Towing a camper in the mountains has its challenges. Especially if your tow vehicle is a front-wheel drive.
As I prepare to make my return journey to Michigan, I remind myself it’s all about the journey, and not just about the destination. I hope to not only hunt for the elusive morel on my way back, but stop for a little beach-combing on the Great Lakes as well. The caverns in the Smoky Mountains are beckoning too. So many things to see and do, why just fight the traffic on the Interstates?
Well, the Interstates are designed with low grades, making them easier on the tow vehicle.
But the less-traveled roads are just so much more pleasant. And my arthritic knuckles have more color after a day’s travel. (Which is generally about 3 hours max in my case. Bessie, my 2004 Ford Escape, seems to be happier too.)
If Bessie ain’t happy, nobody’s happy.
She went in to her favorite car doctor for a checkup the other day. Bill, at Paul’s Auto & Diesel Repair in Brevard, gave her a full screening. Not only did she have a blowby tube which was totally plugged up and collapsed, she had blown a vacuum line, and needed a new fuel filter.
Thank goodness I listened to her.
I thought maybe her transmission needed service, because she just hasn’t felt quite right lately. I know she’s old, but Baby Blue and I have her beat by nearly 50 years. Bessie is who we have, and sometimes you just need to work with what you’ve got.
Mechanics had all kinds of suggestions: flush the transmission, put new shocks on the rear to give the front tires more grip, alleviate tongue weight, put some weight in the back of the camper, add weight distribution bars, get more weight on the trailer axles, dump Bessie and get a 4-wheel drive. Moving stuff around in the camper, and adding the bike onto the back simply made it worse. After trying many load ratio scenarios, I ended up right back with my load, where my initial calculations said it should be.
Thank goodness for a mechanic who actually looks and tries to find the real problem. Go Bill.
Sure, after all the miles we’ve traveled together, her front wheels grab a lot better in the mountains since Bill rotated them. No more spinning on a wet road, like during the rainstorm in St. Augustine. But even with good tires, front wheel drive is not optimal for pulling a camper on wet pavement, or inclines; especially gravel ones.
Like at our friend Nancy’s house, where we also had to “call a friend” when Bessie and Baby Blue weren’t playing nice together in a gravel driveway. After a few moments of panic trying to back the camper down a gravel curve, and getting her wedged into a “no-turn” point, I asked for help to get the camper back out again, instead of letting Bessie throw more gravel at her and breaking another jalousie window.
It’s certainly made me more conscious of choosing campsites and travel routes. When I arrived in Brevard, at the beginning of my journey, I was using GPS and Allstays to find campsites. After 2 weeks, I’d used up my reservation allotment at Davidson River, so I decided to go to a sweet campground called Riverbend, which was only about 20 miles away.
It wasn’t until GPS directed us to turn up a little road off the highway, we really learned about grades. We also learned 21% is a little steep for us, how impossible it is to turn around on tiny mountain roads, what it felt like to downshift into 2nd gear to climb said mountain, exactly how high mountain roads can go in one incline, and what we felt like under pressure. Luckily, we didn’t have to find out what it felt like to roll backwards down a mountain.
We also learned we never, ever, ever want to do that again.
I’ve also learned the prettiest spot on the grass, next to the river in the mountains, is not necessarily the best place to park the camper. I came back after a rainstorm to find Baby Blue sitting in a foot of water. Yeah, Bessie had to call a friend on that one too.
I’ve learned a couple of workarounds though. The best has been flattestroute.com
The great thing about the site is how easy it is to plug in your location and destination, and it instantly generates the route with the lowest grades to get you there. Comes with a nice interactive graph too, so you can see exactly what the grades are, and where on the route they are found. The downside is, you can’t really see what roads the route is taking, or plug it into your GPS to get you there. It takes a little deduction to “approximate” what roads you’re seeing on the little map. Maybe I just haven’t quite figured it out yet. (If you know of a better solution, we’ll give you a shoutout if you share.)
In any case, flattestroute advises me to head to Ohio through Virginia and West Virginia, for my trip back to the Great Lakes. Oh Virginia, I’ve never seen you! Or your sister, either!
But my logic tells me the route is continuing me on through the Appalachians, and my gut says I should get out, for this trip, and easily coast the flats back to Michigan. We’ve added about 200 pounds, including Bella and her crap, so I want to make it easy on everyone.
We’ll take the Interstates through to Knoxville, and land on the other side for a couple of days while I hunt for morels.
Bessie likes just tucking in with the truckers anyway. We all stay in the slow-lane, and cheer each other on. But once she’s out on the flats, I have a sneaking suspicion she’s going to want to jump into the Daniel Boone National Forest to get away from all the traffic.
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