are tentatively planning a trip to southwestern Utah in fall of 2022, and I'm sure we'll get something else worked in next summer as well.

 

I needed to take the motorhome in for some service, so I tried to start it. It wouldn't run well, and wasn't responding to throttle inputs at all. I checked codes and found P2111 "throttle actuator control system stuck open." I have a thread here on the whole diagnosis and repair process, but the Reader's Digest version is I had a squirrel nest in my intake system. After cleaning it out, installing a new air filter and fastening some hardware cloth across the air inlet (to prevent a repeat performance) it was back to new. But I did have to reschedule the service work!

 

Getting that taken care of let me drive it in for the service it needed. After needing to have the generators carb replaced a couple years ago I've been more religious about exercising the generator every month, but when I ran it in February it shut itself down. When I tried to restart it I could get it to start but it would shut off immediately with the indicator light flashing. Reading the manual told me I could pull codes and found a "code 12" saying it was going over-voltage. It turned out that it needed a new main board. $400 parts and $600 labor later and it's good as new.

I can't help but think about the $2000 in repairs I've put in this Onan generator and the $400 new purchase price of a PowerHorse generator I bought to get us through a power outage a few years ago. Maybe I'm just lucky with the PowerHorse (and the other kind of luck with the Onan), but the PowerHorse gets ignored completely and starts on the first or second pull every time. The Onan puts out more power (a real 4000W vs an optimistic 2500W), has electric start and likely has a more stable voltage output. But I sure like the cost and reliability of the PowerHorse.

 

Another short trip, this one heading north to St. Croix State Park for a 4 day weekend. It was a pretty laid-back trip, with only a 100 mile drive each way. We met some friends there and mostly did some easy hiking, a little biking and just hanging around camp with our friends. It rained on Saturday (which was nice because it broke the heat and humidity we had Thursday and Friday), so we played games in their travel trailer. And after the rain stopped we played some yard games.

Not a lot of pictures from this trip, but here are Lesley and I standing on the bank of the St. Croix River. We're standing in Minnesota, and that's Wisconsin on the other side.


Playing yard games in the campground:


Then on our way out we drove down this dirt road to climb up a fire tower.

 

I realized that I've fallen a few trips behind in this thread. So in an effort to catch up...

Back in September we headed off for southwestern Utah. We took parts of three days to drive out, spent 5 days there, and parts of three days to drive home.

We had rather poor weather the first couple of days, with this lovely scenic view as we drove through the mountains in Colorado:


It did improve on day three. Here's our "campground" that morning:


And here we are in our campground in Hurricane, Utah:


While in Hurricane we did some 'wheeling with my Bronco in Sand Hollow. Driving in real sand was a new experience for me (note to self: aggressive mud tires might not be the hot ticket), but we got to have a lot of fun in the rocks too, doing the trails "Milt's Mile", West Rim", and "Double Sammy." This was some of the most aggressive rock crawling I've ever done, and it was a lot of fun getting to push myself! Here's a picture from Milt's Mile, followed by one from Double Sammy. By the way, if you want to see video of the 'wheeling in this trip (or any of my other trips), here's a link to my YouTube channel.




We also spent a rainy day (including flash flood warnings!) in Zion National Park. It was a bit of a drag getting soaked at Zion, but we did get to see it in a cool way that most don't. Now we'll have to go back to see it in the cool way that most do!


We did have a nicer day for Bryce Canyon National Park


We didn't take any pictures on the drive home, so you'll just have to take my word for it that we made it!

The water pump in the motorhome failed on the drive out. Not the coolant pump on the engine (that would've been much worse), but the pump that lets us use water in the sinks, shower and toilet when we're not hooked up to a hose. That was a bit of a drag, but it happened in the morning of day three, after we had showered, so it wasn't as bad as it might have been. And I was able to get a new pump and install it before we headed home, so we had water on the drive back.

We did have a little more trouble with gusty cross winds than we do on most trips. It wasn't terrible, but it did make the driving a little more tiring.

Overall we averaged 7.2 mpg, just slightly worse than the 7.6 mpg we've averaged over the entire time we've had the motorhome. Not surprising with towing the Bronco through the mountains. But what was surprising was that our tankfuls in the mountains were actually our best mileage. Apparently the higher speeds on the plains (~70 mph) hurt the fuel economy worse than the mountains where my foot was often on the floor, but we were only going ~50 mph (or slower).

And that brings up the biggest motorhome-related complaint of the trip. I've mentioned this before, but it's really unpleasant driving this thing in the mountains. The 6.8L V-10 has no power without spinning fast, so we need to listen to it whining at 5000 rpm for long periods of time.

But worse than that is the absolutely horrible powertrain management system. I'm sure it's a system that "learns" as you drive, because it's absolutely schizophrenic. I can never predict how it's going to shift the transmission. Sometimes it downshifts really early and makes the engine scream before it needs to. Other times you are at 3500 rpm with your foot on the floor and you are slowing down because it won't downshift. Upshifts are a little more predictable, because it never does. It'll be at the rev limiter and won't hit the next gear even when it can pull it. I have to lift off the gas to get it to shift. And after pulling a smaller hill where it needed to downshift it'll stay in the lower gear after it's on the flat until I manually shift it from 5th to 3rd (there's no way to select 4th) and then back to 5th. Then it'll go to overdrive (5th) and stay there. OK, "never" is a bit of an exaggeration. But it's very common to have to go through this exercise to get it to upshift.

Also when using the speed control in the hills it will let the speed sag quite a bit as you go up a hill. I actually like that rather than have it always put the engine at 5000 rpm to hold the speed. But then as it gets back to the set point it doesn't back off on the throttle, so it overshoots by 5 mph or more. And as I noted above, it often won't upshift either.

If I knew of a good aftermarket chip that would fix this I'd love to do something about it. But with the small amount of time that I spend driving this in the mountains I really don't see me being able to effectively dial anything in, so it would have to be a solution that just worked right out of the box. And while, other than this, I really love this motorhome, I do dream about getting a torquier motor (godzilla 7.3L? diesel?) and a manual transmission (a motorhome with a manual? I did say it was a dream!)

OK, so that's the highlights of this trip. Otherwise it was pretty uneventful, which generally is good in a road trip!

 

Continuing to catch up, in October we drove down to Southern Missouri Off Road Ranch (SMORR), towing the Bronco to do some 'wheeling. I don't have any pictures of the campground or motorhome from this trip, but the 'wheeling pictures are more fun anyway!





As for the motorhome part of the trip, it was about 650 miles down and another 650 back. We left around mid-afternoon and put in about 400 miles and 7.5 hours the first day, spending the night in a rest stop near Kansas City. We did the last 200+ miles the next day, arriving at SMORR a little before noon.

Driving back we started a little after noon (after 'wheeling in the morning), putting in 8 hours and ~450 miles before stopping in a rest stop north of Des Moines. We wrapped up the drive with about 4 hours for the remaining 200 miles.

Average fuel consumption was a little higher than normal, with only a 6.4 mpg average. Towing the Bronco always pulls it down a bit, and there were some smaller roads with more stop-and-go. Plus I was staying a little closer to 70 mph than I do sometimes.

There was no adventure or drama, which makes for a boring thread post, but it makes for a better trip.