Trailer

This should be somewhat self explanatory.

Last time I launched my boat my truck spent nearly half an hour with the rear axle getting splashed by salt water, which didn't help my already rusty brake lines one bit. Now that I have a smaller and newer car, I'd like to keep it completely rust free, thus there are two options: extend the hitch or extend the tongue. Extending the hitch can only be a temporary solution due to the immense leverage it places on the hitch, thus I chose option 2.

My trailer uses 3" square tubes with about 1/16" thick steel (really thin). Ideally I'd like to have a tight fitting galvanized tube to go into that, but I couldn't find anything so I wound up buying a 6 foot piece of 2.5 in 11 gauge. I think that's a little overkill.

There are a bunch of holes drilled through the pipe so I can change the length as needed, though I don't expect to ever bother.

Photos:

I planned this well in advance, at least 2 months. The park seemed perfect for what I had in mind: quiet, not popular with kids, waterfront, water. Besides, I figured that it would be a welcome reprieve from the hot summer weather in new jersey. The waterfront campsites have no hookups at all, so I got ready to "rough it" by buying a cheap Harbor Freight generator to supplement my solar array on cloudy days. Even with this much of an advance notice my site options were limited at best. Of course I wanted waterfront... But I managed to reserve site number 47 which looked good on paper and on google maps satellite.

Things have not quite worked out as I expected. Sites 30-50 are classified as prime waterfront, while other sites are either just prime, or I suppose, subprime. Our site turned out to indeed be waterfront, but I'm not sure if I would qualify it as prime. While it fit the 20 foot trailer (barely), and it is right by the water, you don't actually see this water unless you can get around the hedges that line most of the water edge. I guess this is really a subprime waterfront site.

Frankly, many of the other prime waterfront sites are not much better, and most offer the same limited view. There are a few perfect looking sites here, specifically 42 through 30. If I were to come back here, that is where I'd stay - except that most of these have significant tree cover and would render my solar panels useless. Even in our site we only got sun until about 3pm - and the nearby sites are worse. None of the waterfront sites have electric hookups, so any RVs that stay there run generators (except ours).

The good news is that you really are about 20 feet from the water and it is possible to launch small watercraft directly from the site, which is exactly what I would have been doing upon arrival if it were not raining and cold! I certainly did not expect mid 60's for the high in late June. Launching is somewhat challenging because of the rocks, so foot protection is highly recommended.

Fortunately, the next day was slightly warmer and was occasionally rain-free, so I seized the opportunity to take out the sail boat - something I continued to do every day until we left. The weather gradually got warmer and warmer, and it didn't rain again.

With my typical tendency to postpone decision-making until some other time, I found myself searching for available campsites for the week prior to July 4th... with barely 3 weeks to go. We were looking to get away for 8-9 days and return on July 3rd, prior to the crazy traffic - and ideally not spend the entire week driving, leaving plenty of time to explore and enjoy one area, which would ideally be nice enough to warrant such exploration.


I settled on lake Ontario for no specific reason other than "it felt right" - and went through Reserve America one state campground at a time (using their semi-usable Microsoft-biased web interface). Most were booked solid or had availability in what appeared to be the worst remaining sites. My clockwise search around the lake eventually reached Lakeside Beach State Park, and that is where we went. The park is less crowded (except on July 4th, as I can attest) than its neighbors because it lacks a swimming beach altogether - in fact, it even lacks a boat launch. All access to the lake is either over boulders, cliffs, or both. For us, this is an ideal destination: less crowded, fewer kids, more serene. (Again, except July 4th). I was able to reserve the closest site to the lake on loop C for the days we wanted, and off we went to be quite surprised on arrival.

Our Sunline T1950 comes with a 24 gallon fresh water tank. It's probably intended to give you a chance to wash your hands and wash the dishes after a roadside picnic on your way to a full-hookup campsite - anything beyond that is tough to accomplish with 24 gallons. We've managed to make it last about 2 days with very judicial usage and military showers (2-3), but it's hardly convenient - and we didn't upgrade to an RV to forego convenience!



In the past, I did manage to extend things a little by bringing along a couple of 6G Reliant Aqua-tainers, but that's cumbersome in its own right because you have to lug them around, improvise a hose to pour them into your tank filler orifice, not to mention holding them up above waist height!

Therefore it was time to make a change. For this installation I decided to limit project scope to the fresh water tank only. My grey and black tank are both 28G for reasons that are completely mysterious to me, but I figured I'd deal with that limitation later on. Measuring the space it became clear that there are two ways to go - either replace the tank with a larger one, or add a second tank alongside. Adding a second tank would require a lot of hackery with Y adapters on all four connections to the tank, in other words - more points of failure. With that logic in mind, I decided to cram in the largest replacement tank I could possibly fit.

This is sort of a trailer trip - being a part-owner (by proxy) of Kingley Health (and Tazi's Cafe that's in the building), I found myself participating in the 4 day long move of the Piscataway location from 120 Centennial to 220 Centennial (it's a really great building). Since I knew that we'd be there all day, I just brought the trailer to the parking lot to save us the commute home - and we could stay there legally for once!

This was a really fun move, and although it was a lot of work I'm glad that we didn't hire professional movers - it forced the entire Kingley Health crew to not only get much closer, but also develop a great deal of appreciation and ownership for the new space, which is a little part of that magical reason why one may want to get out of bed in the morning and go to work. And our clients can feel this too.

Anyway, the trailer was on purely night-time duty for this trip - water was barely used at all as the building has full facilities, heat was not necessary this time of year and we didn't have time to cook. So, basically, we just used the bed. I also brought a chair massager for our sore muscles and it worked just fine on a 320 watt mini plug-in inverter. Everyone was rather amused that we spent our nights in the trailer, but it wound up having an unexpected benefit - we played security guards one night when some neighborhood kids waltzed into the unlocked space. Electric was not even taxed as the solar panels got plenty of sun.

This was a 3-day weekend trip, Saturday through Monday, and our destination is close enough (200 miles or 3.5 hours non-stop) to do this with ease. Assateague Island is a barrier strip with half in Maryland and half in Virginia, and it being an island on the East Coast it has the Atlantic ocean on the East and the bay on the West side. Both have their beauty, though the bay is naturally more buggy . In mid October the insects are pretty much gone (except flies), especially on the ocean side, making it a great time to go there. The island is well known for its wild/feral small horses that roam freely and steal your food.

There are several ways to stay there, unfortunately boondocking is not one of them. Developed campgrounds exist in both the State Park and the National Seashore Park. The latter is cheaper but requires you to pay the Park entrance fee (they take the national park pass) since the campground is located inside the National Park. The State Park campground costs $10 more per day ($20 more if you want electric hookups), but the lots are somewhat larger (or they seem to be). By the time it occurred to me to make reservations (which they only take up until mid October, incidentally) the National Park was full and the State Park gave me a choice of only one spot (D15) for $30/day, which I promptly grabbed after inspecting their campground map and realizing that it's one of the best spots I could ask for - closest to the ocean, and a huge back lot should I need more room. Here is a Google Maps link to the exact spot. My brain, pre-programmed for suspicion, naturally asked "What's wrong with this spot that nobody wanted it?", but I squashed it with "can't be choosers" concept, and it turned out to be a great site indeed.

There are alternatives to getting paved spots in the parks - backcountry camping (read: hike 2.5-15 miles carrying all your fresh water) is permitted but not reservable. I have friends who have done this, and this is probably not a beginner backpacking adventure unless you're in great shape - walking on the sand with 50lbs on your back can be a challenge. Alternatively, the park offers OSV (Over Sand Vehicle) permits, though I couldn't quite figure out if you can overnight (seemed like a "NO" unless you are actively fishing. What does "actively fishing" mean, exactly?) or if you can bring a trailer onto the sand (seemed like a pretty strong "NO"). I am pretty sure my truck could do it, though I'd probably not let someone like me onto the beach

Getting there was uneventful, my old Garmin C330 had no trouble bringing me directly to the park entrance (Assateauge is in its database), and the people are quite nice. Their access control system boils down to an automatic gate with a 3 digit code, which they give you with your parking hang-tag. We traveled with our fresh tank empty since there is a dump station and faucet available in the campground. Note that there are no camping spots with full hookups, meaning that as you get close to the 11AM checkout time, a pretty sizeable line of RV's forms at the dump station, which handles just one vehicle at a time. We were leaving on a Monday, but the line was still at least 15 RV's long, so we found a free dump site along our way home (Dover Slots) on sanidumps.com and that had no wait.

Now about the park:

Labor Day is not the best time to take a long drive in New Jersey, but if that is the only time you can manage to take off 3 days, then there are things you can do to mitigate your traffic experiences. Like - going local. And local in New Jersey means Pine Barrens, aka Wharton State Forest.

Having no specific plan of action I figured we'd go and find a place to hang out. It was my understanding that you can overnight in these areas since the prohibition signs enumerate a variety of noise and impairment-related restrictions, but say nothing about camping or parking. This would also be our first trip with the newly purchased truck (Ram 2500 V10), and with that comes the need to make some adjustments... Specifically - height adjustments. The truck is about 8" taller than the van (it's a 4x4) and I'm still using the same hitch ball mount from the weight-distributing hitch. Which makes the trailer sit a little funny... and by funny I mean that the rear bumper is eerily close to the ground.

The water level sensors in my RV's waste tanks simply don't work that well... It's possible that this is how it must be for exposed metal sensors, and I must simply live with it. Most of the time the tank reads full. I can only assume that the cause is the build-up of conductive waste material on the tank walls, and as long as this layer is even slightly damp, all the sensors are effectively shorted.

The RV forums are full of sensor cleaning remedies - from commercial products to driving with bags of ice cubes in the tank. Spray cleaning tools also abound, and while I am not in the mood to cut a huge hole in the tank to install a permanently mounted (and complex) spray system, I think there is something I can do about this. But first, I'd need to get in there!

Thus, the first order of business was finding the entry point - and it presented itself readily enough, in the form of a mechanical vent under the sink. The pipe leading to this device is entirely straight, as vents tend to be. Removing the vent allows me to insert something down the pipe directly into the tank, but what would that be? There isn't much clearance and thus I can't get my Camco rinser (40103) in there. So it needs to be flexible.



As it turns out, making one with parts I had on hand isn't so hard - a piece of garden hose, a barbed adapter to fit it, and a PVC cap that I blessed with a few small holes. And oh, it works.

PS: In the long run, I decided that I don't really care. I know how much water I had in the fresh tank, therefore I know how much water might be in the grey tank. And besides, it backs up into the shower when over-capacity

In an attempt to make our battery last longer on dry-camping expeditions, I measured all the electrical loads we have and found that the biggest appliance we have is the lighting system - and the Sunline has 15 interior light bulbs, not to mention outside lights all over the place. All the bulbs are 921 (spade type) and at 12-13v they consume at least 1.3A each. That's easily 18 watts. That's each! If we have, say, 4 of them turned on, that's over 5A - over 100Ah in a 24 hour period! How big is your battery?

So that was no good. There are two alternatives - compact fluorescents and LED's. I've tried LED's before, but the color temperature was horrible - very cold and white, bluish almost. They are very efficient though. As for CFL's, the idea of running something that will only glow at several hundred volts from a 12V system just doesn't sound efficient to me, so I looked into what's been happening with LED's these days. I was pleasantly surprised...

Problem: the water pump pulses on-and-off to maintain water pressure. It does a decent job, but it's noisy and the water flow varies every second or two.

Solution: install an expansion (accumulator) tank that will accumulate pressure and reduce the need for the pump to cycle or even turn on.

After some preliminary research, I ordered the parts and installed it in 2 hours (including some performance testing). Here is the how-to, largely for me to remember how I did it.

We have yet to take our first trip, but I couldn't wait. Actually I found used panels and a charge controller on Craigslist and picked them up the same day we got the trailer! Someone was selling a pair of 50 watt panels and a 15 Amp charge controller.

As it turned out, the hard part of this installation was not electrical but rather mechanical - finding beams to screw into, without perforating the rubber roof unnecessarily or causing leaks.

Some details on both electrical and mechanical install:

It finally happened! It's a 2003 Sunline Solaris Lite T-1950. We were fortunate to find it in perfect condition, one owner, having been professionally cleaned with a toothbrush by a meticulous owner for the last 6 years. Even the awning is spotless, not to mention the interior. The water tank has never been filled and the water heater never ran on propane (it was always hooked up).


Why did we upgrade? It's not that the conversion-conversion van is not functional - it is, it has a place to sleep, a sink, even stove and toilet. What it lacks is a place. As in space. It lacks the space to "just be". If you want to relax and just hang out, you either have to do it on tiny director's chairs (blocking the isle), in the driver seat (can't turn), or lie down on the bed. If you need to move around - well you keep your head down, and you push the other person out of the way. If you need to use the bathroom... well the other person should probably vacate the premises, which is fine when it's sunny and pleasant outside, but... You get the idea. It got us this far, and now it's time for it to pull our new toy instead. Which brings us to the trailer: