Utah Moab Trip 4/27/19-5/5/19

@lowranger, tell me about camping at Moab? Do you guys go out for dinner or stay in camp and grill?

One month, are you guys ready? I got my trailer ready and my camper is done except for I want to thoroughly clean it. I cleaned all of the bedding and cushions. I pulled apart all of the upholstery, and washed it, and put it back together, now I want to super clean everything else to like brand new. I want to then practice towing it around.

I am in the middle of putting airbags on my tow vehicle. and I am considering putting my onboard air on the truck also, if I can get it all done this week. I plan on towing the Jeep on the trailer this weekend to the local ORV park to practice towing the trailer with the Jeep on it. Just little stuff left over to do now after the air bags.
We do both, depending how you are feeling after a long or short day on the trail.
Before we had the motorhome my wife and I rented a place that had a gas BBQ in the back. So one evening everyone came over with their food and threw what ever they had on the grill. Couple of times getting off the trail we didn't feel like cooking, we just stopped in town and had dinner. If you feel like just going back to your camp and relax and have dinner alone you can do that too, and if you want meet up for drinks later at someone's place.
All kinds of options. I think we only ate out in town twice last time. Nice grocery store there in town if you need to pick up a few things.
 
One month, are you guys ready?
Yeah, about all I have left is installing the CB and removing the hard top. I need to build a hoist in my garage, I'm tired of having to drag it back to the shed every year.

Other than that I should be good... Trailer is GTG, the Jeep should fare well I think.

I plan on towing the Jeep on the trailer this weekend to the local ORV park to practice towing the trailer with the Jeep on it.

That is ALWAYS a smart move. I picked up a new car hauler last year and did the same. It's good to get it all configured ahead of time.
 
We do both, depending how you are feeling after a long or short day on the trail.
Before we had the motorhome my wife and I rented a place that had a gas BBQ in the back. So one evening everyone came over with their food and threw what ever they had on the grill. Couple of times getting off the trail we didn't feel like cooking, we just stopped in town and had dinner. If you feel like just going back to your camp and relax and have dinner alone you can do that too, and if you want meet up for drinks later at someone's place.
All kinds of options. I think we only ate out in town twice last time. Nice grocery store there in town if you need to pick up a few things.

Cool I look forward to doing both!
 
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Ok so I am a moron!

I was loading up my Jeep on my trailer to go and learn how to drag it around the city tomorrow for practice. I loaded it and then unhooked my trailer from my Jeep so I could take some tongue weights. I got it where I wanted and raised it back up to put on my truck. I backed the truck up to the trailer and it wasn't quite high enough so I raised it a bit more and my damn Jeep rolled right off of the back of the trailer, and pushed the trailer right into my tailgate 3 times. Took out the cowling around the handle then a nice dent scratch as it scraped it coming back down then swung back then pow right into the tailgate again, then swung back and bashed my license plate dented the crap out of that then landed on the bumper.

All I could do is watch in horror. It was so loud it sounded like a traffic accident. Luckily it had a dove tail so the jeep slipped right off unscathed. Holy crap I was right there watching this train wreck. It really wasn't cool.

Now I have it loaded on the trailer and ready to go, but my tailgate looks like I am a moron. My truck was perfect. Argh. I am kind of shaky right now. Going to take it easy tonight, and try and forget about it, and hope tomorrow is a better day.

So if you are moving your jeeps around trying to find the best place set the ebrake when you find the perfect spot. At least put it in gear. I am a moron!

83877


Jeep load fail!
 
Glad you and the Jeep are safe! Tailgate doesn’t look too bad. Was hard not to chuckle at your vivid description.

Sometimes when crazy stuff happens like that as long as everyone’s ok you just have to chalk it up to a learning experience and walk away knowing that you’ll never do that again!
 
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Glad you and the Jeep are safe! Tailgate doesn’t look too bad. Was hard not to chuckle at your vivid description.

Sometimes when crazy stuff happens like that as long as everyone’s ok you just have to chalk it up to a learning experience and walk away knowing that you’ll never do that again!

Yeah my wifee said that exact same thing, but I dropped a boat once on a boat launch loading up my boat. I don't know if I will ever learn haha, but I ate some Chinese food for dinner, and had a bit of time to calm down so I can laugh about it. Yeah the tailgate doesn't look too bad, and it still works, but the truck was perfect and now it isn't boo hoo. Oh well, I didn't pay too much for the truck and now it is a truck, so I guess it is all good. I mostly bought the truck to haul my camper and the tailgate comes off to haul the camper so when I haul my camper it is perfect again lol.
 
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Back 20 yrs ago I met my buddy for a quick round of golf at a small par 3 near our house. Buddy says: "damn your truck is clean" (think kiss of death) It was probably 8-10 yrs old.

After golf, I went to load the backhoe on my trailer:
Since the normal procedure was to drive the backhoe onto the trailer, raising the front of the trailer and possibly lifting the truck slightly. I gave the rise in the tongue no attention and drove the backhoe on. Only when the trailer didn't come down did I realize wtf I had done: I forgot to latch the trailer to the ball and now all the tongue weight (with the backhoe) was now sitting on the tailgate handle!

Now I have to reverse the process....as I gingerly try to back the tractor off (picture the tractor trying to push the trailer toward the truck) the trailer dents and scrapes the tailgate multiple times as it lowers.

Not one of my finest days.
 
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Back 20 yrs ago I met my buddy for a quick round of golf at a small par 3 near our house. Buddy says: "damn your truck is clean" (think kiss of death) It was probably 8-10 yrs old.

After golf, I went to load the backhoe on my trailer:
Since the normal procedure was to drive the backhoe onto the trailer, raising the front of the trailer and possibly lifting the truck slightly. I gave the rise in the tongue no attention and drove the backhoe on. Only when the trailer didn't come down did I realize wtf I had done: I forgot to latch the trailer to the ball and now all the tongue weight (with the backhoe) was now sitting on the tailgate handle!

Now I have to reverse the process....as I gingerly try to back the tractor off (picture the tractor trying to push the trailer toward the truck) the trailer dents and scrapes the tailgate multiple times as it lowers.

Not one of my finest days.

Glad you pointed this out, I was going to say there’s more than one way to beat the crap out of the back of your tow vehicle.
 
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Ok so I am a moron!

I was loading up my Jeep on my trailer to go and learn how to drag it around the city tomorrow for practice. I loaded it and then unhooked my trailer from my Jeep so I could take some tongue weights. I got it where I wanted and raised it back up to put on my truck. I backed the truck up to the trailer and it wasn't quite high enough so I raised it a bit more and my damn Jeep rolled right off of the back of the trailer, and pushed the trailer right into my tailgate 3 times. Took out the cowling around the handle then a nice dent scratch as it scraped it coming back down then swung back then pow right into the tailgate again, then swung back and bashed my license plate dented the crap out of that then landed on the bumper.

All I could do is watch in horror. It was so loud it sounded like a traffic accident. Luckily it had a dove tail so the jeep slipped right off unscathed. Holy crap I was right there watching this train wreck. It really wasn't cool.

Now I have it loaded on the trailer and ready to go, but my tailgate looks like I am a moron. My truck was perfect. Argh. I am kind of shaky right now. Going to take it easy tonight, and try and forget about it, and hope tomorrow is a better day.

So if you are moving your jeeps around trying to find the best place set the ebrake when you find the perfect spot. At least put it in gear. I am a moron!

View attachment 83877

Jeep load fail!

Sounds like a gutcheck moment! That really sucks dude, but we've all been there. No one got hurt, you feel like an idiot, and you'll be more thorough in the future.

A long time ago I was a young airman moving bases, and moving day came. I rented a Uhaul and a car dolly for the trip. It was hectic as hell that day, the new tenents for the place I was moving out of showed up at the same time I was trying to get out of town, my landlord was there, some friends were over to say goodbye... I was not exactly focused on the tasks at hand. I hooked up the car dolly, drove my old 3 series BMW up on it (facing forwards, rear wheels on the ground), hopped out, strapped it down and took care of everything else. I pull out through the neighborhood (you might already know where this is going) and onto the main road thinking "man, this damn Uhaul has NO balls!" I was struggling to get over 50mph going down a hill! Suddenly I hear honking. Lots of honking. I look in my sideview and see nothing but smoke. I pull over and hop out, smoke is pouring out from under the hood of my bimmer. Guess who left the fucking thing in gear?!?!? The crankcase exploded and the headers were still hot, so oil smoke was everywhere... I was livid. I reached in, put it in neutral, and drove for ten hours cursing myself while towing my newly destroyed car.

Pay attention to details!
 
Sounds like a gutcheck moment! That really sucks dude, but we've all been there. No one got hurt, you feel like an idiot, and you'll be more thorough in the future.

A long time ago I was a young airman moving bases, and moving day came. I rented a Uhaul and a car dolly for the trip. It was hectic as hell that day, the new tenents for the place I was moving out of showed up at the same time I was trying to get out of town, my landlord was there, some friends were over to say goodbye... I was not exactly focused on the tasks at hand. I hooked up the car dolly, drove my old 3 series BMW up on it (facing forwards, rear wheels on the ground), hopped out, strapped it down and took care of everything else. I pull out through the neighborhood (you might already know where this is going) and onto the main road thinking "man, this damn Uhaul has NO balls!" I was struggling to get over 50mph going down a hill! Suddenly I hear honking. Lots of honking. I look in my sideview and see nothing but smoke. I pull over and hop out, smoke is pouring out from under the hood of my bimmer. Guess who left the fucking thing in gear?!?!? The crankcase exploded and the headers were still hot, so oil smoke was everywhere... I was livid. I reached in, put it in neutral, and drove for ten hours cursing myself while towing my newly destroyed car.

Pay attention to details!
Wow that doesn't make me feel better, although I don't feel alone anymore. That sucks! It is weird when we do stuff like this, we feel shocked like this could never happen to us, but yet here we are.
 
I have a RV gate in the front of my house, but I wanted to share what it is like to get in and out of it. I smacked my trailer fender and got hung up on the city light pole. I actually had to unhook and move my truck to a different angle to get the trailer off of the pole. It did slight damage to the fender, but beat the crap out of my ego.

Now this is not a straight shot. I have to pull straight then start turning my truck to avoid the pole, but I can only slightly turn or I hit the house with the tire or the gutter with my Jeep. I have one shot at this and it has to be perfect. Today I missed it by this much!:

84087


84088


To make matters worse the neighbor is remodeling his house so there were trucks and cars everywhere.
 
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Wow! You do have to just kiss that gutter and pole. Kinda looks like that gutter has been hit before??

yeah I snagged the gutter with my toyhauler a couple of years ago. I snagged the pole with my new trailer. I also have a RV gate in my backyard too and it is just as awkward. Some day I am going to have some real land where I can just roll up anywhere easy peasy.
 
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