Winter is Coming – Settling the Trailer in for the Winter

Winter RV Camping – In the Mountains…

I always try to arrive at my winter destination a few weeks before the weather turns stormy and cold. Seeing that I choose to spend winter near great ski areas in the mountains, and not on some concrete pad in southern Arizona, its important to “beat the weather.” Sometimes that plan doesn’t work out as smoothly as I hope!

Repairs to my Outdoors RV Trailer & Staying ahead of Winter

I knew this year was going to be interesting as I was searching for a new ski area at which to instruct AND I had an appointment with the manufacturer of my 5th wheel (Outdoors RV “ORV” in La Grande, Or.) to do some significant work during the week of October 29.

For those of you who know me, you know I’ve spoken very highly about ORV ever since I started looking for a new trailer a few years ago. The fact that mine ended up needing repairs does not change my view about them, in fact, if anything, its been raised. The repairs centered around my roof and one side wall on a slide. Both resulted from human error during construction.

One could take the position that “it should not happen”, but knowing how a workplace with a large number of employees operates, there’s always some workers who are less than optimal. Dealing with them is managements challenge.

My concern & yours should only be how the manufacturer handles it when problems arise. In the case of ORV, they “owned it” and “made it right.” All I had to do was give them a few days to work on my trailer and by Friday Nov. 2nd, I was back “on the road.”

From La Grande, Or. to Jackson, Wy. in about 24 hours – with trailer in tow… (heading into a Winter Storm Watch on Nov 3)

This leads me to my video – the footage was created on Nov. 3 as I crossed Idaho knowing there was a winter storm watch issued for my destination (effective early Sunday morning Nov. 4) – so, my goal was to arrive at my winter destination BEFORE several inches of snow made a mess of my campsite!

Mission accomplished! You can see in the video below what its like to cross Idaho. I started in Caldwell (near the Oregon border) and ended up near Jackson, Wy. just under 400 miles east of Caldwell.

 

Despite the limited daylight hours of early November near the 45th parallel, I arrived with about 2 hours of remaining daylight – this enabled me to skirt my camper and begin to stake the skirting down. To learn more about the skirting I use – click HERE.

 

The first piece of the skirting laid out – ready to be snapped and buckled into place.

A few minutes later – viola, done! (Of course it needs to be tucked in & staked.)

The entire project was completed before darkness and about 1/2 the stakes were driven into the ground. More need to be applied, and well, today is the 7th, they just arrived via (who else) Amazon!

First Cross Country Session of the Season

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Its November 8 as I complete this post. I just returned from my first cross country “session” here in Teton County. I skied up a linear trail (one way in/out) called Game Creek – and yes, there’s actually a creek you slide by as you gradually climb up a deep valley. The climb is gentle (at least as far as I got), probably about 1-3% grade. Of course it reverses on the way back. I use cross country skiing as a major part of my cardio routine – especially pre-season and with the 6-10 inches of fresh snow over the past few days, conditions were surprisingly good for this early in the season.

Hey, thanks for visiting with me today. Remember, if you are thinking about getting a camper, I have a great service HERE, and if you wish to follow my me and my posts, you are welcome to join my FB Page or FB Group or MeWe Group and MeWe Page. The groups are great places to interact with other RV’ers – get advice, share thoughts and more!