Working two jobs is making for long weeks.

 

 

Yes it certainly does. Once upon a time I was doing 3 jobs...Makes for VERY long weeks in deed. I do not begrudge you on single minute.

 

Happy Friday Eve or Valentines day. Was 40 as I left the house today.

 

Morning Andy and those to follow.
Currently 43° and light rain here.

 

 

Good morning Oregon and everyone everywhere else. 34, wet and rain.

 

Sounds like the same camper you have. We had 4 of us in there one night for dinner and there was plenty of room. Nice unit for sure. He's got a huge boat he tows also hence the 450. I had a 9.5' S&S and wet it was 4000lbs, I hauled it on a 2000 f350 drw and I was still 1000lbs over gvwr. I figured I could do the Arctic fox 990 on the current truck and be 1000lbs over as well which isn't too bad. Got tired of the dually and wanted a more normal truck so went to back to the single. Wife feels she needs lots of room so slide in is out. I still have my Four Wheel Camper and plan on doing a couple of "outback" trips this year which is my kind of camping.... with or without her.

 

I'd say it is now raining like a "cow p****ng on a flat rock", but the cow drowned a half hour ago!

We do make a few 'wild' camping trips with nothing but us, the pickup and the camper. We have a bunch of 'little' bungy cords for the cupboard door in the camper just specifically for some of the fabulous back country super highways.

Out of all the campers we've had over the years, this is the very first, and probably the only, brand spanking new one. Custom ordered none the less.
We are pushing the weight limit (and the budget )for sure, but are still going to be lighter than we are with the Alpenlite. If the engineering calcs available from Lance are anywhere near accurate, we will only be 2" longer and a couple of hundred pounds heavier than the our old Lance and 1500 + lbs. lighter than the Alpenlite. I don't think we'll be loading the cast iron pots and pans back into this camper either.

I'd love to have a 350 or 450 just for the purpose of hauling the camper and towing the boat at the same time. I told the Warden that as long as the 96 PSD was still 'breathing' there was no way that the 96 we have now was going anywhere, that the bigger truck would be "in addition to". I was actually hoping to find a package deal like I mentioned I saw in K Falls, but only have seen that one that rated a look. It was gone so fast that I needed a faster graphics card to load the picture and phone number. The fellow said he had had a 'serious' inquiry and would call me back that evening if it didn't pan out. He didn't call back and the add was pulled that night.
We need some time to recover from the new camper now, but I'm still keeping my eye out for a really good 'dedicated' camper + boat hauler. If we could get a settlement - reimbursement on our over done marshmallow Lance Camper...

 

 

I've always bought used as well. Both truck campers were used and so is the trailer. Trailer is a "2016" made and bought in "2015"...so technically it was only 2 years old. I do plan to go into the back country with the trailer. Just need to make sure I know where I'm going. hehe... Last year we did camp in a forest service campground in the Ochoco's. Had the place to ourselves during the week. Ran the genny just enough to keep the batteries up. Weekend came and ended up with neighbors. That's ok but we like to be by ourselves and wife likes a few more amenities...mostly the TV at night. I do find the trailer is much easier to deal with vs unloading and loading the camper. Here we are in the Ochoco's...





I don't call it camping...It's "Glamping" at it's finest.

 

Nice camp site too Rich, I like the trees and the fact there is no snow...lol

 

That is a very nice looking rig you have there! One thing we like about the RV shows is touring the different trailers, as well as what the various vendors have for accessories to take along these days.. To be honest, slide in campers are kind of boring. They are all about the same.
The trailers have the ability to change things up a little and not worry so much about weight. When you get into the fivers, the gloves are off and you never know what you are going to see for a floor plan.

We bought a TV for longer trips, but it doesn't get used much. It's a 120 volt we picked up for cheap at Wally World. No HD antennae on the camper so have a Blue Ray and take some movies along. The new camper will have a 12 volt TV and HD antennae, although I doubt there will be a TV station to receive where we camp the most. The TV gets used the most via its USB port. I plug my Nikon D7500 into it and we review the pictures or any video's I've taken during the day on the bigger screen. Devils Lake State Park Campground does have a cable hook up as we found out. Came in handy waiting for the rain storms to pass.
The Alpenlite camper we have now has some type of membrane roof. They call it Thermal Polyolefin (TPO) with some type of special backing.It's pretty interesting as the rain hitting the roof makes it sound like someone is frying chicken in wesson oil in the frying pan.- or deep frying French fries.

How big is your trailer? I think there might be few 'technical' problems and some pucker factor moments with that in some of the Thielsonview Campground at Diamond Lake. That's another consideration for us. TView is kind of our summer home away from home. With a camper on the pickup, there is no problem The biggest pad there (I think) is 35' with a 45' driveway. The 'C' wouldn't be a problem except maybe the corner by C13. Quite a few of the longer rigs have to stop and back up and maneuver to get by some trees on either side of the roadway. A and B loops have some corners that would take some very experienced driving. See a lot of the longer tandem trailers get into trouble trying to make the corners in the campground and avoid trees. Some the big fivers get into trouble with height. And the Class A's...? Well we've seen a few try and can show you the missing tree limbs and bark on the side of the trees.

We spent some time in some BLM campgrounds (had those all to ourselves) on the John Day River and USFS in the Ochoco's in June of 2017 on the way back from the Condon Get Together. Spent 4 days running around the John Day Fossil beds and then went "civilized" and spent a couple nights at the State Campground at Prineville Reservoir. Gave us a chance to dump tanks, refill fresh water and wish we had the boat in tow. From their we spent a night with a cousin in Redmond and then went Wild Camping several miles up a USFS Forrest road somewhere south of Bend and another 'wild night' in the Newberry National Volcanic area. I guess the BLM and USFS is calling that "Dispersed" camping now.

We've done several nights at Hebo and South Lake as well. Those are crowded anymore during the summer so we tend to avoid them.

We might have to discuss a weekend at Detroit later this year. You could bring your trailer and we can bring the camper and the boat.
Actually that doesn't sound like a bad idea for a West Side get together...I have a couple of suicide tubes we could pull behind the boat.

Taking off now to pick up mother and take her to dinner in Dallas at the Washington Street Steak Steak House.

Some pictures of camping and being able to 'beach' the boat 'in camp' at Thielsonview.

 

Good evening Oregon and Visiting Ford Fans.
Been a long time since I have been to Detroit Lake.

 

Evening everyone. Almost ready to roll out of here in the morning.

Yes the 5'ers are in different league for sure. Wife says they are easier to maneuver around which means in wife speak, "we can get something bigger". I've been dragging boats around forever and I'm comfortable with a bumper pull and I think the bumper pull is easier to hitch and unhitch.

Our trailer is a 27RLS and so it's 33'ish end to end plus it has a "superslide". It's bigger than I would have liked. I wanted a 24' so we could go more places. (You see where is has gone... I pretty much have little voting ability here.) It was a good deal and paid half the cost of a new one so it was hard to resist. There are a lot of places we can't fit for sure. Add in the crew cab long bed and I'm pretty long ...like 55'. So far we can fit in sites that say 30' and that is what we usually use as our minimum. we then have to shoehorn the truck in there somehow.

We camp more in the 'off season" so the extra room is nice when the days are short on daylight and the weather is iffy. One other thing we do is I have at least 3 work related conferences a year and with 2 small dogs and a medium size dog, it's easier for us to travel in the RV vs hotels. I end up taking extra time off and we make a week long vacation out of a conference. One of the perks of being somewhere a long time and having a lot of vacation on the books.

We have a dvd player so we mostly bring movies with us. We also download netflix movies to our tablets and then stream them to the TV. That works really well. If the weather is good I'm usually out by the campfire watching that show instead.

I was thinking if there was a GTG this year we'd try and make it. A western gathering sounds good too. Any excuse to get out and use the RV.