First the 5th wheel heads to the shop

The messed up door, flaky backup camera, and broken battery situation had me head back to where I purchased this 5th wheel, Crestview RV Waco, before taking it out again. I had hoped to take it to one of their two locations much more convenient to my home, but was told since I purchased the trailer in Waco, I’d need to drive 90 miles to Waco. It took 3 contacts over 4 days with their Georgetown location to even get a callback. The Waco dealer offered to replace on battery on them, asserted the camera with a resistor electrical taped to the wiring worked fine, and as my RV inspector didn’t mention the door, they weren’t going to cover it. It was clear the mission of the service rep speaking to me was to get me to accept this, come pick up my trailer with one new basic lead acid battery, and go away. This did not go over with me.

Without going into gory detail, I went picked up the trailer with a new battery and a full refund for the expensive backup camera + installation charge, with the camera still attached to the trailer.

At least with a working set of batteries, I decided it was enough to take the trailer out again. The outside handle that locks of over the door isn’t ideal but enough to prevent cats escaping. The trucks telescoping tow mirrors and some experience backing the rig up made me worry less about the unreliable backup camera.

Xmas with family

This was all well an good, and I ate far too much, including large quantities of a variety of Xmas cookies. I also attempted a new route to my cousins RV spot. Rather than a tricky multi-point turn backup, I came from the other direction to make it a near pull-thru spot. The challenge of this route, which I did not get pictures of, is that it goes through a narrow tree lined route up to their home, and features two tight left turns for a 40+ ft rig that I did not know for sure were doable. I had to backup and redo the second turn again to avoid scraping the trailer on trees/rocks on the driver side but made it. If my trailer were only a few feet longer the turn wouldn’t be possible.

The ghost in my 5th wheel and heavy rain

On Christmas eve hunkering down with my feline camping crew to sleep, one of the touch lights in my bedroom turned on by itself. I shut it off, only to have it turn on again, multiple times, and occasionally another touch light in the bathroom joined it. I was disappointed that this was not followed by paranormal or extraterrestrial contact of any sort. A quick search of the internet revealed this can be a thing with 12V touch lights caused by slight changes in voltage and the like, and there was nothing to do about it on the fly. To add to the oddity, while there for several days, this only ever happened at night.

I also experienced my first rain in the 5th wheel, which was a heavy thunderstorm and featured a short burst of pea sized hail. It gets fairly loud in there with heavy rain, which did not bother me, but definitely made my cats jumpy. When the hail kicked it plunking on the TPO roof and fiberglass sides of the trailer, it was a low roar inside. Quetz, the most vocal cat I have ever had, protested mightily at the din. We all survived.

Off to Fort Richardson driving a biggish rig

I had tentatively planned to visit a state park somewhere in the vicinity of my Cousin’s place, and so far my experience has been the lesser known state parks in Texas have been easy to reserve on short notice. I had no problem finding a site at several nearby choices with only a days notice. The heavy rain had turned some of the road at my cousin’s into mud, so I delayed my departure a day and picked Fort Richardson as it was less than an hour drive up 281.

While I’m still new to my rig, I’ve driven it enough I’m comfortable with it on the road. I pay close attention to the gas gauge and so far have made sure any fueling has been at stations friendly to big rigs. While 281 is a major state highway, it’s not loaded with semi-friendly truck stops compared to your average interstate. I’ve also so far joined 2 different diesel discount clubs which have worked out very well (Mudflap and TSD Open Roads). There is no fee to join, apparently they make their money by taking a cut of the discount they negotiate. I saved 25 cents a gallon a couple times on this trip with Mudflap. To get the full discount you need to pay with a debit card or a checking account link, and Mudflap puts a $250 hold on any debit card until the purchased is finalized. It’s designed for semi truckers, but I’ll take the discount and the easy-access for big rig fast fuel pumps.

Fort Richardson Campsite thoughts

I arrived at the state park early enough I had a full day on arrival. The park’s few full hookup sites were full, so I picked one with electric and water for less than $17 a day with my Texas State Parks pass discount. The back-in site was at a roughly 45 degree angle and easy to park at.

TON 618 at Fort Richardson 12/27/2024

My 5th wheel has a 30 AMP hookup, so I was not disappointed the site only had 30 AMP service. While I am still fresh to camping in state parks with an RV, I am beginning to realize the advantage of having a smaller trailer as a solo traveler. I don’t need a particularly huge spot to park, and I don’t need 50 AMP service to run everything in the trailer. I also don’t produce a lot of gray or black water, so as long as there is a dump station somewhere in the park, a dedicated sewer hookup really isn’t much of a plus. Overall I’m mid to smallish size compared to most of the RV’s out there and that’s going to pay off in terms of where I can go and flexibility on campsite choice.

Fort Richardson, more light History lessons

This is another state park built surrounding the remnants of a Fort that was built and primarily used in the 1860s and early 1870s as a frontier outpost to deal with the Native American threat at the time. It was reactivated a few times for World War’s and the like, and ultimately converted into a state park. Compared to my recent trip to Goliad, it’s not nearly as rich in history. The most significant thing that occurred at this park was capturing three native American chiefs, defeating the local Native American threat, and ultimately pushing the frontier of America further out. The grounds and buildings are well kept and preserved, but are light on exhibits. If your primary goal is winning on Jeopardy, you won’t learn a ton of historical trivia here. This parks exhibits are more geared toward showing the realities of daily life for soldiers and their supporting cast living there over 150 years ago.

I fortunately stumbled into a guided tour arriving at the Fort’s grounds my first day. A 12 year state park vet guided me (and only me) around the Fort’s buildings and gave me a lot more context about everything I was seeing than if I had wandered around on my own. I’d recommend it. It took well less than an hour, and I spent a little more time wandering the relatively large grounds of the Fort. Many of the buildings have a lot of original materials, and otherwise the maintainers of the park have tried to keep it as faithful to the way it was in 1860 as they can.

Hiking Fort Richardson

With daylight waning I explored some of the trails in this small state park. According to the signs there is some good opportunity for Bird Watching but I didn’t see much in the way of any wildlife (I’m no birder, but I assume late December isn’t really the season). The state park is pretty much flat with a river running through it, I saw several folks fishing as I wandered. All in all some nice, short hikes that didn’t take long to exhaust.

Going the distance and Hiking the Lost Creek Trailway

With most of the state park itself “done”, I decided to take on this 18 mile trail on my second day. My ranger tour guide had warned me that parts of it had been washed out in recent heavy rains, so the lazy part of my brain figured there would be a washout that would excuse doing the full 18 mi round trip. The hiking oriented part of my brain noticed only 1000 ft or so of elevation gain and figured it probably wasn’t that bad despite the distance.

Heading out plenty early to support potentially extended rest stops, the weather was ideal for hiking. Temperature in the high 60s, sunny, and a light breeze. I did the trail in it’s entirety and worked off a lot of Xmas cookies in the process.

From there you return from whence you started. With the weather conditions, I enjoyed it. The trail is really ideal for a mountain bike, and I’ll be bringing mine along in the 5th wheel for future opportunities. There were also a number of horse riders on the trail, the park has several equestrian campsites. I believe some are on the land that were stables for the fort and have been converted per my ranger guide. Last but not least, though I did not see one, covered wagons are explicitly allowed on this trail. Despite the sign showing no horse pulling one, I’d presume a horse pulling it is allowed.

This trail has some long sections with no tree cover or shade, and with the distance, I would not attempt it with highs much over 85. It would be brutal to hike this anywhere near or during the summer, a bike capable of doing it in under 2 hours would be the only option, early enough to beat the extreme heat.

Fort Richardson in summary

I enjoyed my stay here and felt it was a good combination of activities. 2 full days was just right for me. Exploring the historical site and the park itself is something you can easily do in under a day. With a couple meal stops, I did the Lost Creek Trailway in about 6 hours and was all about taking it easy afterward. I pondered going in for dinner after my hike, but didn’t see anything appealing enough to motivate me to get up so I did not see any of the nearby town of Jacksboro. While it’s not a Walmart sized town, I did notice there was a Tractor Supply Co there if I needed any RV stuff, parts, or propane. The same was true of Goliad.

New Fifth Wheel Gadgets that worked, or didn’t

Epiphany #1 – Washing tons of cat bowls by hand is not fun

With a few trips under my belt with my 3 cats, I quickly realized the output of dirty dishes due to wet cat food was going to be a lot to deal with by hand. Ricky’s illness demands a diet with as much of anything I can get him to eat, and he is mostly toothless and prefers wet food. Dry cat food only is not an option, nor is somehow attempting to only feed one cat wet food. Even rotating the uneaten food into the fridge for reuse and the sake of preserving a cat bowl from needing 1 use washing, I pile up cat bowls quickly.

To cope I decided to purchase a counter top dishwasher that does not require an input hose, and can be filled with roughly 1.25 gallons of water for a load of dishes. The drain hose just goes into any sink, and it doesn’t draw a ton of power. There are multiple brands of this style of counter top dishwasher that look like they source exactly the same parts. The buttons and modes on the machines are identical and the layout of the dish rack is the same between all of them. I selected the one I did because it was available in green, a white dishwasher is boring. I was skeptical but decided with a 30 day amazon return window I’d give it a shot and I have been pleasantly surprised. It’s basically just a tiny dishwasher, and can handle a good number of shallow stainless steel cat bowls. Rather than fill a sink and grinding through cat bowls by hand, just hit the button.

My only disappointment is that while it has a number of modes, all of them automatically go into a drying mode. This lasts an hour, and from my experiments, actually uses more energy than the washing cycle. However you can of course manually shut off the machine if you’re paying attention. Thinking forward to boondocking without shore power available, it’ll be questionable to run even cutting out the drying, but I’ll likely experiment with it. With great care I probably could use less than 1.25 gallons of water washing and rinsing my own dishes + 3 cats worth of dirty encrusted wet food dishes, but I suspect not by much. In any case if nothing else this AIRMSEN counter top dish washer is definitely a very handy addition to the fifth wheel for me.

Epiphany #2 – What prevents someone from stealing my 5th wheel. Oh, nothing

This started coming to mind after parking the trailer in RV storage. The panel controlling the landing jacks is flimsy plastic. The battery compartment’s door is higher quality, but anyone with a crowbar and a few minutes would make short work of it. Or they could turn on the battery shutoff knob from the adjoining propane compartment which has no locks. Having a compatible hitch is really the only thing to prevent someone from hooking up to the fifth wheel and heading off with it. The lot has security camera’s, a chain link fence, an alarm, and an owner who is on site much of the time, but I still didn’t feel entirely comfortable with the situation. Fortunately the company that makes my hitch also makes a lock for it that goes over the kingpin. With the right tools and determination it can also be defeated, but hopefully further deterrent for any would be thieves. This isn’t the only security I’m going to add but it’s a decent start.

Epiphany #3 – Clothes get dirty in the outdoors easily

Camping and hiking in dirt and mud means it’s a stretch to use the jeans a second day. Dirty clothes also translate to getting dirt all over the inside of the 5th wheel. I could care less about dirtying up a tent but I feel differently in trailer with cats. These said felines also occasionally barf or the like on bed sheets and such. So far my trips have been short enough I can just carry as much clothing and whatnot as a I need, but that will not always be true. While Laundromats are available in little towns, that is not true in Dog Canyon campground in the Guadalupe Mountains which is 50-60 miles from any civilization whatsoever.

I explored mini clothes washing options and bought one of them, a “The Laundry Alternative” Drop off Amazon, one of many small clothes washers with mediocre reviews that looked a little nicer than most of the rest. It claimed a 4.4 pound capacity. I did a test run at home with a single bath towel. It took a ton of water (something over 5 gallons), more if you want to rinse. The motor was unimpressive, if it wasn’t defective, the single bath towel was enough to make it struggle through it’s 15 minute wash cycle. The washing didn’t seem to do much, and I promptly returned it without bothering to try out it’s spin cycle for “drying” the sopping wet un-rinsed bath towel.

I am now convinced any clothes washer worth it’s salt needs a big motor to be useful. I’d seen YouTube videos where folks with 40+ ft trailers designed for larger but still “RV sized” washer/dryers complained about them and now I get it. In the future I’m going to buy a manual clothes washing plunger and with a collapsible bucket for any “off grid” laundering. I also have a “scrubba” wash bag I’ve used tent camping, and it works, but it’s also got a very limited capacity.

More 5th Wheel, More Problems

Tree branch vs 5th Wheel (L) – TKO

I returned to my cousin’s home for another day of family visiting after Fort Richardson. Having navigated the “new” pull through route once, I thought I had it figured out on 2nd pass. Swing even a little wider on the turn that had given me trouble, and I’d have no need to backup and redo. I executed exactly as I hoped and pulled into the spot first try. I was surprised when my other first cousin who’d watched me park came up after with a broken off vent hood cap from the trailer. In taking the wide left turn, I clipped a branch no bigger than 2″ in diameter on the opposing passenger side and it broke off.

Inspecting the damage, I’d broken off the this cap cleanly and partially broken off another right next to it. Fortunately these plastic vent caps are cheap and easy to replace. The roof looked alright, and I thought it was no big deal until I returned to Austin and brought the 5th wheel to another shop to deal with the door and backup camera. In mentioning the roof vents to the dealer, he noticed some very small punctures in the roof. Then inspecting the trailer from the roof, also noticed the branch damaged the awning cloth and the awning roller. My <10 mph scuff was far worse than I realized. If my cousin hadn’t witnessed the accident I may have never realized it happened. I heard and felt nothing. I probably would have driven off and someday noticed my roof cap vent was gone with no idea what happened to it.

Hooking up the trailer for the first time, I envisioned driving a 14000+ pound rig of hulking metal I needed to take care with to as not obliterate a small sedan. The door on it is hatch-like and tightly fitted to the frame with weatherproofing, seemingly tough. With a mostly fiberglass exterior and TPO rough, all my readings led me to believe it was durable.

What I have learned in a short period is, if the trailer isn’t very close to level, you need to be extra careful with the door. Despite the fact the door looks like it could fit on a submarine hatch, it is a fragile piece of equipment. Same with the slide – while I’ve had no trouble with it, I’ve heard it strain slightly when I suspect I was not entirely level side to side, something that’s not easily remedied with my 5th wheel. Now a single, fairly small branch caused considerable damage in a very low speed encounter I didn’t even personally notice in the moment.

From now forward I will be treating the rig as a 14,000 pound eggshell. Make a low speed pass through some branches in a national or state park that’s not well maintained? No way. With the trailer hitched to the truck it’s not level front to back. Any overnight scenarios I might leave it that way I’m going to be really careful with the door and leave the slide in.

And that’s not all…

Leaving from my cousin’s, I also took the occasion to use my “black tank flush”. This is just a hose connector on the side of the trailer that goes into the black tank to allow you to really flush it out. Opening the black tank valve itself to dump is just gravity, this helps get the gunk out. I’d used it once prior but this time noticed a little water started leaking from somewhere in the interior of the trailer, into the underbelly, and onto the ground. Not good.

By the time I got to my parking spot, the underbelly of the trailer had somewhat come undone. What I had not noticed until this happened is that part of the underbelly was held together with a large amount of duct tape. I would presume it did not come out of the Winnebago assembly line that way, and yet another thing my RV Inspector missed for a hefty fee for his services. The relatively small water leak was enough to undo a good part of this duct tape job. I suppose I’m fortunate to have discovered this earlier rather than later.

Postscript – I’m wary of the RV Biz

With the trailer in the shop and unusable until it’s fixed, I’m not sure I’m going to be doing any trips in January. Hopefully getting it all fixed up doesn’t get me fighting with an insurance company and I don’t learn any more lessons the hard way.

After a good sales experience, the service department at the dealership I purchased the trailer at is a real disappointment. After getting a terrible inspection on my truck prior to purchase, it’s been followed up with a similarly sloppy inspection of this 5th wheel… at 2.5x the price. I also got the “cheapest” inspection, which was comprehensive but lacked any detailed report or photos. That option at $800 would somehow have cost more than the last full stick and brick home inspection I had, complete with an extremely detailed report, photos, and personal walk through.

Shopping around for a place to get the trailer fixed, the first mobile RV tech declined due to a death in the family and then referred me to three buddies and warning me to be careful in this very corrupt mobile RV repair business. After finding one of these mobile buddies who considered me in his service area, the guy completely flaked on the appointment despite me leaving a voicemail to confirm the night before. A day later he offered to come take a look at my trailer door without his usual service fee having screwed this up, so I took him up on it only to learn a Winnebago 26″x72″ door + decals are overpriced and that my estimation of his assessment of a backup camera fix would do nothing for it.

My initial impression of the “RV Industry” isn’t favorable. I suspect it is dominated by campers who watched “how to make money while you’re living in an RV” youtube videos and with or without minimal training who hang out their shingle as “RV Techs” or “RV Inspectors”. A dealership who needs 3 contacts from me to prompt scheduling an appointment is bad enough, insisting a camera install I personally spent 3 hours watching them botch “worked fine” goes beyond the pale. It seems a level or two of hell deeper than scummy little used car dealerships and mechanics. Unfortunately I don’t think there’s an equivalent to taking your car to a “dealer” for a used RV unless you literally drive to them in Indiana.

I’ve been inspired to learn more about electricity and general trailer handy work based on my experiences so far, we’ll see if I’ve I get motivated enough to do it. Trips in the 5th wheel have been great, the problems not so much, and while the branch related damage is pro level, I’m starting to think I’d be better off fixing the rest on my own both from a cost and quality perspective. We’ll see if I get motivated enough to take on the next SNAFU myself.