I had a conversation with some friends the other day about the benefits of towing a car behind their motorhome, and if they were to do so, what type of car to buy, as well as whether or not to use a tow dolly, as opposed to towing all four wheels down.

I don’t see how any fulltimer, or even an extended time RVer, can handle not having a tow car, sometimes called a dinghy, especially if they have a very large motorhome. I have known several that tried it, and all of them have eventually decided that the hassles of renting a car wherever they stop are just too much to deal with.

Several years ago, one of our students at Life on Wheels was convinced that he could save money by not towing a car, while his wife couldn’t understand why they should leave their perfectly good car behind and rely on rental companies. This man is a retired accountant, who by his own admission is “anal” when it comes to keeping track of every penny spent.

They are subscribers to the Gypsy Journal, and we have kept in touch over the years. They towed their Saturn during their first year on the road, and the second year the wife gave in, and they left their car with their son, so their granddaughter could use it to go to college. Bill told me that at the end of their second year, they had traveled 274 miles more than the first year, and they had saved $300 by not towing. This included fuel mileage, the difference in tolls between their two axle motorhome and the two extra axles on a tow car, insurance and registration on the car (which the son paid while his daughter used it), and two annual oil changes on the car. They decided that for less than $1 a day, it just made sense to tow their car.

We have known some fulltimers who used tow dollies, and again, after a year or so, most of them have switched to towing all four wheels on the ground, with a tow bar instead of the dolly. At a big RV park like Elkhart Campground, it’s no problem finding a place to stash a dolly during your stay. But at a lot of the smaller places we frequent, such as Tra-Tel RV Park in Tucson, it’s pretty tight, and most RV sites will not accommodate a tow dolly.

As to what kind of car to tow, the choices are wide, and a lot of personal preference comes into play. For years we towed a Toyota 4×4 extended cab pickup with a five speed manual transmission and a camper shell, and it was a great vehicle. A couple of years ago we switched to an extended length cargo van with an automatic transmission, to carry our toys, and to make loading the papers easier when we get a new issue printed.

We use a Remco driveshaft disconnect, which can be a real problem occasionally. You have to lubricate the linkage three or four times a year, and if you forget, it will lock up and you can’t get it to engage. This necessitates crawling under the van, disconnecting the locking pin on the driveshaft disconnect, manually rotating it into place, and then putting the locking pin back in. We’ve also had the driveshaft disconnect get fouled and lock up after towing the van down dirt or gravel roads. It was a lot easier to simply put the Toyota’s gearshift and transfer case in neutral and take off.

We know fulltimers who pull  fifth wheel trailers with huge medium or heavy duty trucks, who also tow a car behind the trailer. They look like a freight train going down the road, and I would probably run over a mailbox or a fire hydrant the first time I tried to turn a corner in a rig that big. But the folks who have them seem to be able to handle them just fine.

We’ve also seen RVers who carry small cars, or Smart cars, on the bed of their trucks, between the cab and the front of their trailer. I just know I could do thousands of dollars worth of damage trying to load a combination like that up before I hit the road! But again, the people who have them seem to have it down to a science.

I’m curious, what do you tow, and how? Have you tried RVing without a tow car?

Thought For The Day – If you worry about what might be, and wonder what might have been, you will ignore what is.

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After reading yesterday’s blog, RVing’s Top 10, my friend Connie Bradish suggested maybe we needed a Bottom 10 list, and suggested, in no particular order:

1. A major dumping event, like the hose comes off and it’s all over.
2. A tire blowout, especially if it’s the right front tire.
3. Being sunk up to your rear axles in a designated camping spot.
4. Being sunk up to your axles in a non-camping spot.
5. Dragging the tow car behind the RV because it’s still in gear.
6. Driving a back road, and coming up to a bridge with a 10 foot maximum clearance, you need 13 feet and you have to stop, unhitch and turn the coach around, all while blocking traffic.
7. Driving a road you shouldn’t be on, like the southwest road around Lake Tahoe in you big RV and tow car.
8. Having a husband and wife disagreement while backing into a site, accompanied by funny hand signals from one partner to another.
9. Having a pet get out, and you can’t find them.
10. Hitting a low rock, post or cone, or an overhang of a building or a tree, damaging your coach.

Connie admitted that she and her husband Pete have scored 10 out of 10 on this list. I think we’ve missed just one, which is having a pet slip out the door, never to be found. When Miss Terry’s cat, Sasquatch was still with us, he was quite the escape artist, but he never went far.

But 9 out of 10 on the Rock Bottom list isn’t a bad (or in this case, good) record. Less than a week into our fulltming life, we were camped in a fairgrounds in Torrington, Wyoming, on our way to Life on Wheels in Moscow, Idaho. We had the place to ourselves, so I had nobody but myself to blame when I pulled out of our site and turned too soon, swinging the back end of our shiny new Pace Arrow motorhome into the concrete pedestal that held the water and electric hookups.   

I was just sick, and to Miss Terry’s credit, she didn’t shoot me, or even thump me with a rolling pin. Believe me, there was nothing she could have said to me that was worse than I was calling myself. I was still kicking myself three days later when we got to Moscow, where I met Dick Reed, founder of the RV Driving School. When I told him my sad tale of woe, Dick took my by the hand and led me to the back of the row where the instructors’ RVs were parked.

“Do you see the ding in that one,” Dick asked. “That belongs to Bill Farlow. Bill did that on a tree stump last year. This one here is Charlie Minshall’s rig. See that ding? Lord know what Charlie hit. And this one here, with the dented bumper belongs to…” By the time our tour was finished, I felt a lot better about my own mishap, and I had made a friend for life.

We’ve been stuck and we’ve been really stuck, and it’s never fun. This picture was taken at an RV park in Ohio a few years back. It had been raining for days, and we were nervous about pulling onto grass, but when we arrived, the park owner told us another bus had just left the same site. It must have been a Volkswagen bus, because our MCI promptly sunk up to its rear axle!

But anybody can get stuck in soft ground. In Bremerton, Washington, I proved that it is possible to drive a bus up a hill so steep that your front tires are on the pavement, and your rear bumper is digging into the pavement, but your drive tires are three inches in the air!

I also proved that while you can drive into that situation, you cannot drive back out of it! Getting out requires a very large tow truck, the police department to stop traffic, the fire department’s haz-mat crew to clean up the 36 gallons of radiator coolant that spills when the the tow truck cable snags a hose, and the local news crew. Did I mention I was going the wrong way up a one way street at the time?

When all was said and done, I asked the police officer in charge of the scene how big a ticket I was getting, and he replied “What with the tow bill, the radiator coolant you need to buy, the hose you need to replace, and the roses you’ll need to buy your wife to make up for this, I couldn’t in good faith give you a ticket. I’m a married man too!”

I also remember driving out of one of our first RV parks, and how everybody waved at us as we drove past. I commented to Terry about how nice everybody was, and wave right back. It wasn’t until I got to the street and glanced in my rear view mirrors that I noticed that I had left all of our window awnings out. Of course, at that point there was no way I was going to stop and get out, so I just drove away, while poor MIs Terry hung out the windows unhooking the awnings as we went!

So yeah, I could easily do a Rock Bottom 10 – been there, done that, and a few more. How about you? What were some of your worst RVing goofs?

Thought For The Day – Time is what keeps everything from happening at once.

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Hindsight is always 20/20, and more than once in my life, I’ve found myself repeating that old saying “I sure wish I knew then what I know now.” Looking back over my life, from today’s perspective, I can see a lot of things I would change, if I had it to do over. 

For example, going back to my high school days, I wish I had spent more time paying attention in typing class, and less time staring at that pretty girl with the long blonde hair who sat across the aisle from me. I’ve forgotten who she was long ago, but as a writer, knowing how to type with more than two fingers would really come in handy. Somebody gave me a touch typing instructional CD a couple of years back, but the habit of a lifetime are hard to overcome.

Speaking of bad habits, anybody who saw the pictures of my daughter in the last two blogs knows that she is the one in our family with the willpower. Tiffany was able to break her unhealthy habits at a relatively young age, while mine are so ingrained that I will probably never lose that kind of weight.

More than once I have wished I had made a career out of the Army. I made rank fast, and I enjoyed military life. It would be nice to have that military retirement to fall back on at this point in my life, and as a fulltime RVer, I’d sure love to be able to take advantage of the Fam Camps on military bases across the country.

Of course, like every RVer, I have my “shoulda, coulda, wouldas,” as my friend Joe Kieva calls them. If I had it to do over again, I’d have done more homework before we started out, and bought a diesel pusher motorhome to begin with.

I would not have invested so much money in an expensive campground membership in our first month on the road. But back then, we had never heard of resale memberships and the bargains they offer.

One thing I would have invested in was an automatic rooftop satellite TV dish. After over ten years of fumbling around with a tripod mounted dish, it sure is nice to just push a button and sit on the couch waiting until the dish locks onto a signal.

I could go on and on – there are roads we should have traveled, and those we should have avoided. There are campgrounds where we should have stopped, and others where we should have just kept right on driving. And there are several dead end streets we never should have turned down! But we’ve all been there, haven’t we?

As a fulltime RVer, there is no doubt that the one thing I would do differently is to have started out years earlier. We were in our mid-40s when we hit the road, and we regret the years and adventures we missed, while we were stuck in our workaholic ruts. I’ve never heard a fulltimer say that they wish they had worked longer, or that they had not started out so soon.

Of course, Miss Terry always reminds me that who we are today is the result of all of the things we have experienced in the past, good or bad. And some of those missteps do lead to good stories to tell around the campfire.  Yes, you really can back up a motorhome with a tow car attached if the street is narrow enough and the neighborhood shady enough to prevent you from wasting time unhooking. You shouldn’t, but you can!

So what about you? What would you do over, if you had it to do again?

Thought For The Day – Sometimes life gives you a second chance.

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We were in no hurry yesterday, and that was a good thing. It was cold in Gila Bend overnight, and I was too lazy to get up and turn on the furnace, so instead I shivered half the night. Finally, about 7 a.m., I got up for a bathroom trip, and when I came back to bed I snuggled up to Miss Terry and dropped into a deep sleep. So deep that finally somewhere around 10:40 a.m. Terry woke me up and asked if I ever planned to get out of bed. There were several RVs at the Elks lodge overnight, but by the time we opened the curtain over our windshield, there was only one travel trailer parked back at the far edge of the lot, and I think he’s staying there long term.

We puttered around for an hour or so, checking e-mail and returning a couple of phone calls, and finally got on the road about noon. But we only had about 120 miles to go, so there was no pressure.

It was a beautiful day, and the storm from the day before had blown itself out. We cruised west on Interstate 8, stopping only long enough to pull into a rest area for a quick walk around the motorhome and van, making sure everything was still in one piece. It’s always a good idea to stop every hundred miles or so do a walk around and stretch your legs. It gives you an opportunity to check your tires, be sure your tow bar and safety cables are still secure, and look for anything that might need attention. We had friends who once drove 400 miles nonstop, and when they arrived at their destination, they discovered that the side window of their SUV had been shattered. They had no idea when or how that had happened, and it remains a mystery today.

I like comparing how our Winnebago motorhome compares to our MCI bus conversion on steep grades. There is a small mountain range just east of Yuma on Interstate 8, and in the past, if I had a good running start at it, we’d top out in the bus at about 15 to 18 miles per hour. We had stopped at the rest area just before the uphill climb began, so there was no running start, and I had to slow down for a big truck, but in the Winnebago, we still hit the top at about 50 miles per hour. What a difference! However, I still much prefer the Jake brake in the old bus to the exhaust brake on the Winnebago. I just felt more secure with it on steep downgrades.  

After a stop for fuel at the Flying J on the east side of town, we arrived at the fairgrounds and stopped to check in at the office. They have several other events going on between now and our rally, so we found a quiet spot away from the main area, parked next to the stables. We have 20 amp electric and water, which is plenty to sustain us indefinitely.

Once we were settled in, we called our friends Mike and Elaine Loscher and arranged to meet them for dinner at the Golden Corral. Mike and Elaine are sweet people, and very dedicated supporters of our efforts. They have been to every one of our rallies, always volunteering to help. We could never afford to pay them for all that they do, from helping with parking and registration, and a hundred other chores that come up. We feel very honored to have such wonderful friends. 

I noticed in Gila Bend, and again here in Yuma, that our Verizon air card is working much faster than it was in the Apache Junction/Mesa area. Some snowbirds had told me that they were experiencing slow service here in Yuma too, but so far, so good. We’ll be busy getting all of the last minute rally chores done in the next few days. The clock is ticking down!

Thought For The Day – Tourists see the world, travelers experience it.

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