Beaches and BBQ: Day 3

After a good nights sleep in the T@B, we were off - crossing Ohio into Indiana. A lot of the day was spent doing this:


That’s Juliet driving. Lots and lots of driving. We can definitively say that we like the rest stops in Ohio better than those in Indiana. (We have to stop a lot, since we’re getting less than 300 miles out of a tank of gas in the Odyssey.) One joy of having the trailer: we heated up leftovers rather than eating McDonalds for lunch. (I’m not sad for getting that full order of pork and potatoes Friday night after all.)

Our destination tonight is Indiana Dunes State Park. I had seen pictures of this park years ago in a book, National Geographic Guide to State Parks, that I had bought from a discount rack. The park, which borders a national park, consists of large sand dunes on the shores of Lake Michigan. I pestered Juliet during our trip planning to plan a stop there - and we’re glad we did.

We climbed my namesake (192 feet above sea level):


And we walked on the beach for a while. 70 degrees, sunny, and a nice breeze. Lovely.

Even more lovely was dinner. We had found a barbeque place, Smokey's Southern BBQ, mentioned on line, Located in Chesterton, it’s right down the road from the park. It turned out to be delicious.

Juliet got a ½-rack of ribs

And I got a plate of pulled pork.

Perhaps as important, they had fantastic pie. I was let down by the pie at the diner yesterday, so I needed pie redemption. We found it here, with a slice of blackberry pie. The banana cake with cream cheese icing was great too.

This picture looks like I was hogging all of the dessert. Not true. (Notice the beautiful pies on the shelf behind me. So tempting. So hard to have just one.)

Tom

Pennsylvania is a big state (Day 2)

We left my parents bright and early. When we got on Route 80 first thing this morning, the mile marker was at 289 - and it was counting down. And we were staying on Route 80 all day. Wow.

First fill-up = 17 mpg. Second fill-up = 14 mpg. Not horrible, given we’ve been cruising at 65 mph with the trailer. Driving the speed limit alternates between being relaxing and maddening. But it keeps the van’s engine relaxed, which goes back to keeping me relaxed.

Going the speed limit means that it takes a while to get through PA. Route 80 is pretty, but far from exciting. Kind of desolate in spots too.

We stopped for lunch at a diner in New Middlesex PA recommended on Chowhound. It wasn't anything special, but it did have a big parking lot. Funny how priorities shift when towing.

We're camping in a KOA in Streetsboro, OH. KOAs are sort of like the McDonalds of camping; they're franchises and work similarly. They're usually right off the highway, have hook-ups (electric and water), and are generally nonscenic but easy to deal with. That's what we wanted, and that's what we got.

But, for someone used to camping in the woods, it's a bit odd to be sitting here in the trailer, typing these words using my laptop, over the campground's free wifi. We're two miles down the road from a Target, Lowes, and any other big box store you'd desire in suburbia. Not sure I'm complaining - but just a bit odd.


At least we got a nice corner site with shade. The 35+ foot long Mandalay motorhome in the site across from us is towing an Odyssey as their "around town" car. We're at the other end of the spectrum, towing a tiny trailer with our van. Oh well.

But there's a cool old Airstream Bambi parked 3 spots down, from folks with an 80s Dodge Ram (tan and primer color) who appear to have bought it before Airstreams became hip.

Tom

Packed and off! (Day 1 of big trip)

After slowly packing for something like two weeks, with piles of stuff and lists all over the place, we finally got everything into the car.

It looks bad, but consider everything we have:
Clothes for weather ranging from snow to summer
A Weber Q barbeque grille
Port-a-potty (in a closed box)
The 10x10 screen room
Two mountain bikes (the kayaks and paddles are on the van's Thule roof rack)
Equipment for biking, hiking, and kayaking

And in the end, there actually remained a bare spot of carpet on the floor. (Well, there was - we've covered it with stuff by now.)



And the obligatory start-of-trip odometer shot (note how we're thoroughly out of warranty on the van):


We drove to my parents in Pennsylvania, but didn’t camp in their driveway. On the way, we stopped for Portuguese food on the outskirts of East Stroudsburg. We’ve passed by it before, and thought it to be an unlikely place for such a restrauant, but finally stopped. Glad we did - it was really good.

Tom’s Diet Tip of the Day: When asked if you want a “half-portion” or a “full-portion,” get the half portion. I’ve got the full portion - and have enough pork and potatoes for three days. (It’s in the trailer frig.)

I would have taken a picture of the place - but when we left, it was pouring rain, so we made a mad dash to the van. The sudden downpour had dumped a lot of water - there were several inches of flood water in places. We drove though it slowly and got to my parents fine.

I've mentioned before how everyone in the campground watches (there isn't much else to do) as you back into a spot. I couldn't even back into my parent's driveway without their neighbor having a stare. Oh well - at least I didn't back over the mailbox.

Tom

Modification: Bye-bye table

Part of what makes the T@B (and a lot of other RVs) so flexible is that you can convert an eating area (a dinette) into a bed. You do that by folding down the table to form a platform. By rearranging cushions atop the platform, you get a bed. So why is this picture of the table taken in our basement?

Well, the T@B table is heavy. (After all, it has the TUV - an European version of UL - sticker on it. That means it's probably built stronger than the trailer itself. Did the US builder of the T@B really need to import this mechanism from Europe?) It takes up a lot of the limited floorspace inside; removing the table makes the trailer seem bigger. Trust me - every bit helps on that front.

So out went the table. But that also means you lose the bed, unless you come up with a substitute for the platform. I did just that, using a common modification among T@B owners.

First I put two "rails" on the front of each side of the dinette. (This was made out of a leftover "wood" piece I found in IKEA's as-is section. It's a really good match to the cabinets.)

Then I cut a bunch of slats out of 1/2"x4"x36" "craft board" (I think it's pine) found at Lowes. I just cut the end to length and sanded off the edges.


These slats fit in the curbside cabinet. They're thin, so they don't take up much room. (Most people seem to use thicker boards, but we haven't had any scary creaking sounds or breakage when we both sat on them.) When it comes time to go to bed, we put the slats across the rails, arrange the cushions, and there we go - bedtime.

One more thing - our trailer's floorplan had cushions that continued the dinette's backrest back to the rear of the trailer. Curved on the top, these cushions had to be stowed while sleeping, since they didn't make up part of the bed. Since we aren't worried about seating six for dinner, those cushions were yanked out of the trailer and put in the box of "stuff to give the next owner that we never used" - along with the table, I guess.

Tom

Getting Hitched

We've been planning a big trip for years. We never quite got around to doing it though - until this year. Part of the planning for that trip was to find a suitable road trip vehicle.

We dabbled in looking at VW Eurovan Weekenders. The pop-top gives you a sleeping space up top, and there is another bed inside. You also get a little table and fridge.

There were a few problems with this idea. Eurovans sold really badly when they were new, often with big discounts. But when they stopped selling them after 2003, they were the "last of a kind." Prices for used ones hit brand-new levels, when you could even find one. (There is also a Eurovan camper, with a longer wheelbase, bigger fridge, and a sink and stove. They're even more money.)

We did find one, with low miles and a reasonable (ahem) price of $29k. But I couldn't do it - even for a VW, Eurovan reliability has been shaky. And I couldn't really live with the idea of driving a European plumber's van as a commuter-mobile. (Or especially Juliet driving it.)

But when we drove our Odyssey a few years later(we had driven it on a business trip to Maine before we bought it, the ultimate test drive), we fell in love. Comfortable, roomy, space inside for bikes and boats. It's been almost totally reliable, save normal maintenance, for the nearly 50k we've owned it.

So that was our tow vehicle. But we needed a hitch. To be more accurate, we needed a hitch, a wiring harness, and transmission and power steering coolers. Even buying them from a discount Honda parts place, it all came to nearly $700. (Yes, I could have saved maybe $150 by buying all aftermarket stuff, but this didn't take hours of web research - I have my limits - and it all fit right in place.)

The Odyssey is rated to tow 3500 lbs, far less than the T@B. It pulls it great. Thanks to the narrow trailer width, I don't need mirror extensions. The T@B's surge brakes mean I didn't need to wire in a brake controller either, helpful for towing (as the other pics in the blog attest) with company cars.

Towing ratings are forum flame-bait; you need asbestos underwear to read them, much less to post. Lots of folks have distain for minivans as tow vehicles. But it seems to me that a 4600-lb, long-wheelbase, 255-hp, stability-control-equipped, big disc-braked minivan should make one hell of a tow vehicle. So far, so (really) good.

Tom

The second trip

Since the first trip went so well, we decided to do it again - same place, even the same campsite. (The nice lady who ran the office even kept our Ready, Set, Tow! checklist card for us; guess it had fell out of the Odyssey. "Are you the ones with the cute little trailer?" Yep - and the picture on the card matched.)

This time we stayed two nights and cooked a few meals there. The campground was wonderfully located; we left one car there, drove another car to the kayaking put-in upriver, and paddled back to the campsite! We bemused a lot of people, walking through the campground in our helmets, spray skirts, and carrying the boats.

It was an odd April weekend - got to nearly 90 degrees - but we were cool in the trees. Loved sitting by the river, listening to the rapids below. The cooling fan worked well.

Importantly, we learned a few things:

- The five gallon water supply is enough for about a day and a half when cooking and washing up. Would like more, but don't want to give up the room for a bigger tank.
- We were able to keep the 12 volt frig running, shutting it off at night to sleep, as much as needed. Along with the LED lights, we had no problems with battery life when boondocking for a weekend. (Still didn't have the charge wire in the van.)
- We really prefer eating outside of the trailer, but there is decent space to cook inside with our L-shaped galley.

- The Paha Que screenroom (picture above from their website) is, well, let's just say I have mixed feelings. It's big inside, but heavy and far from inexpensive. (It will get its own blog post in due course, when I set the thing up again.)
- It's so easy to tow this with the van.
- Our bed modifications worked well. More on those later too.

No new pictures, sadly enough, but it looked the same as in our post below.

Tom

Modification: Going under (stove) cover

An advantage (and pitfall) of actually researching purchases is that you start to learn inane trivia about the product. (Hence, this blog.) One of those things that you pick up are what changes happened from model year to year.

RV manufacturers are a lot less consistent at this than car companies. They can get away with it: hand construction, and the various components aren't that critical to one another. Consider your house: you can replace the dishwasher with another one, and the rest of the house still works OK. (Not so much with cars.)

2007 was a pretty good vintage of T@B, at least in my point of view. It has the newer Alufiber construction and they offered the floorplan that I wanted. But there are a few things I would have liked: a city water hook-up, 12 volt outlets inside, and the sleek flat-top SMEV cooktop.

Of the three, it's that cooktop I'd like the most. The flat top gives more countertop space when it's not on. And it looks cool. But not worth paying several thousand dollars more, the cost of a 2008 T@B.


Our more pedestrian cooktop didn't have a cover. Thanks to the enabler that is the T@B Yahoo group, we learned of an eBay listing from an RV surplus place that was selling them for $22. Sold. (You'd think an RV company would hold onto surplus as spare parts, but I guess not. I'm trying to get a replacement screen, but need to wait 3-4 weeks and buy an entire window surround unit.)


The cover works well, giving us another surface and it keeps cooking splatter off the back wall. For some reason, we attached it with Command adhesive strips, keeping the countertop free of holes in case we do that concours restoration, I guess.

Tom

Modification: Under the bench storage

Dear T@B designers and builders:

Thank you for building my trailer in August 2006. You seemed to have done a pretty good job. But I have to ask you this: could you have maybe, just maybe, have run the wiring under the streetside bench better?

I know that copper wiring costs a lot. And the shortest distance between two points is indeed a straight line. But if you had run the wire along the bench, using maybe another foot of wire, you would have left a free space for storage. That would be nice in this little trailer. Instead, the wiring is nearly as tight as a banjo string and runs right across the middle of this cabinet.



Sure, I know you tried to keep me out of this bench. The top was screwed shut, and there is a warning label about putting flammable objects in that space (bah!), since the electrical panels and 110 AC to 12-volt converter is there. But really - you couldn't package this more efficiently? (I get the feeling the German-built T@Bs don't have this; wasting that space would be verboten. After all, they would put an iDrive controller or something like that there.)



But that's OK. Doing this made me feel all handy and stuff. First I cut off 2 inches of the plywood top and screwed that in place against the wall. That gives a mounting point for a piano hinge. This gives me access into the cabinet. (I did the same on the other side.)

Then I screwed in some wood to form a bracket for a small tool box. I put some wire loom around the electrical wires, cleaning things up and protecting the wires. Finally, I found a small basket to screw to the forward edge, giving room for more tools.



Still not all that efficient of a use of space, but I'll take it. (Don't get me started on the furnace routing....)

Truly yours (until I find the Trailmanor or Airstream of my dreams),
Tom

Modification: Tired Out

See that bracket (with the two nuts) underneath the center of my trailer? That's where the spare tire was located on our T@B. ("Was" is the operative term.)

Now this seems kinda crazy; it's about eight feet from the end of the trailer, and four feet underneath. If you get a flat, which would drop the trailer's ride height, it leaves next to no room under the trailer to get to it. (There already isn't that much space.) And once you loosen the two bolts, the heavy wheel and tire comes crashing down, probably onto your arm.

This all seemed, well, somewhat impractical. (That's putting it lightly - frankly, it's stupid.) It was hard enough for Gen-X me to remove the tire on a dry day, in the daylight, on a level paved driveway.

But the tire isn't there anymore. I bought the tire holder from Tropos Manufacturering, a nicely made frame that bolts onto the tongue of the trailer. Installing it required drilling four holes. That would have been easier if 1) I had the right sized drill bit and didn't have to borrow one from my neighbor (thanks Jerry!) and 2) it would help to have at least one fully charged cordless drill battery.



You do have to be a bit careful with exactly where you mount the holder. You want enough room to get into the propane tank cover while leaving enough room for the tire to fit on the front, around the brake handle and such. We worked it out. (The carrier comes with a little plastic spacer that tilts the tire at just the right angle to achieve all of this.)

Buying this is like insurance - hopefully the $129 keeps me from ever having to fix a flat on the trailer. But if I do, at least now there is a chance in hell that I can do it myself.



Oh - and since I couldn't just have an ugly steel wheel and tire besmirching the sleek lines of the trailer, I had to find just the right tire cover. I found one from Bestop; they make lots of covers for Jeeps, and they're all out of heavy convertible top fabric. This one is sized for a Suzuki Samurai (!) and the charcoal gray matches the trim on the trailer. Even found it on closeout since they're getting rid of the color. It fits on snugly with elastic around the back; I'm hoping it stays on on the road.

Tom

Our Airstream hunt

OK, I didn't start out looking for a T@B. I wanted an Airstream, the iconic aluminium "Cadillac of trailers." (Well, maybe now the "Lexus of trailers" would be more fitting.)

So we started looking. Juliet wasn't convinced, but I got her to come with me to Bates RV, a massive Airstream dealer in Florida. (I think she gave me a time limit - maybe 45 minutes max.) Turns out she really liked them too. We narrowed down the search to a specific floorplan - the 16' Bambi CCD - that could be towed with our Odyssey. (Well, just barely.)

Well, there's a problem. Airstreams are massively expensive new, and Bambis are in high demand used. (They are a popular Craigslist scam target.) The best we could find was a $22k trailer at an Ohio dealer that sold in 4 hours. (This was pre-recession.) Not good.

Move on to used Airstreams. Something like 70% of all Airstreams are on the road, but like the story goes about George Washington's axe (the one with 3 new handles and 2 new heads), it doesn't mean they didn't need work to get there. Lots of folks restore old Airstreams, but they often need a new floor (they rot from roof leaks) and axles (the rubber hardens up and they "sag.")

This is complicated by Airstream having a big hiatus in their small trailer offerings. They built small (18' or so) trailers up to 1971, then didn't offer any until 2001. That limited my options.

So I spent hours searching online. We found a rare Argosy Minuet 20' in Pennsylvania, but it sold 20 hours before we could get to it. (The buyer paid for it sight unseen!) Then we found this trailer, a 2001 Airstream Bambi 16'. Turns out they only built 16 of them, yet we found one right up the road in Connecticut!



Well, the floor was rotten, it was wet behind the dinette, and there were mildew spots on the side walls. Plus, it had one tiny bed, plus an overhead bunk. (The owner told me that her adult daughter slept there, but I'm skeptical.) I was done looking in 10 minutes, even before Jules could show up. (The trailer sat for another 8 months, and was just recently listed on eBay.)

Sad, I spent an evening surfing the web for alternatives. Someone on a thread on Airforums (titled "What would you buy if you didn't buy an Airstream?) mentioned T@B. I went to the website and was smitten. Jules was travelling for business, so I sent off a hyper email to her, all excited. She was wary about their size, but a trip together to the dealer (I went by myself to the local dealer the next day) convinced us it could work.

And another search began. (As you can see, it turned out OK.)

Our First Trip

OK, so a blog is supposed to keep up with events while they happen. Well, we're working on that.

Anyway, we finally took the trailer out in mid-April. It was a spur of the moment head-out-Friday-afternoon trip after we realized the Odyssey was all ready (save the charge wire for the trailer battery) to tow.

Two hours of throwing stuff in the trailer and van, and off we went. (We even still had the snow tires on - not that we needed them.)



We went to Housatonic Meadows State Park, a nice campground in the northwest corner of CT on the banks of the Housatonic River. It took us three campsites (like Goldilocks) to find one that was just right, but we were able to back the trailer into a snug spot, nestled among the pines. (I'm convinced that watching others back their trailers into spots is about 50% of the entertainment of going camping.)

All went well. Then again, we didn't try much - we went out for dinner and breakfast, and we were back at the house by 10:30 the next morning to pick up relatives for a weekend visit. Still, we learned that the trailer tows easily and is comfy. Not bad for a spur-of-the-moment trip.