A Walterland Weekend...
This was a long weekend…
This weekend we went camping… Griswold style. The weekend started out for us on Friday when we drove to BWI to pick up Kaite’s son Alex from the airport. This actually wound up going very smoothly, considering his flight arrived at 8:35AM. I figured we’d hit a ton of traffic and wind up arriving late to pick him up. Fortunately for us, nothing bad happened… that was still to come.
We had made plans to go up to Pinchot this weekend and camp out Friday and Saturday nights. I was hoping that the weather would hold out for us… more about that later. We got back from the airport around 10:30AM and had a ton of stuff to do to get ready. This was going to be our first time going camping together in something other than a tent (we recently upgraded to a pop-up). So, we wanted to make sure we had everything we would need.
Check-in for the campground wasn’t until 3:00PM. We were thinking that we would have a ton of time to kill before we could check-in. After getting everything together and packed, fetching firewood, and filling the propane tank… we didn’t depart Walterland until after 2:00PM. Now the camper is connected, all packed up, and we’re ready to go.
We barely got out of Walterland when I heard a BANG! I looked in the rearview mirror and saw that the damn trailer had popped off the hitch. It is now being dragged by the safety chains. May I add, every time the tension was taken up in the safety chains it caused the trailer to then slam into my truck. It was all very loud, but mostly embarrassing.
I got everything stopped and I went out to survey the damage. I’m not exactly sure what happened. The lever on the trailer was still down and there were deep grooves cut into the actual ball hitch itself. It wasn’t that I didn’t get it all the way down on the ball, it just seemed to malfunction. Now I was wondering if it was worth the risk to keep on going. This to me just seemed like one of those “one in a million” things, so I jacked the trailer back up, got it back on the hitch, and away we went… again. I did stop one more time to try to manually pull the trailer off. It wasn’t budging this time.
We pulled into Pinchot just as it started to rain… lovely. We found our site and started setting up… now, it was pouring. We got the trailer unhitched, unpacked and set up with no problems. By the time we were done setting up, it stopped raining. Now everything’s wet and it’s kind of crappy still. What the hell are we gonna do? Can’t go swimming… can’t go hiking… guess we’ll just go walk around the campground a little.
While doing that we got to talking about what we were going to do for dinner and realized there were some things we forgot. Seeing as how it was crappy out and we were all soaking wet… it wasn’t too difficult to convince everyone to load up and go to the store. I swear the weather is different in Dover than it is at Pinchot. Every time we left, it got sunny… when we got back, it started to rain. We did get a break from the rain long enough to get a fire going and get some food cooked.
After dinner, Emily and Alex were up in the one bed watching a movie. I went over to cover Emily up when all of a sudden… another BANG! Now, the camper was popping a wheelie. I guess I forgot to put the jacks down too… dammit! Katie was at the door talking to me when it happened. Now she's trying to stop everything from crashing down onto us. She instructed me to “GET BACK TO THE OTHER SIDE!” Something I was already trying to do, but now it’s an uphill battle. Eventually I got back to the other side where I was greeted with another BANG! as the trailer slammed back down to the ground.
This was one of those times where if you would have been alone it would have been funny. When there are others around to witness this, it becomes embarrassing. “Are you OK over there?!?” Now seriously… how do you answer that…? “Yep, we’re OK.” I kinda wish I could have seen that from the outside… that must have been a sight. I can picture it in my mind and I laugh every time I think about it.
From here on out things could only get better… then the sky opened up. We spent the rest of the night in the camper listening to the rain. We awoke Saturday morning feeling like we had just been through a wreck. We ate breakfast, inside because it was still raining, and decided that if we were going to have to be indoors… well we could do that at home where we have more room. We packed everything up surprisingly quickly and headed out for home.
As I pulled away I heard this scraping sound. I didn’t think anything about it because we were pulling out of a decline. I figured it was just the hitch dragging as we got level. As we were about to exit the park Emily announced, “Wait! I don’t have my seatbelt on.” D’OH! I guess it the rush of packing everything up (in the rain) we forgot to buckle her in. No biggie, I pulled over where we were and fastened her in. Since we were already stopped I decided to inspect the hitch. I checked the chains… good. I tried to pull the trailer off… won’t budge. Great! As I was getting back in the truck a van pulled beside me. The driver said, “You still have a jack down in the back.” Wonderful… that would have been what made that scraping sound earlier. Now I feel like a complete idiot and am very glad we decided to not stay another night.
I did learn a lot from this experience though. Just because the camper is called a pop-up doesn’t mean it should pop-up off the hitch, nor should it pop-up into the air on one side. I’m betting that the next time we go, it will be completely uneventful.
This weekend we went camping… Griswold style. The weekend started out for us on Friday when we drove to BWI to pick up Kaite’s son Alex from the airport. This actually wound up going very smoothly, considering his flight arrived at 8:35AM. I figured we’d hit a ton of traffic and wind up arriving late to pick him up. Fortunately for us, nothing bad happened… that was still to come.
We had made plans to go up to Pinchot this weekend and camp out Friday and Saturday nights. I was hoping that the weather would hold out for us… more about that later. We got back from the airport around 10:30AM and had a ton of stuff to do to get ready. This was going to be our first time going camping together in something other than a tent (we recently upgraded to a pop-up). So, we wanted to make sure we had everything we would need.
Check-in for the campground wasn’t until 3:00PM. We were thinking that we would have a ton of time to kill before we could check-in. After getting everything together and packed, fetching firewood, and filling the propane tank… we didn’t depart Walterland until after 2:00PM. Now the camper is connected, all packed up, and we’re ready to go.
We barely got out of Walterland when I heard a BANG! I looked in the rearview mirror and saw that the damn trailer had popped off the hitch. It is now being dragged by the safety chains. May I add, every time the tension was taken up in the safety chains it caused the trailer to then slam into my truck. It was all very loud, but mostly embarrassing.
I got everything stopped and I went out to survey the damage. I’m not exactly sure what happened. The lever on the trailer was still down and there were deep grooves cut into the actual ball hitch itself. It wasn’t that I didn’t get it all the way down on the ball, it just seemed to malfunction. Now I was wondering if it was worth the risk to keep on going. This to me just seemed like one of those “one in a million” things, so I jacked the trailer back up, got it back on the hitch, and away we went… again. I did stop one more time to try to manually pull the trailer off. It wasn’t budging this time.
We pulled into Pinchot just as it started to rain… lovely. We found our site and started setting up… now, it was pouring. We got the trailer unhitched, unpacked and set up with no problems. By the time we were done setting up, it stopped raining. Now everything’s wet and it’s kind of crappy still. What the hell are we gonna do? Can’t go swimming… can’t go hiking… guess we’ll just go walk around the campground a little.
While doing that we got to talking about what we were going to do for dinner and realized there were some things we forgot. Seeing as how it was crappy out and we were all soaking wet… it wasn’t too difficult to convince everyone to load up and go to the store. I swear the weather is different in Dover than it is at Pinchot. Every time we left, it got sunny… when we got back, it started to rain. We did get a break from the rain long enough to get a fire going and get some food cooked.
After dinner, Emily and Alex were up in the one bed watching a movie. I went over to cover Emily up when all of a sudden… another BANG! Now, the camper was popping a wheelie. I guess I forgot to put the jacks down too… dammit! Katie was at the door talking to me when it happened. Now she's trying to stop everything from crashing down onto us. She instructed me to “GET BACK TO THE OTHER SIDE!” Something I was already trying to do, but now it’s an uphill battle. Eventually I got back to the other side where I was greeted with another BANG! as the trailer slammed back down to the ground.
This was one of those times where if you would have been alone it would have been funny. When there are others around to witness this, it becomes embarrassing. “Are you OK over there?!?” Now seriously… how do you answer that…? “Yep, we’re OK.” I kinda wish I could have seen that from the outside… that must have been a sight. I can picture it in my mind and I laugh every time I think about it.
From here on out things could only get better… then the sky opened up. We spent the rest of the night in the camper listening to the rain. We awoke Saturday morning feeling like we had just been through a wreck. We ate breakfast, inside because it was still raining, and decided that if we were going to have to be indoors… well we could do that at home where we have more room. We packed everything up surprisingly quickly and headed out for home.
As I pulled away I heard this scraping sound. I didn’t think anything about it because we were pulling out of a decline. I figured it was just the hitch dragging as we got level. As we were about to exit the park Emily announced, “Wait! I don’t have my seatbelt on.” D’OH! I guess it the rush of packing everything up (in the rain) we forgot to buckle her in. No biggie, I pulled over where we were and fastened her in. Since we were already stopped I decided to inspect the hitch. I checked the chains… good. I tried to pull the trailer off… won’t budge. Great! As I was getting back in the truck a van pulled beside me. The driver said, “You still have a jack down in the back.” Wonderful… that would have been what made that scraping sound earlier. Now I feel like a complete idiot and am very glad we decided to not stay another night.
I did learn a lot from this experience though. Just because the camper is called a pop-up doesn’t mean it should pop-up off the hitch, nor should it pop-up into the air on one side. I’m betting that the next time we go, it will be completely uneventful.
Now that is a great Story!
An absolute classic!
Posted by
Chuck |
11:38 AM
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
Posted by
Old Man Kirby |
1:17 PM
IDIOT...man wish I could have seen that. That would have been great to see!
Posted by
Old Man Kirby |
1:19 PM
Did you fail the see-saw test in recess when you were a kid...?
your pop-up is nothing more than an enclosed see-saw when not attached to the truck.
Posted by
Rich B |
8:59 AM