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OOPS! by Carol Ray When my husband Bill and I decided that we would like to become full time RVers, Bill was still working and we thought it would be a couple of years before he would retire. We had a Ford Windstar at the time, and were told that it was all set up with a "tow package", so we went looking for a small trailer to start out with. We wanted to get something that would be really easy to tow since we have never owned an RV and were a little nervous about towing one. We bought a Hilo Trailer. The Hilo, if you are not familiar with them, lowers to a height of about 6 feet and, when in use, raises high enough to stand in comfortably. Easy to tow even when windy. This trailer was going to be "just right" for our needs. But....Oops! We discovered that the Windstar would not be able to tow this trailer...it was too heavy. So we traded in our one year old Windstar and bought a Ford 250 pick up truck. We were having a lot of fun with the trailer on the weekends but soon realized that we could not spend more than a few days in it together, or we would go bananas. If I was cooking and Bill need to use the restroom, I would have to back up to let his through. We found ourselves having to step around or over each other due to the cramped area of this small trailer, (plus the fact that both Bill and I are far from being small people). We realized that we could not live in this trailer even for a few months. So.....OOPS! About six months after buying the Hilo, Bill decided to retire early and we went looking for another RV. We then decided that we could tow something that was "full sized", but Bill said it could not be over 30 feet long. We sold the Hilo and bought a 29 foot Layton Fifth Wheel, put a fifth wheel on the Ford 250 pick up truck, (we already had a $500.00 hitch on the truck for the Hilo), and of we went on a 14,000 mile odyssey that took us from Banning, CA to Booth Bay Harbor, Maine, and 25 states in between. It was a wonderful and exciting trip which I would like to share with you sometime, but all during the trip we, (Bill particularly), missed our desktop PC and all of the accompanying equipment. When we arrived back in California we brought all of that "stuff" on board and guess what! Our living area all but disappeared with the addition of a computer desk and all of the equipment. So....OOPS! We decided to trade in the 29 foot fifth wheel for something a bit larger. Since it was less than a year old, we were able to get a good trade in allowance for it. We bought another Layton Fifth Wheel. This time a 37 footer with triple slides. But....OOPS!...the Ford 250 would have a hard time pulling this much heavier trailer. So we sold the Ford 250 and bought a Ford 350 one ton pick up truck with a crew cab. Now I think we have finally found the right RV for us, but all of this stupidity took place within three years! Don't do this to yourself. Do your homework better than we did ours. Rent a few RV's and spend some time in them if you can. Start off with the right sized RV for your needs. I don't like to admit how foolish we were, but if it saves you from the same kind of mistakes we made, then I am glad to share our OOPS! with you. Oh yes, and PS, we told our dealer we would not be back for another trailer until they came out with a two story trailer with quadruple slides. What did you say you saw advertised in the Highway's magazine? OOPS!
:)
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