A pair of maiden voyages

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We took care of two maiden voyages during this camping weekend.

The first was with our new truck:

One Maiden Voyage

 

 

Compare that to the pic from our ‘End of an era‘ post:

Last tow

 

 

The other maiden voyage was for our son, Aaron.  This was the first time he was towing his new, our old, Airstream:

Aaron and Paige

 

 

We decided not to go too far for either of us.  That way if there were any major issues we could very easily bug out and head home.  Roxie and I had did some scouting a while back in the area and discovered Club Royal Oak outside Kingsburg.  This was ideal as it was virtually right in between Fresno and Visalia.

We got there about 4:30 which meant we could let Aaron and Hanna (his girlfriend) in when they arrive.  The RV park is totally gated and needs a key card to get in.  A lot of sites, including ours, are right on the Kings River.  Unfortunately the river was very low at this time.  We will have to come back here sometime when the river is running high.

We had a few problems unhitching where I had to jack the trailer and truck to a point where its rear wheels were off the ground.  After analyzing it a bit I adjusted the legs that hold the equalizer bars to the tongue.  Hooking up when we went was much easier.  I will have to go back and check this rig at the scales like I did with the other rig.

Aaron and Hanna showed up around 6:30 and I helped him get ‘his’ rig in the spot.  The spots here are HUGE!  They are wide enough to park your trailer sideways if you want.  We had Aaron just pull his trailer straight in.  That way our doors faced each other:

Spots

 

 

He quickly learned how to hook the utilities up and we were eating dinner in no time with a campfire later that evening.

The next day was just a take it easy day.  I never left the campground the whole day, trust me that is a rarity for me!  It was nice to just relax and take care of a few small projects on the truck and trailer.

The campground had a car show on Saturday, which we didn’t know about but went to see anyway.  They also had Elvis performing but we opted-out of that.  We could still hear it at the sites.  We also bought some fresh kettle corn.  Here are the top three winners at the car show, alas I forget who got first:

Car Show

 

 

We had a simple dinner of dogs, sausages and burgers, with Roxie’s masterful potato salad.  We then watched Ironman 3 in our trailer and retired shortly thereafter.

Sunday started slow and calm without Aaron.  He was still sleeping and did so for quite a while.  We hatched a plan after he woke up.  We would hookup his trailer, follow them to Fresno, drop the trailer, go have some Teppanyaki for lunch.  Here he is backing out the trailer and just missing the garbage can:

Backing around the corner

 

Roxie took a family shot of Aaron, Hanna, Paige and Maggie:

Family Shot

 

Here is a couple more shots Roxie took of them on the road back to Fresno:

On the road 1

On the road 2

 

After that we would come back and hookup our trailer and head home.  This only worked because the park had no one coming in on Sunday evening.  The management let us stay as long as we needed.  We came back to get our trailer and there were only 2 RV’s there.

The road home was uneventful and short!  The usual stop at the dump station.  I did another time lapse of the drive home here:

The seed.

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3 years or so ago the seed was planted. That was when we started thinking about retirement (it’s closer now, look at the timer to the right). On our trip to Alumafandango, the seed was watered further when we stopped in Redding. A couple of weeks ago the seed finally blossomed.

What is the fruit of the seed? This:

New Truck

 

Knowing that we would be on the road a lot I knew I wanted a newer truck for our retirement. The current truck would have done it but would be 12 years old by that time. By getting it now we have at least 2 years to make payments on it and get ahead of things.

When we were in Redding I went for a drive with my friend Mike who has a new F450 to tow his 5th wheel. That is when the seed got watered.

Right now the 2013 models are ending and the 2014’s are coming in. There is no differences between the years except higher prices. So we thought we would see if we could get one. Our credit union approved us and the search was on.

I probably contacted 8-9 dealers in different ways, AAA, CostCo, TruePrice, etc. It was fun wrangling all these dealers, not! My son loves it but I don’t. We test drove the Ford and also the GMC model but liked the Ford better. I started dealing with two in Fresno but one was more aggressive in pricing and communication. When all was done we had worked out all the numbers via email. I love that!

This truck ended up costing us more than our first house we bought in 1986! OUCH! A friend and I were talking and he mentioned about wanting a new truck but not wanting to spend that much. I told him if we waited longer then he would be paying even MORE!

We were able to get great financing from our credit union and did not have to trade anything in. But that means we have to get rid of the old truck. Off to Craigslist!

We waited a week to post the old truck as a family friend was trying to buy it. Unfortunately it did not work out. I posted it on CL. We had a few nibbles. One guy that seemed very interested but fell off the map.

We were parking it wherever we thought there was good traffic to get exposure. I was only asking $12000 with room to negotiate. One day I took it to work and got a call the next day from a guy that saw it driving by.

Today they came and put a deposit down on the truck and should be bringing the rest in a day or two.

We are planning on a trip with the trailer the first weekend in Oct with Aaron and family. This will be the first trip for both of us towing our trailers with our new trucks. Should be fun!