2 Attachment(s)
Cross Country Trip Report
We made it from CA to DE. My wife took a job in DE now that she is out of the Navy so we decided to buy a 21 ft toy hauler style trailer and make the move and live in it until we find a house in DE to buy.
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It was kind of a disjointed move because my wife was deployed at the time of moving out of our CA house. So the movers came and packed up the majority of our stuff to put it in storage and the kids and I moved into the RV.
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We spent around 2 weeks in the RV while I tied up loose ends and hung out with a friend who had a business trip to CA from FL. Then made our way to AZ to park the trailer at my brother in laws so I could fly to MI and see some family/friends while my wife finished up her deployment. On the way to AZ I had the trailer loaded poorly and very close to max weight and had to pull over once to let the transmission cool. This was before my superchips update which allowed me to monitor transmission temps. The other thing I noticed while on this first stretch of the trip was that I didn't like how little I could see with only my mirrors, so I decided to install a rear view camera on the trailer.
Camera Located at the top of the trailer pulling power from one of the marker lights.
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Monitor installed in the Jeep in an easy to see spot since it's just like looking at the rear view mirror.
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I also installed another camera on the jeep, I mounted it to the third brake light so I could monitor when the jeep is loaded down and I can't see out the back window.
Once my wife made it back from deployment to CA, I flew back to AZ to meet up with her, and we all went back to CA for a week for her to go through out processing. Then loaded up her van and drove back to AZ. Now we're all together with both vehicles, trailer, and ready to roll cross country. While I was in CA Jon ordered me a transmission cooler, and had his local mechanic install it for me. I don't have the model number handy but it fit well and added approx 2.5 quarts more fluid. While towing trans temps haven't gone much over 210 and mostly stayed around the 180 range which is the temps I was getting prior to the aux cooler and not towing. So I think it was a good idea and helped me avoid problems while on the road.
We had planned to travel around 400 miles a day, since with the trailer I could only go about 55-60 without absolutely killing the mpg's. Even at 55-60 I was only getting 7.5ish mpgs.
So on the second day, around an hour outside of Roswell, NM I blew a trailer tire. Fun times changing a tire on the side of the road when it's a 100+ degrees outside. To make things worse, the winch for the spare wasn't hooked up correctly, so I had to rig up a way to get it down. So what should have taken 30 minutes, took an hour and half.. Once changed we made our way to Roswell and promptly had all new tires put on, I wasn't going to mess with that again.. Discount Tire took care of us, and stayed late so we could get it taken care of the same day. So we did the tourist trap crap in Roswell and relaxed for a day before getting back on the road.
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Nothing real exciting happened through Texas, Oklahoma, or Arkansas.. But I did get to check off OK and AR from my visited states list, now leaving 3 (ND, HI, WI)
When we stopped for gas just outside of Memphis I noticed I had lost a CV boot. This was of course on Sat night, so I got the part ordered on Sun, but it wasn't going to be in until Tue afternoon. Thankfully I found a little shop that was willing to put it on the same day so we could get back on the road Wed morning.
Because of our delay we had to change our plans, we were originally headed straight to DE and then going to MI so my wife could see family since she hadn't been back home in over 2 years. We decided to just leave from Memphis and go straight to MI, and saw a bunch of friends and family and got to make it to my family reunion.
After the reunion we made our way to our temporarily home for awhile. At Woodlands Camping Resort in Elkton, MD, and don't you dare call it a trailer park it's a resort ;)
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So we're here for awhile until we can find a house, we have a real estate agent so hopefully soon we'll having something figured out, a 21 ft trailer with 2 kids, 2 adults and a cat is a little cramped.
I think that covers it, nothing too crazy but we did get a little excitement. It was approx 3500 miles, and I haven't totaled up the gas cost yet I'm a little scared of that..
