Let the Adventure Begin

Part 3
It was about midnight when we left Tampa to head to Georgia to look at the trailer. I packed what I thought we would need for the day trip. Pillows and one blanket for the kids while they slept on the way up and our tools, we always take Kurts' tools when we go anywhere, you never know what may happen. It was the beginning of March, and still a bit chilly, plus the truck didn't have heat, so I grabbed our heavy fleece blanket and we headed up. On the trip up, I had the normal concerns, what if, after driving all this way, we don't like the trailer? Or there was something terribly wrong with it that didn't show in the pics? We would have wasted our time and money and have to continue our search or scrap the whole idea. We got there at 7 in the morning, called the guy and waited in the Home Depot parking lot. We got donuts to feed the kids and let them out to play in the bed of the truck until he got there an hour later. He was at the trailer cleaning it out, let me mention that the ad said the trailer would include everything you need, coffee pot, plates, grill, ect. Turned out it didn't include any of that stuff, which was good really, I didn't want to have to deal with figuring out what to do with all the stuff since we didn't need it. Guess he figured that because he came down in the price he was going to keep everything, fine with us! He arrives, and we proceed to the trailer.

As we are following him, my first though is, how are we going to get this thing, if we buy it, out of here? We traveled down a sugar sand road, full of 90 degree turns up and downhill grades, and it had recently rained. What a nightmare, but as we pulled into the hunting park, my first thought was "Oh my God, It's huge!" We parked and everyone got out, the kids began running towards it screaming "Our New House!" I gotta admit, I thought that was great, and a good sign, and we preceded to walk through the trailer. While I inspected the interior, Kurt and the owner walked around outside, inspecting the exterior: wiring, plumbing, the hitch, all the things that didn't concern me, the interior was my domain, I had to make sure it was something we could live with/in. The interior was great, clean, do damage, the only thing that concerned me was the skylight in the shower, it looked like it had leaked, when I brought this up to him, he informed us that it had indeed leaked but he had replaced the roof. He was an electrician as well, with his own business, so Kurt and I thought he would be a pretty honest, hardworking guy, turns out he was a better businessman than a decent guy, but thats going to be a different story, lets just say, there was no new roof. So all in all we were (I was) in love with the trailer, glad we were done looking, and bought the trailer. He spent an hour showing us the ins and outs, the modifications, and how to level and pull up the jacks and spent another hour helping us hook it up to the truck. Once it was hooked up, I wish I would of brought my camera, the trailer made our poor truck dip so bad it actually V'ed, we were still within the weight it was rated for, barely. If the truck wasn't a stick shift, we would of never been able to tow it. So, first thing we noticed was we didn't have the right wiring harness, so , once we got the truck out of the sugar sand maze, at a slow and nervous pace, our first stop was Walmart. Once at Walmart, after a few returns and 2 hours later, we were on the road to head back to Tampa. As it turned out, Kurt had to completely rewire the truck to install the wiring harness, believe me, his electrical skills and knowledge have been extremely helpful in this lifestyle. I'm so grateful he has this knowledge, it has saved us thousands.

Our trip back to Tampa was pretty uneventful, until we reached Stuart. We had underestimated the amount of gas the truck would use towing a 7,000 lb trailer. 20 miles from Stuart, we were almost on E, it was 10pm and every gas station we passed was closed. We were sweating it, finally, we found an open one, when we pulled in to fill up, water started gushing from under the hood. Oh great, I thought, were in the middle of nowhere and our truck just broke down. Kurt determined it was the water pump, and after being there in front of the pump for so long that the attendant had to come out, see if everything was ok, and asked us to move, we were taking up the majority of his gas station, we drove the truck with no working water pump a mile down the road, where we found a Winn Dixie, and stopped for the night.