I am finally up to date now! Also WordPress says this is my 100th post.
Day 5 was essentially a travel day. I told Roxie we should not probably sleep in today but get a relatively early start since we had some hills to go over and I would rather do it when it is cooler. She complied, indirectly. Her back was hurting her in bed so she was up around 6am! I didn’t roll out until about 8am which is NOT sleeping in for me when traveling!
We worked on all the teardown and tow vehicle connecting. Roxie is trying to learn all the aspects about the trailer, she tells me it is in case something happens to me when traveling. I am thinking she might want to go out WITHOUT me sometimes! She still has not actually towed it on the road so that will be the dead giveaway when that happens!
We got on the road about 9:15 or 9:30. Immediately we pulled the grade up to Shasta Lake and the Pit River Bridge. After that is was a bunch of minor ups and downs until Dunsmuir which had a long steep stretch. A bit after Yreka we had another up AND down portion of road. The down portion ended up at the Randolph Collier rest area where we decided to have lunch. I always remember this rest area as a very nice one. I was teasing that California puts a nice one here to convince all visitors that the rest of the rest areas will be just like this. HA! The Klamath river runs right by it. Hiway 96 takes off there which will take you to Happy Camp (a road I would NEVER take a trailer on). Here is a pic Roxie took of the river there:
After the rest area we had more climbing but the real treat came with the descent into Ashland, OR. This is a pretty long 6% descent. Roxie doesn’t mind climbing hills with the trailer but she really doesn’t like coming down. The truck did very will, I will explain at the end. It got a little tense for her when she started smelling brakes but luckily it was someone else because I wasn’t using any.
When we were descending we could see all the smoke in the air from the Oregon fires. It got progressively worse and hotter, it seemed, the farther north we went. Medford was worse and Grants Pass was the worst. It got better after Grants Pass and is relatively clear here in Canyonville. We had some more hills until we arrived it it was all good.
My concerns for the truck have to do with the fact that it is getting older and we are taxing it more with the current trailers. The old trailer maxed out at 6300lb weight. This one will max at 10000lb even though we are only pushing 8000 in it. I can feel the extra weight going up and down the hills. The truck is 10 years old with 122000 miles on it. Some will say that is young for a diesel but this is the first year of the notorious Ford 6.0 diesel. On the flip side, I do not chip the engine, I have appropriate maintenance and I don’t push it beyond what it should be designed to do. All that said I am still on the lookout for oddities.
The performance up hills is different. No more boiling up a hill at 65mph with the 25′ trailer, barely getting out of overdrive. Now we can still get up the hill but we may go down to 50mph. Down the hill is very different. Using the tow haul mode I always had a problem keeping the 25′ at a good speed without too many RPM’s. Oddly the 31′ seems to work fantastic with tow haul and can keep us at 50-55 on a 5% grade. Not sure why.
I guess I am just being a bit worrisome about this and I should just take it as it comes.
We are now sitting outside in the cool under that stars and listing to the insects in the woods. Nice to finally get here.
