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| From Buckskin Mountain 2011 |
This weekend I went camping in Arizona at a vintage trailer and teardrop gathering. This was at Buckskin Mountain State Park on the Colorado River in Arizona. My friend John Drake from Ventura brought his 1940 Ratzlaff tent trailer although his wife Debbie wasn't able to attend because of work obiligations. There were quite a few teardrop trailers as well as various larger trailers.
As you can see by the picture above I had my 1979 Brougham motorhome and my Ken-Skill teardrop trailer. I didn't intend on driving the motorhome but my PT Cruiser broke down about 45 miles from home. This happens to be near where my parents live in Pine Valley so I limped to their house. The car was overheating when going up hills and since there were a lot of hills between home and the campground I wasn't going to be able to continue with that. My first thought was to borrow my dad's Ford Explorer which he doesn't drive much anymore. Of course the battery was dead in that plus it has a big wheelchair lift on the back I would have had to remove. I've had my Brougham parked at their house for a while so I decided to take that. Of course even that wasn't a simple affair.
At some point I needed some towing stuff out of the Brougham so I had brought home the box that also contained the draw bar and other stuff. Well my dad had a draw bar in the back of his Explorer I could use but it had the wrong size ball and the ball from the PT Cruiser wouldn't fit that draw bar. My parents live in a small town without a hardware store but a few miles away is a small one so I gave them a call. They assured me they had what I needed. I hopped in my dad's Impala and headed off. When I get there, of course they don't have the right thing. I figured I'd have to go 15 miles to the next town but then decided to take another look. They happened to have a drawbar that might fit the ball from the PT Cruiser. Well it kind of fit.
So I get the hitch situation taken care of and now have to hook up the trailer and transfer all my stuff from the car to the motorhome. All this puts me a couple of hours behind. So much for getting to the campground way before dark. Next thing I have to do is get gas. The station in town charges $4.17 a gallon for regular so I head east thinking I'll find something more reasonable along the highway. Since the gas gauge in the motorhome isn't that accurate I decide to opt for the station at the Golden Acorn casino. It's only 4 bucks a gallon and the motorhome took 15 gallons. Other than some rain and a whole lot of wind, the rest of the drive was uneventful. I stopped at a truck stop just over the border in Arizona and filled up at $3.299 a gallon. Another 56 miles to go to get to the campground.
I got to the campground about 5:30 Arizona time. John was already there and setting up his trailer. I backed into my spot and unhooked the teardrop and pulled the stuff out of it and set up a bit. After saying hello to a few people and kind of checking out the campground we decided to watch a movie in John's trailer. Now the Ratzlaff is a tent trailer and one with several holes in the old canvas. John had a big tarp covering up the trailer to keep the wind and any rain out. He had two heaters in there and I brought him an oil radiator to help out. It was actually quite comfortable in there. After a while we could hear it starting to rain outside. It was forecasted so not a surprise and as long as it wasn't a hard rain, my teardrop would be ok. Well when it was time for bed I went out and it was still raining and I decided I would open the awning on the motorhome and put the teardrop under it. Good thing I did because it ended up raining most of the night.
Of course people thought I had slept in the motorhome but the teardrop trailer is more comfortable to sleep in and since I hadn't planned on taking it, all the bedding and such was at home in San Diego. The rest of the weekend was pretty lazy. We went for a drive to Lake Havasu and over Parker Dam. We got back late on Saturday and missed the potluck although we could have showed up late anyway. Watched a few more movies and just hung out. John offered to straighten out my Ken-Skill fenders so we took them off Sunday before heading home. My little trailer had to go all the way back to San Diego with uncovered tires but it didn't seem to be a problem. I stopped at my parent's house to switch vehicles, which of course meant transferring all the camping stuff and trailer again. The car still is still getting hot going up hills but it's mostly down hill to get home so I decided to drive it. It made it home OK. I'm going to change the thermostat and see if that fixes it.
I didn't take many pictures this trip but you can click on the one above to see the ones I did take. For some reason I didn't take any of the other trailers at the gathering. Other people did and I'll add a link or two later.
