Where it all started 37 days ago

Levis, Canada

Today I rolled into the Quebec City KOA, 37 days after I first picked up my trailer and drove directly here to figure out how to be a trailer camper. Like most holidays, in many ways it seems like forever ago, yet in others it seems like just yesterday.

This will be my last post for this part of my journey. I head back to the plant for some minor deficiency issues, as well as the repair of the fibreglass ding on the front of my trailer since its confrontation with my SUV. Then it’s back to Ottawa for some time to gather my thoughts, and figure out where I go from here.

The plan

The current thought is that I’d depart with my little wandering buddy in tow at the beginning of August to head across Canada to Vancouver, and then mid-October to head down the west coast to San Diego, some weeks in Palm Dessert and then across the US South to get back to Ottawa at the end of March or so. As I said, that’s the plan. Whether that happens will depend on the information I’m able to gather in the next couples of weeks and how I’m feeling about it all when the decision needs to be made. That decision likely needs to happen before next Friday because that’s when my furniture is slated to go into storage.

But….

There are some things for me to gather info about and think about first.

1) Is my SUV powerful enough and will the transmission on it hold up to climbing through the Rockies?

It struggled going up some of the grades in the Gaspe that were short, but pretty aggressive slopes. Coincidently as I’m starting to think seriously about this, I ran in to a couple in a gas station (well, thankfully, not literally) who own an older version of my exact model who are on their way to make the trip I just did plus going to Iles de la Madeleine. They have a 4 cylinder as well and their thoughts were that by going slow and doing it over a few days that it was possible for both the vehicles to get up the grades and the drivers to remain sane, but they worried about the coming down part. I hadn’t even thought about that! So I have some questions for Honda, a transmission shop, the trailer guys, etc as to whether that’s something I want to attempt.

2) Do I like the lifestyle well enough to embark on an 8 month odyssey?

I have really enjoyed the experience of trailering. I like the pace (slow), the people (friendly), the change of scenery (although I did like sitting still for 10 days in two different places to take in what the area had to offer). The trailer is very comfortable and I don’t mind the smallness. After 5 weeks I’m missing my peeps and happy to be heading home. But is that just the horse to the barn thing? One thing that I learned is how important having good wifi is for connecting. I’m also glad to be going home to use my own shower. I have one in the trailer, that I’ve used when the weather has been yucky, but it’s really small, and takes a while to dry out. I didn’t experiment with camp cooking too much. Too many other things to deal with. But I did really start to enjoy the lifestyle once I’d gotten over most of the “first times”.

3) Can I physically manage to do this?

Although the bridge incident put a serious dent in my confidence, I have gained most of that back in the last couple of travel days despite 25 kph winds yesterday and brake controller issues. (it’s not working right and has been added to the list for the guys to check out). It helped to have the installer at the auto accessory place where I stopped to check my trailer brake controller (in Charlottetown) tell me that there is no way that I could have gotten all the way to the Confed bridge having installed the hitch wrong that day, and he agreed with the CAA guy that it must have been the nut on the coupler that had just jiggled loose and chose that moment to allow the coupler to give way.

Today was a perfect day. Nothing broke, there were no “firsts”, no incidents, no wind, no almost running out of gas, no problem finding the RV Park. So a good way to end. When I think about what I’ve learned and what has become second nature I am encouraged that I can deal with it. But still some questions remain that I have to think about.

And I have some questions for you!

1) How’s the blog doing?

2) Too much info, not enough?

3) Too frequent?

4) Too many pics, not enough?

5) Too personal?

6) Have you read all posts? Or just a few that look interesting?

7) How is the format? Should it be more point form and less prose?

8) Is the bad grammar and spelling off-putting?

9) What else?

Thanks so much for the “likes” and comments. It’s really made it more interesting to share my trip with you and I feel like I’m not really alone on the road after all.

So, I’ll write again when I have the answers to the above and have had a chance to decompress a bit.