Boy am I glad I have 4WD! I didn’t need it on the road but at the fairgrounds the snow was deep with wet mud underneath. I would have been stuck a couple of times without it trying to find the perfect spot.

Set-up and tear down were simple by myself. My husband had suggested taking the battery operated impact wrench and that made the corner leveling jacks incredibly easy to operate. 

Some learning moments- engineer hubby’s are sometimes wrong about things. He even has a t-shirt about this that his kids bought him! We had discussed the furnace last week when he decided to leave it on 64 degrees all week to make packing pleasant for me. I asked if he thought it would use all my propane. “It’s on the electric,it’s a “3-way furnace”. He was absolutely positive that he was right. I was sure that 3 way furnaces don’t exist in camper land and the seller must have confused him between the fridge and furnace. Friday night I talked to a friend on the phone about this as I was packing,I thought about getting the extra propane tank out of the barn but it was pouring rain and I was really running behind getting ready. So I didn’t. We also talked about me grabbing the little space heater from the greenhouse but I forgot about it later.

Needless to say,the heat worked like a champ and kept my camper warm all week,including the trip up to Winston-Salem and then stopped working about 2 hours after I arrived.

Thankfully,my friend had brought a space heater to keep her dogs warm in her van. She was going home for the night and loaned it to me.

Other than that,no issues. I do need to learn how to get the sway bar part of my hitch off and on by myself as it would have been nice to unhook and go find propane or go to Walmart for a space heater.

I learned a lot and feel confident doing this by myself. I didn’t really have any doubts as I traveled a lot with my horse trailer/ camper by myself and I’m pretty self sufficient. I did blow the CB at the post a couple of times between crock pot,space heater and microwave but luckily there were lots of plugs to chose from. Just not a 30A that matched my cord. I need another dog-bone to go from 30-50amps. There was a plug I didn’t recognize with 3 holes but the holes didn’t match my cord?

I am going to get a waterproof cargo bag to put the light stuff,especially bedding and memory foam so that I can store it outside on my cargo roof rack. With all my show clothes I have no room for the bedding and my bunks got pretty messy. I may get a receiver hitch rack. I’d love to get a cheap scooter to lug things to the buildings since my feet cause me problems. For now,I’ll just remember the bike for the next show.

I had so many compliments and questions about the r-pod. 

I do wish I had gotten my light hangers up so that I could have shown off my teardrop camper Christmas lights! Oh,well. I’ll use them and he lighted flamingo next time as “party lights”.

The door to the cabinet under my sink fell off one of the hinges. Looks like it pulled out of the wood. Anybody have recommendations for fixing this?

Oh,I also won my classes at the dog show both days and a “Group 2”in the owner handles groups which was the best I’ve done so far without a handler! I show a Doberman and I’ve been out of showing for 25 years. 

You probably already know this since you have so much hauling experience, but the key is to get the load off. I have not yet personally done this so I'm not going to go into more detail. Just that I've been paying really close attention as my partner does it. It will be easier to practice with him coaching me since we moved our trailer back to our property recently from the storage space we have. I don't foresee taking our trailer somewhere without him but I like to know how things work, especially since we do so much dispersed camping (aka boondocking). The ol' "prepare for the worst and hope for the best"