Our Mobile Universe

Having sold our home in San Diego, we are now fully mobile and living the nomadic lifestyle. Many of the things we all take for granted when in a stationary home are different when traveling! In case you are interested, here's how we have set ourselves up for the road:

The Trailer:

Our trailer is a travel trailer, which we've named "Taylor the trailer" because we like the way it sounds. It's an "Arctic Fox 22H" made in Oregon by Northwood Manufacturing. Because of it's northwestern heritage it is better insulated than many similar trailers, and so better able to keep us comfy in inclement weather. It's 22 feet long, but that measurement is made from the tip of the towing tongue to the back of the bumper... so the real living space is somewhere about 140 square feet. Just big enough for two humans and two big dogs! In that small space, they have packed just about everything one would need to be comfortable. We have a double bed, a sofa (converts to a single bed), a dinette (also converts to another single bed), and a kitchen with sink, three-burner stove, oven, microwave, and refrigerator/freezer. There's also a full barthroom with shower and toilet (and a hot-water heater). The trailer has a 40-gallon fresh water tank, and holding tanks for both "grey water" (sink and shower drains) and "black water" (toilet). If we're camping at an RV park, we usually have full hookups (electric, water, sewer), but if we're "dry camping" somewhere, like in a national park, we don't have all of that stuff. So, the trailer is self-contained: most things run on 12-volt batteries or propane (thanks to the wonders of thermodynamics, even the fridge runs on propane!), and if we really need to, we have a 110-volt generator on board. We've barely used the generator, but it will be handy if we're dry camping sometime long enough to run down the batteries. The only things that don't run on 12 volts are the air conditioner, the microwave, the automatic coffee maker, and Brian's electric shaver. Certainly none of these are camping essentials! :-)

For nice weather, we've mounted our bikes on the back of the trailer. We have a big awning on the side that we can extend to get shade, and some folding chairs to relax on. We've also got a big green ground cover/rug-like thing that fits under the awning to make it like an outdoor living room. We have a little propane grill that we can use for outdoor cooking as well.

All-in-all, all the comforts of home! We've actually found that when we stay somewhere else besides in the trailer we feel like we're not at home, and we miss our own bed.

The Truck:

Taylor the trailer is being pulled by Chuck the truck. (And, no, this is not intended to be a homage to Chuck Taylor of Converse shoe fame!) Chuck (the truck) is a 1996 Chevy Tahoe SUV with about 59,000 miles as of the start of the trip. It has the full towing package, so it's supposed to be (just) powerful enough to pull our trailer. Jacque and Brian ride in the front seats, and Kasie and Barney happily ride in the back.

Since the trailer itself has fairly limited storage space, we've used a few tricks to expand our overall storage. First, we've turned the truck into a two-seater by filling the back seat with "stuff" -- our laptops, a printer in a box, our "offices" (Brian has a small plastic file box, Jacque has a cardboard mover's box), our "library" (a box full of reading material and travel guide books), a large supply of dog food, etc. Also, in the "way-back", under the dogs, we've built our "basement" -- basically the dogs are on top of a sheet of plywood (with lots of padding and a comfy blanket), while under the plywood we have bulk storage of stuff like paper towels, Kleenex and the like.

When we first bought the truck, we saw that Chevrolet had thoughtfully put three 12-volt outlets in the dashboard. We thought this was overkill -- who would ever need to plug in three things while driving!?! Well, now we know... we usually drive with the GPS turned on (mostly 'cause it gives us a real-time altitude measurement, which is fun when driving through mountains), and maybe we've got a cell phone or two plugged in. We also (especially Jacque) can work on the laptop while driving, and it also can be plugged into the 12-volt. We also have a CB radio that comes in handy when there is a sudden backup in traffic -- listening in to the truck drivers is a good way to know how long the wait might be and whether it might be better to get off the road and have lunch instead.

We've also bought some mirror extenders so that we can see what's behind us on the highway. With a massive weight-distributing hitch, the truck has done exceptionally well wth towing, even on some pretty steep roads. We've learned to just take it easy and let others pass us -- above about 65 MPH it starts to sway a little. Gas consumption is a whole 'nother story, though... we're down into the single-digit range... But, the silver lining is that it means that we have to stop to fill the tank at about the same frequency as Brian needs to stop to empty his bladder...

Our Internet Connection:

When we lived in a house with a foundation, we had wires comning in from the street bringin us things like telephone service, cable TV, and a DSL broadband Internet connection. Obviously, we need a new solution when on the road...

We explored a number of options, and found that the best solution is "Express Network" from Verizon Wireless. (As an aside: we had AT&T Wireless service, and we asked the salesmen if we could get a data-capable phone from them. He candidly told us that AT&T wireless would only give us a data connection in a very, very limited area, and we should try Verizon instead. Even though they lost us as a customer, they gained some goodwill by being honest about it!)

Our Express Net connection is great! All we need to do is connect Jacque's cell phone (an LG VX-10) to the laptop via a USB cable, and click on "connect". When we are in an Express Net Service Area (which is many major cities, and growing), we can connect at a super-fast rate (115 Kbps), even while driving down the highway! When we are outside of the Express Net area but still within Verizon's cellular territory, it connects at a slower rate (14.4 Kbps).

Our Entertainment:

We made some decisions about entertainment for our walkabout. There was a significant debate between ourselves and among our friends about whether or not a television was an essential part of our experience. We don't watch it much at home, but we thought there might be some major sporting events that we'd want to catch, or we might find ourselves cooped up in our 140 sq-ft trailer for a long time during a multi-day storm, or something. The trailer has a TV antenna, and some RV parks have cable TV connections. So, we reached a compromise: we brought along a TV, but it's securely stored in a padded compartment underneath one of the dinette seats. We also brought a DVD player and a selection of DVDs, so we can watch movies if we get really stuck somewhere with nothing better to do with ourselves. So far (as of 3/25/03), we only pulled the TV out once. We wanted to watch a final game of the season for the Wake Forest basketball team, since we were arriving at the Wake Forest campus the next day. But, it seems we did the time zone calculation incorrectly, and missed the game all together! Oh well. It may yet turn out to be a major waste of valuable weight capacity...

A much better form of entertainment that has served us quite well is satellite radio. We have subscribed to the XM satellite radio service, which provides us with clear, digital music anywhere, even in Death Valley where there are no terrestrial radio stations in range. XM provides 101 channels, many of them commercial-free, so we can pick the kind of music we want to hear at any time without scanning through unknown FM stations. (How many times on previous trips have we put the radio on scan and found that there's nothing but classic rock, evangelical bible thumpers, and sappy country... if even that! And, if you do find a tolerable station, it's out of range in a few minutes anyway.) The actual radio we bought to accomplish this is really handy, because we can use it in either Chuck the truck or Taylor the trailer. It's a "Delphi SKYFi" radio, and we've put docking stations in both the truck and the trailer. In the future, we will probably also put a docking station in our home when we settle down. The big advantage is that we pay the monthly service ($10) on only one radio, but we can still listen to it in multiple locations.

We've also brought a number of books to read, and our bicycles to ride. But, of course, one major form of entertainment is cooking and/or eating, which we satisfy by eating at interesting local establishements (as might be found in Roadfood), or by cooking some wonderful gourmet meal in the trailer or on our gas grill. Jacque still gets her Bon Appétit and Cook's Illustrated magazines, and she loves to make good, interesting food. Brian has been treated to such great foods as Orzo with Everything, homemade corn muffins, grilled black-bean-and-chili pockets, homemade pizza (cooked on the gas grill), lamb and basil sausages, etc. And, Brian made a couple of batchs of Toll House cookie dough ahead of time, which we've stored in the freezer in logs -- we take a log out and slice the cookies off and bake them! Yum.

Our Mail Drop:

While on the road, getting mail can be problematic. But, there are still bills to be paid, and magazine subscriptions, and all manner of things that don't happen via email or the Internet. We have rented a box at a Mail Boxes Etc. location near our old house in San Diego, and snail mail can be sent to us there (see the address on our Contacts page). When we think we know what our address might be sometime down the road, we give them a call and they send us everything that's in our box. It's a workable solution, but it does mean that most of our mail gets delayed by as much as a month before we receive it.

Some definitions:

We are traveling in a "travel trailer", which is a self-contained house-on-wheels that is towed by something else using a bumper-mounted hitch. It is intended to travel frequently, if not daily. It's not a "camper", which is something that sits in the bed of a pickup truck, nor is it a "fifth-wheel trailer", which is something that is towed by a pickup truck via a special hitch mounted in the truck's bed. An "RV" or "motor home" is a self-contained house-on-wheels that includes its own engine and steering wheel, and can range in size from a small van conversion to a huge land yacht.

There is also something known as a "park trailer", which is a long trailer that is towed by a semi-truck to one spot and then left there indefintely, but could be moved again. That's almost like a "mobile home", which, once parked, is meant to stay forever, probably on a foundation. Mobile homes are often double-wide or even triple-wide. When people refer to a "trailer park", they are most likely referring to a place where people live semi-permanently in park trailers. On the other hand, an "RV park" is a place where people stay temporarily on vacation in their RV, travel trailer, fifth-wheel, or camper. It's "trailer parks", not "RV parks", that are the tornado attractors!