January 27, 2018 - Things weren't exactly "perfect" our first day!

Once we were finally done at the dealership with training, orientation and familiarization of our new travel trailer (Gidget), the technician then showed us how to hitch up properly. They had set up our weight distribution hitch in a way they felt would work safely...but it was far from perfect for a variety of reasons. Short story is that the Toyota 'squatted' quite a bit, and I knew there was work I (Doug) would need to do later, on that issue...gotta learn sooner or later we guessed.

Things got far more 'interesting' when we got home with the rig. While I (Doug) had visualized all week long on how I was going to back into the RV parking area at our home, what my 'inexperienced' self found, was that the entire area appeared to have mysteriously shrunk when our Coachman Travel Trailer (Gidget) arrived home. (see picture)

Adding to this dilemma was that we were backing onto "pea" gravel, which readily moves around when 5500+ pounds of RV are rolling on it. As if that wasn't tough enough...I had added cinder blocks to 'level out' the area...one of which broke when the weight of the trailer rolled over it and created a serious close call when the trailer nearly hit our house when it started 'rocking' as a result. The other problem was that the decorative line of bricks, about an inch high, separating our cement driveway from the RV parking...only added to the instability.

Fortunately we have great (and experienced) friends and neighbors who were all actively taking part in what for me, had become a very stressful situation and could have easily put a black spot to our days' excitement and our RV dreams early on.

So as you can see, our 'learning' started the very first day! Thankfully we had watched many experienced folks on YouTube like Keep Your Daydream, Long Long Long Honeymoon, RV Odd Couple and many others, which despite the 'drama', helped us out immensely. A huge thanks goes out to the many RV YouTubers out there, for sharing their hard earned experience.

We will soon post (finally) our first year in "Gidget"...but you can go to our YouTube channel "Thriving Happily Ever After" and see our newly uploaded video, which gives a montage of our 2018 travels. It would be great if you would "like" & "subscribe" to our channel, because we have a lot of footage we're going to be posting very soon.

May God bless you with fair weather and safe travels, and may you always be Thriving Happily Ever After!