The problem with getting a site at our favorite Campground is that you have to make reservations 6 months in advance. Gina managed to score what I think is the best site on the beach at Francis Beach Campground for an overnight. Last Summer we sold the motorhome of over 20 years and purchased a used Lance 1685 trailer. I love the trailer and the ability to unhook and drive around without dragging the house along. Also, the trailer has way more room than our Motorhome with the popout. We were so thrilled that there was literally a dance floor in the center of our trailer. The kitchen was great and it was a joy to cook in a modern kitchen .
The first skill Gina and I had to learn is how to park the trailer on our sloping driveway. It takes some thinking and tire chocks. I hope I dont get forgetful and hurt myself hitching and unhitching that trailer. We filled the dip in our driveway to keep our hitch from bottoming out with these nifty rubber threshhold ramps. Hooking up a trailer to a hitch and Weight Distribution hitch on a slope if a complicated thing but I think with some practice, it will be routine.
There are some new skills I needed to learn with a trailer vs RV. For one, Ive learned how to use a load balancing hitch and tune trailer brakes. I really like the Anderson Weight Distribution hitch. Although some say that my light trailer doesn’t need a Weight Distribution hitch, I feel better that it on back there. Cranking the lift higher makes removing the Anderson Hitch chains easier. The tension chains tighten when the hitch is loaded.
The towing capacity of our 2018 F 150 Laredo is 13500 lbs. I think our trailer runs about 3000 lbs loaded so the overhead is refreshing. It doesn’t feel that much different than the boats at twice the weight towing. I bought some side mirror extensions to see around the edges and I mounted a WIFI camera at the back to transmit me backup info to my phone or ipad. Pulling a trailer is more comfortable than riding inside an RV while driving. It’s so much quieter and way easier to maintain. I feel more confident pulling a light trailer as well since I pull a boat every weekend fishing at the lake.
Camping on the beach at Francis Beach Campground even for the night is a blast. Half Moon Bay as great restaurants and seafood markets. The beach often has great perch and striper fishing as well as snare crab fishing from the beach. It takes us less than an hour to pick up the trailer from storage and drive it to the campground . If we dont feel like cooking, great local restaurant close. We can enjoy a good meal before a campfire on the beach. The campground has superb internet and cell service as well as hot pay showers. I feel like if I had an emergency at the office, we could make it there in an hour. Our trailer is rigged with a Winegard Togo Roadlink LTE Router and WiFi extender to give us unlimited internet for a year for a flat rate of $300.00 We can Run Streaming TV through it and watch our home cable through Slingbox or use a FireTV or Chromcast to watch streaming internet TV. It not hard to find TVs that only work on streaming services these days. We installed a Vizio Series D streaming TV in the motorhome from Costco for less than $200. The TV also supports Airplay by default with enables us to watch media from my phone in HD resolution on the tv if no internet is available.
I use to run only 12 volt appliances in the motorhome until we bought an EcoFlow Delta. The Delta is a Lithium Battery has a capacity of 1300Wh and an output of 1800W. When fully charged, it can run the tv for 30 hours straight. The amazing thing about the Delta is that it can be charged from zero to 80% in an hour (totally full in two hours). It also can be recharged with solar panels. It is lightweight at 30 lbs and it has six AC outlets, two USB C ports and a large LCD screen that tells you how much battery you have left in Hours and Percentage. It’s hard to believe that in my lifetime, such battery technology might be doubled and smaller. Check out “Solid State Batteries“. Battery Technology will allow us to harness solar energy at night and possibly use all the Electric Vehicles charging overnight as a feed to the grid. The solution to lowering green house gasses is right around the corner. In two week we will return. I made a long list of things I need to change and add. Life fishing, half the fun is in the prep!
Love that place. Looks like site 17 we like #19 due to having windows out the back. We need to meet up some weekend. Tight Lines