Two Week Colorado to Pennsylvania Trip

My girlfriend and I just got back from a two week camping trip to Pennsylvania and back. We still love each other, so we're taking that as a good sign!

We prepared the TM by doing some basic checks of the appliances and greasing the wheel bearings (it really is pretty easy to do - those E-Z lube hubs are slick, at least compared to the way I was taught to grease wheel bearings!). During the preparation, we found that a 15 amp electrical circuit was enough to run the TM's AC in the driveway, but you had to switch the converter off (by flipping its' breaker off) or you would pop the garage's 15 am breaker (I didn't even think of trying the fridge with the A/C, although I'm sure that would have done it too). Then we took off on our 3,000 mile trip.

We stopped at KOAs on the way for the most part, with a really great experience in Omaha at the KOA there (one of the nicest campgrounds I've stayed at) and a sort of scary experience at the Sandusky, OH KOA.

Once we got to Pennsylvania, we went to a conference at a small university. We were worried when we registered for the conference, as it was clear that this wasn't exactly an RV park, but rather a section of parking lot. However, when we got there, we found a relatively remote lot next to a large, grassy field, under the shade of several large trees. We parked with the door facing the grassy field, and plugged into the provided 20 amp extension cord. We were concerned about running the A/C, but this circuit ran the A/C and converter just fine - I left the fridge and water heater on propane just to be safe, though, as I had no idea where the breaker box was for the extension cord, and didn't really want to find out.

We had no water or sewer hookups, but we thought we could manage 5 days. Sure enough, even with lots of showering, we managed fine. I do carry two 35 gallon tanks in my truck, one for waste water (I use a macerator pump to dump the TM into it) and one for fresh water. I did dump twice while there into my spare waste tank, when the TM indicated 2/3 full on gray water (this corresponded to about 13-14 gallons each time, which is much less than 2/3 full). I also refilled the fresh water in the TM twice from the spare tank, using the small electric pump I have for this purpose (I started the trip on campus with the spare 35 gallon fresh water tank full). One complication we didn't expect: no campground in the area would let a non-camper dump, even if I offered to pay a dump station fee.

The TM was the talk of the conference, with tons of people stopping by to take a look at the amazing trailer.

The way home was uneventful. Travel was pretty easy with the TM. Even through Iowa and Illinois, where there was a lot of flooding (it was pretty sad to see the amount of damage), we were able to make decent time. We kept to 6 hour driving days, except the first and last driving day, to minimize stress - that worked out great for both of us.