Wanderung 4

Toyota Tundra Tows Trailer!

Or: Following Fall Foliage with Family Flophouse Firmly Affixed!

September - October 2003

September30 - Mirror Lake, Michigan

Trying desperately to remember all the things the dealer had briefed us on, we hooked up the trailer and trundled off toward the Wisconsin Dells about 10 a.m. As we were bypassing Lake Geneva, I suddenly recalled that I hadn’t connected the emergency disconnect switch and pulled over to hook that up. That’s the switch that puts on the trailer brakes if the hitch fails and the trailer starts to take off down the road, so I really felt better having it on. When you think about it, a run amok trailer with no brakes would essentially be a couple of tons of unguided missile careening down the interstate, which strikes me as a really bad idea.

We reached Mirror Lake State Park around 1 p.m. and found plenty of campsites available, probably due to the frost warnings that were keeping the fair-weather campers at home. Setting up the trailer took about an hour, which was slightly longer than putting up a tent, but that was in large part due to this being our first time with a trailer, I think. But we finally got it parked with only minor damage to the tent pad at the back of the campsite—it turns out there is a LOT of Momentum with a 2-ton truck and 2-ton trailer! After putting the framework back in place we still had time to take a short walk down to Mirror Lake and around Echo Rock. True to its name, Mirror Lake reflected the sunset in a spectacular way, after which we returned to the trailer for the evening.

Since we just completed a 10-week camping trip this summer (see Wanderung 3), I really noticed the contrasts with tent camping. Inside our little cocoon we had running water, a refrigerator for beverages, gas for cooking, a flush toilet, and, last but not least, light and heat. It was nice eating an evening meal where I could easily see the food and my hands weren’t going numb while I was eating. It was curious to see and hear the wind in the trees outside but not have it rattling the sides of the tent—overall it was a rather more muted experience than you would have in a tent. But it was so nice to be warm enough to just wear a shirt when lounging about. Essentially the trailer has about the space of a small hotel room combined with a complete set of conveniences, including a microwave and CD player.

The downside of dragging our little hotel room around with us was the fuss of hitching or unhitching plus the experience of towing. We kept the speeds down to 55 mph and our truck seemed to handle the load quite well in this relatively flat country, but when loaded like this my truck started to ride, well, like a truck. That is, I actually started to feel the bumps in the road and was occasionally, oh horrors, even jolted. It shouldn’t have surprised me, I suppose, but I was spoiled after driving this truck for nearly a year during which it rode very much like a car and I rather missed that “boulevard ride”.

At 55 mph we were, of course, passed by everything on the road. Cars passing were no problem, I was used to that, but the tractor-trailers put out a slipstream that made the trailer and truck veer across the lane. It was very discomfiting at first, but I got used to correcting for the sway if I could see the semi coming. When a semi sneaked up on me, however, the first clue I would get was the nose of the truck suddenly swerving over toward the shoulder while the trailer swung over toward the semi, and having that happen unexpectedly always disturbed me. Still, we were very comfortable in our little house as the evening fell and could even watch a small herd of deer walk past our campsite, grazing all the while. The deer seemed suspicious that there were people inside that big white box but they weren’t quite sure and they couldn’t smell us so they slowly moved on. All in all, I would say that if you want to experience nature you should really camp in a tent, but if you want to protect yourself from nature while still being close to nature you should go in an recreational vehicle of some kind.

Copyright 2004 by R. W. Holt and E. M. Holt
Prolog Map Epilog

September 2003
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October 2003
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