4. OK, now we FINALLY get to pick it up

By the 14th of Oct. my shoulder had ‘healed’ enough that I could at least lift the keys to the ignition and lift my arm to the steering wheel…driving a 5er home should be a piece of cake. Don’t worry, it was.

We drove down to Happy Daze for our early morning appointment, and while they installed the new Curt ‘slider’ hitch (and the 4 6v golf cart batteries I had bought at Sam’s Club) we got our walkthrough in the trailer on all the ‘systems’.

A little ‘side-bar’ here on batteries; Normally when a trailer is NOT hooked up to ‘shore power’ (meaning plugged into regular 120v service), all the lights, fans, etc., are operated from a 12v battery mounted in the trailer that is charged by the TV (via an inverter) when the trailer is hooked up to it. If you are ‘dry camping’ for a while then that one 12v battery is not going to last very long (like maybe a 3 day weekend depending on usage).

With our tent trailer there were a couple of times when we actually ‘went dark’…so then I began to carry a 2nd 12v battery as a backup. In doing research I learned that 4 6v golf cart batteries (based on the way 6v batteries are built) will actually provide more power (and faster recovery) that 2 12v batteries…so that is why I went with 4 6v batteries (aren’t you glad you asked?!?) And they are linked in series so I don’t have to change back and forth (but I will still carry that extra 12v battery as a back-up…no more blackouts!)

And do you want a side bar on slider hitches? Didn’t think so….

Ok, back to the ‘story’.

Actually there’s not much to add for this day. Well, one little thing; after we hooked it to the truck and pulled out onto the street I did have a bit of…of…nervousness?

I had never towed anything that big/heavy, so all the nerve endings were ‘on alert’. But once we got on the freeway and then onto Hwy 49 on the way to Penn Valley I started to feel very comfortable and realized how nice it was to have a TV that was built just to handle jobs like this. Cool.

Since we hadn’t sold the tent trailer yet we had to rent a second storage space for the new 5er, so I had taken care of that the previous week. Now I simply pulled into their yard, backed into our slot, and unhooked. Piece of cake (thanks to Janna for walking me go through all the steps…1st turn off the keys…OK OK….)

It was sort of sad though to then have to drive off and leave our new toy all alone.

When I got home I checked to see how the hitch had been installed to make it so ‘stable’. In looking at all the new brackets and bolts I noticed a nut missing on one of the bolts…YIKES! I called the dealer, and said just to bring it by and they would take care of it. I said it was too expensive to drive our new gas guzzling TV an hour each way just to have a nut put on, so they agreed that if I brought a pic of the bolt with the missing nut (so they would know what size) by some time when in the area (in the other more fuel economical 4-Runner) they would set me up. No problem. All fixed now.