Trailer, Sweet Trailer

After breakfast, our last motel waffle for a while, we headed out to the truck in 22C temperatures…. beautiful.

I must admit to having been somewhat apprehensive about heading out to the trailer after it had been left in the California sun for a year. Would the tyres still be inflated, would the trailer have been colonised by hundreds of mice, would the roof still be waterproof etc?

After about 40 minutes of twisty-turny driving we arrived at the storage facility, our gate card worked (another concern!!) and in we went. The trailer was still there, whats more there was no visible signs of damage and all 4 wheels were round. Things were looking up.

While I got the truck and trailer ready to hitch up, Lyn opened up the trailer. No mice, or signs thereof, and no water or signs thereof! The battery still had enough power to raise and lower the legs supporting the trailer, and as a major bonus I connected onto the trailer at the first attempt.

All we had to do now was to get some air in the tyres, the trailer tyres had dropped from 80PSI to 65PSI, and the truck is normally set to 50PSI, but needs to be raised to 80PSI for towing. Luck was still on our side as the storage place had a commercial size compressor that I could use. Ten minutes later all 8 tyres were correctly inflated.

We pulled the trailer out of its parking spot, checked all the brakes and headed out. Having not driven with the trailer for over a year it was a little strange, particularly as we were on back roads that were neither straight nor level.

All went well though until about 300 yards after we turned onto another road, there on the side of the road was a sign that proclaimed that this road is not recommended for trucks towing trailers!! Too late to turn back now.

Luckily the road was not busy, nor was it too treacherous. It was steep though, and for the first time I felt that the truck was really working near its limits to keep us moving. Gas consumption at this stage was about 2.1 MPG. We climbed about 2000 ft before heading back down, this now put a strain on the brakes, even with engine braking the the brakes got pretty hot and smelly.

We finally got to the bottom, and headed through the vineyards of Napa Valley. Thirty minutes later we arrive at the campground, not the best we’ve been at by a long way; it’s situated in the middle of a residential area and has very little grass, mostly gravel.

Its most serious deficiency is the lack of internet access. We can connect to the WiFi, but the WiFi has lost its internet connection, being Sunday there is no one around to fix it. Realising I am morally obliged to publish the blog we went for plan B, I renewed my T-Mobile plan for a small WiFi/Cellular box that we have.

We only booked this site for two nights, primarily to allow us to get the trailer set up and fix up any problems that there might have been.