The Loadout

I may have to give up my man card, but I didn’t really want to tow a trailer across the country. I can tow a trailer. I was hauling trailers full of cattle from the age of 16 on. I’ve towed a too-heavy boat from Missouri to Lake Powell and back. I can drive towing a trailer.

But a couple of years back when I bought our little camper, even though it’s a mere 21 feet long, I watched my fuel economy go from around 23 mpg to 7 mpg on the tow home. I was impressed that the fuel pump on my truck was capable of evacuating the gas from my tank that quickly.  It’s a tall camper, and it doesn’t exactly glide through the air.

But perhaps even more than the horrible mileage, I wanted to be able to stop for the night at a motel, then go out for dinner somewhere, without worrying about parking something as long as a school bus, or going through a big ritual of unhooking and hooking up every day. We bought a camper shell specifically for the move, and I was really hoping everything fit.

It did – but just. We had probably about 2,000 pounds of stuff I can’t quite explain loaded floor to ceiling in our 5 ½ bed. There was no seeing through the camper shell. On the back, we had our four-bike rack, perfectly positioned to make the backup camera completely useless and make the truck about six feet longer. But I wasn’t towing a trailer, so I wasn’t complaining.

The back seat was 2/3 filled by our dog Mary, and the other 1/3 went to our cooler and overnight bags. You couldn’t call it traveling light, but in terms of actually uprooting ourselves and moving, it seemed like we were doing well.