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Extended Camping Trip
Hi Everyone!
We just returned home from camping from May 1 to May 22 in our new Fleetwood 2701SS. We "worked" as campground hosts at the Crystal Lake Campground in the Northern Highlands-American Legion State Forest in northern Wisconsin between Boulder Junction and Sayner. We were supposed to be a source of helpful information as our work duties and do some light cleanup around the campground. There were not a lot of campers in the campground over this time because winter seems to be hanging on too long.
There are flush toilets and showers at this campground but most of the toilets are vault toilets and hand pumped water. As hosts we were given electricity, but no sewer or water. We had to move off site once to fill up the fresh water tank. Good practice for backing up! Later I got a 6 gallon water tote to fill up the fresh water tank.
We used, 2 of us, the toilet for liquids only, and the 25 gallon black water tank did not completely fill. There are two grey water tanks, maybe 25 gallons each, and they got 2/3 full. I dumped all three tanks as we left the campground for our trip home.
This is a beautiful campground! It is on a small, spring fed lake, with a sandy beach all around the lake. It is completely in the state forest so you can legally walk around the lake on the beach. We saw loons, of course, but also eagles and bears and and coyotes and wolves in the area. Plus lots of white-tail deer. (We heard the coyotes and saw bear and wolf scat.) There is a beautiful paved bike trail connecting this campground to Sayner and Boulder Junction. I rode my bike to these towns to buy newspapers and do email at the libraries.
Issues:
1. The outside gas grill fell off of the trailer. The bracket was not attached very well.
2. The screen door latch is attached very flimsy. Two sheet metal screws into thin aluminum with a bit of rubber "stick-um" to help hold it in place. (The screen door should open with the outside door when they connected together. If the screen door latch gets bent or loose you need to use two hand to open the door, one hand on the screen door latch and the other on the outside door latch.)
3. The Concertone radio, what else! Our problem with it was that if we were listening to an FM station for all afternoon, the reception would get garbled and unlistenable over time, strong station or weak station. This did not happen with TV or DVD sound.
Carlisle tires. We still have the original equipment tires and we had no problems with them at all. I made sure that they were inflated to 50 psi and I kept my speed to about 60 mph maximum. The total trip up and back was 520 miles.
Small Toyota Tundra. We have a 2005 with a 4.7 L V-8. It pulled just fine. Of course there are no mountains in northern Wisconsin so that was not an issue. We have a Load Leveler Equalizer Hitch. I did not get a good fuel mileage number but it was about at 10-11. Unloaded, by itself, the truck gets 18-20, driven moderately, on the highway. I did not use the cruise control; it was too binary, either roaring on or off.
After we got home I discovered that we have an electrical heating element in our water heater. This is from reading postings on this forum.
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