trailering on a vacation

Traveling with a vacation trailer is not for everyone. It had been over a year since we bought our 26 footer, and we'd put off taking it out even though we knew a lot about trailering as we bought our first 15' one when our kids were tiny as a way to camp most week-ends without dragging along all that baby gear. We had pulled that one a lot of places during their growing up years, taking it to Arizona more than once usually in May with no air conditioning. It enabled secure camping but had no real luxuries including no bathroom.

This trailer has the luxuries with a nice sized bathroom, shower with tiny tub you could sit in with knees up anyway, queen sized bed, nice refrigerator with a freezer that can run off propane or electric, gas stove and oven, table and chairs and a sofa-- the latter in a  pop-out that makes the trailer more spacious than it would otherwise appear. It came with a radio, DVD and CD player. We bought it a small flat-screen TV.

At 26', it's larger than we originally wanted but it would let us live comfortably for a month. It's like pulling your vacation cabin with you... and that is one of its drawbacks as it does require a big truck to take it anywhere. But then hauling in a year's supply of hay or taking steers to market requires that also.

Pulling such a trailer requires a good hitch, making sure electric is properly working, brakes with a box by the driver to adjust as needed when going down steep hills, and Eastern Oregon is full of steep hills. The older models used to have jacks that you stored and brought out but today's have a jack that you crank down but need to bring extra blocks to level the trailer if you don't plan to stay in fancy RV parks. Pulling such a rig does require some expertise and willingness to learn but for the passenger, you rarely even know it's back there-- exceptions being really rough roads.

hooking up and ready to leave Steens. This is the pop-out side with it in

One thing that makes trailering perfect for me is I like to go on trips where nothing has been planned. I want to vagabond it, stopping wherever it seems good, open to anything that comes along and especially open to surprises along the route. We took four cameras and kept three at the ready almost everywhere we were whether in the truck or walking to something we wanted to see.

We started out this trip intending to go to Pendleton first, changed our minds and delivered boxes of beef and lamb to our daughter in Medford, headed over the Cascades and spent the first night at a KOA in Klamath Falls. We didn't consider that the beginning of our trip, that came the next day and from that time on we winged it, deciding where to go sometimes that morning, deciding how long to stay somewhere only once we were there. We both dry camped (which means no hook-ups and stayed in state parks and city parks (they are in many small towns east of the Cascades and provide full hook-ups minus the internet or cable, of course-- although one small town where we didn't stay had a city park that offered wireless internet.

After we'd been out a few days, we got to thinking about turning Farm Boss's Droid phone into a hot spot. We knew it could be done if you can get cell phone coverage ( some places we could not), but we didn't know how much it would cost. It turned out to be reasonable and whenever cell phone coverage was fast, our internet was also.

The hotspot had one drawback as no way to watch videos without eating up the GBs. We bought 4, upped it to 10 after we watched Bill Maher and saw our time disappearing. We were more careful after that and 4 a month would be enough-- if we resisted our addiction to Maher once a week. We have HBO at home and it would have let us watch movies from them also-- except we'd have needed a lot more than 10 GB if we wanted to do that. In the future we would just have to save watching anything live for when at home or in a place that provides wireless-- and some of the professional parks do but then they run $40 or more a night for the full deal. Those small city and beautiful state parks usually were under $30.

We learned a few things that will make the next trip better with the trailer. One is to consider carefully how to use the available storage cupboards. Thinking that through ahead of time would have been better. Also we are buying it a new mattress before we go out again as this one was okay but not what we are used to at home-- that and higher quality sheets as I had brought the kind we used to use thinking I'd get value from them. Not worth it as sleeping well is a big deal.

So it was a fantastic trip and I will have at least four blogs here about some aspects of Oregon's back country that many people may not know. We couldn't get into the fossil beds, of course, due to the government shut down and likewise national forest campgrounds were generally closed (many would be soon anyway as winter sets in) but BLM generally was open and of course anything run by the state of Oregon or Washington.

We saw museums and so many wonderful things that it'll take awhile to find the right words to describe it all. Some I'd seen before and some not. Everywhere I got new insights that will help with the fourth Oregon historical book. I think a trip to the Oregon Historical Society in Portland might be helpful also as some of my kind of questions docents don't generally have to know.

When stopped for the night, on my Kindle, I read George Custer's, My Life on the Plains. Although I was traveling different country, it was useful for my future book for the mindset of a cavalry officer of that time period. Custer has been a hero and a villain depending on who you read. I enjoyed having his own words regarding the winter 1868 campaign as he described his motivations and experiences.

I am giving the trip a little time to sink in before I begin writing again on that book; and while I do that, I'll try to write some future blogs about Oregon's high desert and ranching country, some of its little known history and a few of the places we visited in the Gorge. I have so many photos that it overloaded one folder. Eventually I'll try to put a selection together into a slideshow.