After a few camping trips into the Rocky Mountains in a heavy tent, with water coming in the bottom as well as the top, we had given up. But that’s a story for another time. We were driving down the highway after moving to West Tennessee and spotted a bumper pull travel trailer. Now having no experience with RV’s with wheels, we decided to stop and take a look.
We only spent a few minutes in the used 24 ft. Starcraft travel trailer and we liked what we saw, light, airy and clean, but we continued the five or six mile trip home. After a few minutes at home "mulling" over our find, notice we did not spend a lot of time mulling, we called the owner and made an offer. He accepted! What have we gotten ourselves into?
Without any more thought, we drove back to our find and paid for our new adventure. The seller made mention of a few things about the travel trailer, but it was hard to remember his instructions, and were we expected to write them down?
Having no receiver hitch on our truck, brake controller or wiring harness we decided to lower the travel trailer tongue on our two inch ball on the back bumper and take our chances. After all it was the middle of the afternoon and we didn’t have far to go. You were expecting a mishap weren’t you? We made the five or six mile trip home just fine.
With time now to inspect our purchase we set about hooking up the electric, water and leveling the travel trailer in our driveway, and dreaming about our first trip. What did he say about gray water and black water tanks? Hmmm, guess we can figure it out, after all we are adults and had a little common sense. Yeah right! Repairs had to be made in a few minor areas but nothing we couldn’t do for ourselves.
A lot of enjoyment goes into equipping your first RV. Shopping trips to find the right dishes, cook ware, linens, accessories and finding the right locations to store them. A used equalizer hitch was purchased and our tow vehicle was made ready with wiring and electric brake controller for our first camping trip.
Our first trip was to Land Between the Lakes, a beautiful area that had electric hook ups only, at that time, water was from a spigot every so many feet down the road. After figuring out where our potable water tank was we filled it before we left home so didn’t have to worry much about water. Except......we didn’t know how much our gray water tank held. We found out it holds less than the potable water tank! After water refusing to drain after washing some dishes we knew we had filled the gray water tank over and above capacity. So after dark I snuck around and let some out on the ground. Shhh......don’t tell anyone, that’s a no no. We also found out that the shower was built for midgets! All in all it was a great adventure and that’s when we fell in love with RVing.
This was the first of many travel trailers, motor homes and good times for the past twenty- five years. I guess my point is, don’t dwell on it too long, just do it!
JB Moore
