Travel Trailer Blogs

Propane is a very important part of our Winter camping experience, so we make sure that we are carrying enough along with us for the trips’ duration. Now, you might say, “just how do you measure that?” Actually, it isn’t all that complicated. It is all about weight and being able to quickly and easily measure it. If you fly commercially and weigh your luggage, you may already have everything that you need to measure your propane. A cool thing is that each propane tank has the empty and the full weight permanently stamped on it. Here is a look.

You have been camped for a week in your travel trailer up near the Continental Divide National Scenic hiking trail and it has been great. Taking early morning hikes, getting back into camp just before the late afternoon Monsoon rain, a quick shower, a nap and fantastic campfire camaraderie in the evenings. Only one thing could make it any better. Another week of the same!

Awning out and anchored down, screen room kit attached with a tarp and rug on the ground. We were at the sugar beet harvest in this photo.

Oftentimes a campsite can be subject to high or gusting winds making the whole camping thing less fun. Now, Mother Nature always seems to rule, but, moderating that wind a little can make the difference between holing up inside the trailer or sitting around the campfire enjoying the outdoors.

Putting a tarp on the ground under your travel trailer’s awning is a whole lot like adding a floor to a spare room. And if you add a screen room kit to the awning for walls you do indeed have a spare room.

Our most commonly used tarp is a poly tarp from a discount retailer because it is inexpensive and pretty much disposable. They are tightly packaged and take up little space, while weighing nearly nothing. When you add to them things that are normally found around the campsite such as tent pegs, bungie cords ( tarp straps ), or nylon ratchet straps and poly rope, you can quickly assemble some of the handiest campsite stuff imaginable !

This photo was taken just as the sun was beginning to rise upon Engineer Pass. We had set up our Oliver travel trailer, at an old ghost town above Silverton Colorado. Leaving our base camp OLLIE at 0430 hours in the dark we started our climb up through the next ghost town and continued upward towards the summit to view that very special sunrise at elevation.

Most of the built up campgrounds in the Rocky Mountains are along the water courses, as are the roads. Making access to them as the snow melts off better and better as the season progresses. Normally, elevation is the controlling factor for how late in the year the snow will melt off enough to let us get our travel trailers into campsites.

Camping off the grid is a very satisfying thing for Betty and I. It fits into our out of doors campsite style quite well. Camping off the grid with total comfort does need a bit of thought though, especially when it is at high elevation. Both early and late in the camping season up high, the temperatures will drop below freezing at night for brief periods of time. And yet, just before sunrise each day, the temperature starts climbing to comfortable levels quickly.

You’ve just arrived at your campground in your camping trailer at the Rocky Mountains and as you drove the last few twisty road miles, you thought, “now this isn’t so bad ! What’s up with all of this talk about altitude sickness and vertigo?”

The higher we go up into the Rocky Mountains the thinner the air gets. So, just why would anyone want to camp above ten thousand feet for extended periods of time, especially when you will be off of the grid camping for over 110 consecutive days.

RVer’s are spare part carrying kind of folks, whether it’s a spare tire, fan belt, spark plug or other repair part, we usually got em’.