Shakedown

- 3 minutes read - 433 words

AJ Jolly

I have wanted to get out and do a shakedown night or weekend this spring to try out my trailer and make sure everything works as expected, but due to weather, a fairly minor medical procedure that resulted in having to get stitches (twice), and other prior commitments, it hasn’t happened. Until today that is. Not really ideal to do it two days before I leave on my actual trip, but better late than never I guess? Anyways, I got a campsite at a local campground, AJ Jolly, and came out to do a test night.

Wasn’t really concerned about how nice my site was for one test night, but I ended up with a pretty nice site, with nobody on my awning side: Picture of my campsite The large rear window in my trailer allowed me to enjoy the nice view out the back too: Picture out the back of my camper Lots of geese around, but also had this neighbor: Picture of bird Things went pretty smoothly with setup, but I’m happy I did the test because there are a few things I’ll pick up tomorrow before heading out.

Unfortunately my luck ran out after cooking dinner. The rain came and I got a taste of more severe weather in the trailer too, it wasn’t great to experience the wind shaking the trailer. Picture of severe weather passing through Fortunately the thunderstorm is settling down and it seems to be just raining at this point. Will probably make for a bit of a muddy mess to breakdown in the morning though.

Next day

Narrator: The storms did not settle down.

Wasn’t a great night of sleep last night since it seems like instead of dying out, the storms kept up all night. It wasn’t so much the thunder and lightning (or even rain), but the wind shaking the trailer made for a rough night of sleep. Another thing that kept me up was the temperature swings. It was very similar to a hotel room compared to a house, where it feels like it can be a 4-5 degree swing before the A/C kicks back in to cool things off. Once I switched the A/C fan to be on constantly rather than only coming on when the A/C compressor comes on, things were much better. With highs in the 50s next week in the UP, looks like it might be awhile before I need to worry about that again.

Breakdown went smoothly this morning, fortunately it was a gravel site, so not too muddy. My first dump station experience also went smoothly, so overall I would call it a successful shakedown. Time for the final packing before I leave tomorrow.