This is part of the 5-year plan, which included Deryl backing away from her job at Barron Chiropractic, selling The Wolery (the house in Carlisle), and moving to New Hampshire.
The Grand Plan:
Like any expedition, be it by foot, wing, sail, steam, jet propulsion, or rocket power, success starts with planning and preparation.
This is the case with us. Rob and Deryl have spent years planning, and preparing to explore more of the United States. We spent our vacation time exploring this amazing country traveling by motorcycle. Each trip made us more sure that we wanted more time to explore each area we visited.
This page will cover some of the aspects of the planning process.
Why a Trailer?
The first step was to decide how we would travel. Motorcycles are lots of fun, but we are limited in the amount we carry. At first we traveled by driving between motels. Staying in motels is limiting, in that you have to unpack and repack every stay, eat at restaurants, and what the beds might be like vary. Some times you get a good nights sleep, the next motel, not so much. The expense of staying in motels adds up quickly.
In 2009, we tried a brave experiment, and Rob towed a small storage trailer behind his motorcycle. The trailer added the ability for us to carry camping gear. That enabled us to spend 9 nights at the Buffalo Chip campground in Sturgis, South Dakota. By camping, we were able to reduce room costs, and also enabled us to eat a bit healthier by making many of our own meals.
Traveling by cars helps but still we are quite limited in the amount we can carry, and we are still locked into the Motel or Camp mode.
We tried using our 14 foot utility trailer towed behind the old truck. That enabled us to go further in a day than riding the motorcycles, however at the end of the day we would need to stop at a motel, or unload the motorcycles, and set up camp.
This led us to the idea of buying a recreational vehicle of some type so that the set up camp, and unpacking/packing would hopefully be reduced.
Conclusion, Buy a 5th Wheel Trailer.
The pages that follow cover the details of how we went about going from a concept to use: