Hitching up..

A couple of weeks ago, I was sitting here thinking about leaving for Arizona, when it dawned on me that Loyce would want to take her new Honda CRV and that we would also take the car towing stuff in case we had to tow the car for some reason.

You can't use what you don't have with you.  So all the Toad stuff will be in the trailer, along with the tubs of fabric so my dear wife can do her sewing crafts.  And, Oh by the way there will be a scooter in there too.  You know over in one corner......

Since we do not intend to double tow, Loyce will just follow in her car.  But still, once you get there, there is the problem of parking the trailer in the exact spot that the park spotters say you have to on your lot.

It is about impossible to back up the little trailer with the motor home.  You can only see it in the camera TV next to the radio on the dash, and by the time you see it in the mirrors it is way off kilter  to one side or the other.

A couple of years ago we had installed a hitch on the back of the Camry, so we could just back the thing around with the car once we arrived.  The Camry will pull the trailer, but I wouldn't want to do it for long distances because it is just a 4 cylinder car and it is too much for it.

Again we now have the CRV and it has no hitch, so I found one on an ebay store and ordered it.  Arriving a few days later, Loyce wondered who or how we could get it put on.  She stashed it in the garage, thinking I was nuts.

But this afternoon I installed it.  You have to take the rubber mounts down that hold up the muffler and that caused more trouble than actually putting on the hitch.  Using a pry bar and a really big screw driver and some bad language I eventually got it off of the mounts.

I knew I couldn't lift the entire hitch by myself, so I started to find stuff to put under it.  A paint can and  a brick.  Then I went for the coat hanger and made some hangers to grab each end and pull them up into place.  Slowly it was raised until I got a bolt started into the nut plate.  Then a second, and from that point it was no problem.  Well until that pesky bunch of rubber mounts on the muffler had to be dealt with again.

But we have a hitch on the back of the CRV and that makes us one little step closer to leaving.  If we had to, we could hook up the car as a Toad, and then put the trailer on behind the car to double tow.  The car wouldn't be pulling the weight and most of the braking would be the motorhome.  Still that would require that things be in the go slow mode until you got the feeling for how it all worked together.

Retired Rod