Randy and I were eager to spend time in the new fifth wheel, so we decided to tow it to Louisiana for Christmas. We spent two nights in Walmart parking lots on the way down, to break the trip up more. I was pleasantly surprised at how well the truck pulled. It definitely has plenty of power! Randy had no issues getting it in and out of parking lots. He had to coach me a a bit, to make sure I swung wide enough to pull into truck stops to refuel. But all in all, it wasn’t as hard to manage the 42 foot fifth wheel as I imagined it might be.
We stayed with my parents for almost a week, enjoying Christmas together, then headed to Memphis, TN on Dec 27th. I made sure to get reservations for pull-thru sites for our first trip, so getting in and out of the campground was easy enough. We need to come up with a way to make lining up the ball with the Reese Goose Box easier though. (We replaced the standard fifth wheel pin box / hitch). We like that the ball doesn’t take up room in the truck bed, but it has to be pretty precise when lining it up, so it sometimes takes longer than we’d like to get the truck positioned. We just take our time and make sure we don’t damage anything, but after the fourth or fifth time trying to get it lined up, it does get frustrating. I’m guessing when we start hitching and unhitching every few days, we’ll get the hang of it quick enough!
Marissa joined us in the RV when we left Louisiana, and we stopped at Graceland in Memphis to learn a TON about Elvis. Besides the museums and house, we also walked through a plane he had renovated, which I thought was super cool. It took longer to walk through it all than I had thought it would, so it was dark when we arrived in St. Peters, MO. Again the site was a pull-thru with nice concrete pads, so it was easy enough to navigate in the dark, fortunately. Since we were leaving the next morning, and Marissa was able to find a friend to take her to get her car, we just kept the truck hitched overnight. Marissa slept in the RV one last night, then we said bye in the morning and Randy and I headed back to CO.
If we had driven straight through, it would have been dark when we got home. Since we had a lot of stuff to unload and put away, we spent a night in a Walmart parking lot a few hours away from home. It was super windy in Colorado Springs the next day, but the fifth wheel did better in the wind than I had imagined it might. Our gas mileage suffered a couple of miles per gallon when there was a head wind, though. (And we were only getting about 10 miles per gallon to begin with!) Thankfully, the total fuel cost was less than two plane tickets would have been, but it wasn’t cheap by any means. It was a long, tiring trip, but I’m glad we have the experience under our belts as we make plans for going full-time.
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