Old Colorado City, Colorado Springs, August 22, 2004, teardrop trailer

There was some sort of festival in progress the day that we visited Old Colorado City.

(click on image for larger version)

Gallery: Cripple Creek, Old Colorado City, Manitou Springs, etc. – August 22, 24, & 27, 2004

See more of our Image Galleries at Haw Creek.

A post in a Seattle Times blog, nwautos, discusses four of today’s crop of small camping trailers.

If you think of travel trailers as mobile motels for the retired set, think again. Their popularity is surging among families and adventurers wanting to make the most of the road-trip destinations available in our vast and beautiful backyard.

They are cheaper than RVs, far greener, can go pretty much anywhere, and can be towed by nearly any truck or SUV and, in some cases, even small cars. This new generation of trailers is hipper, lighter and more agile than ever before.

The four camping trailers in the post are

• SylvanSport GO
• Compact Camping Concepts Explorer Box Trailer
• Thor Industries T@B
• True North Freelance Outdoor Support Vehicle

Read the entire nwautos post: Car campers: Travel trailers are getting smaller, cooler and more multifunctional.

The economy is loosening up and people seem to be changing the way they vacation. These, along with other factors, are resulting in improved RV sales, according to an article in the Denver Business Journal.

Recreational vehicle (RV) dealers report big sales increases, and RV show organizers say there’s been higher attendance at their events in early 2010.

The number of RV units shipped from national manufacturers to dealers rose by 116 percent from January 2009 to January 2010, from 7,300 units to 15,800, according to the Reston, Va.-based Recreation Vehicle Industry Association (RVIA). The numbers have spurred RVIA officials to predict shipments will increase 30 percent this year, a predictor of vehicle sales.

That growing interest in motorized homes and non-motorized trailers was visible at two Denver-area RV shows this year. Attendance at January’s Colorado RV Adventure Travel Show at the Colorado Convention Center rose by 24 percent over last year. And it was up 14 percent at March’s Colorado RV, Sports, Boat and Travel Show at the National Western Complex, said Vilma Fraguada, regional manager for Affinity Events, organizer of both shows.

Read the rest of the Denver Business Journal article: RV dealers expect much better sales this year

RV Manufacturer content pages are being moved from Haw Creek to new RV Manufacturer pages at rv.exit78.com

The first of the new pages, Class A Motorhome and Motor Coach Manufacturers, has been completed at the new location and the old page has been updated. Eventually, all new and updated content will be at the new location, but, for the near term, updates for the RV Manufacturer pages will continue to be made in both locations.

I will be quite busy for the next few days so posting of material from our Colorado trip will be delayed.

Most of my posts have been delayed, partially as a result of not being in a location with wifi or, when we do have wifi, having difficulties with it. I will continue to post material from our trip to Colorado. The posts will be in sequence and will have a date appropriate for the activities and photos being described and/or used.

We used to use a portable satellite dish for internet access. It could be a real pain to set up, but, when it was up, it was only a little slower than our DSL at home.

When we went to a smaller recreational vehicle, our storage options became much more limited. On our first long trip, we took along the portable system, but I forgot the alignment instructions. We still had to deal with the dish when we moved stuff around and it took up a significant portion of our storage space. When we went on our trip in May, we left the dish at home and decided to rely on wireless whenever it was available.

Unfortunately, the wireless circuits in Karen’s computer stopped working. We’ve tried two different USB wireless adapters for her computer. The results have varied from campground to campground and wireless location to wireless location.

Some of the places we’ve stopped at have had a great wireless connection. The KOA in Ouray, Colorado, however, is terrible for wireless. It would run just fine and, then, it would seem to stop completely or just plain crawl very slowly. I guess it has some kind of limiter that limits traffic if too much bandwidth has been used. However, in today’s internet world, where most websites are going to have a combination of pictures and text, that is just NOT satisfactory.

It was certainly more enjoyable when we were in the National Parks or Corps of Engineers parks where there was NO wireless available at all.

I will be replying to most of the comments when I get a chance, especially those who have asked questions.

The bad part of this trip, though, was looking forward to going back to work at the end.

Note: While I will not be posting material from the Colorado trip for a few days, other pre-published material will be posted.

This post is being simultaneously published on Exit78 and Haw Creek Out ‘n About.

Ozark Highlands Trail along Lake Fort Smith, October 21, 2008, Arkansas

Check out Lake Fort Smith State Park Info and Gallery

I am in the process of gradually moving all of the Haw Creek content pages, except for the photo galleries, into a blog format.  Since I spend more time working with blogs, it makes more sense just to work with one publishing platform.  It will take a while to get it done, but hopefully, it’ll be somewhat transparent to site visitors.

The Haw Creek blog will be devote to topics related to camping and RVing.  This blog, Haw Creek Out ‘n About, on the other hand will be used for travel related content.  I’ll be publishing more material here related to places that we’ve been and online reference resources associated with them.  I’ll also be publishing resource material for places that we either will be visiting or are considering visiting.  And, of course, I will continue to publish some of my photography from the trips that we have taken.

As part of the process of change, this blog will also get a bit of a facelift.

This winter season, I didn’t winterize our motorhome right away.  We had tentative plans to do a few weekend trips if the winter turned out as mild as the weather service said it was going to be.  Unfortunately,  the weather service got that one wrong.

With very cold weather forcast early in January, I got the owner’s manual out and started trying to figure out how to winterize the water system of our new Navion iQ.  With the fifth wheel camper, all I had to do was drain the water system, drain the hot water heater, and fill the traps with RV antifreeze.  With the iQ, the options were to blow the water lines out with air or fill the lines with anti-freeze — and, of course, drain the tanks, drain the hot water heater and fill the traps with RV anti-feeze.

The first problem was draining the hot water heater.  The owner’s manual shows a picture of the drain plug and says to use a socket to take it off.  Unfortunately, there is a copper pipe running in front of the plug and there is no way to fit a socket on it.  Fortunately, I had another wrench that fit.  The funny thing is that the picture in the manual where it tells you to use a socket has exactly the same configuration as our iQ.

The next thing I had to do was figure out where all of the valves and connctions were located.  It sure would have been nice if they were all located in one central location with easy instructions on how to do it.  Naturally, that wasn’t the case.

I found all but one of the valves I needed.  The description, “Behind louvered access grill on lower face of refrigerator cabinet” was clear and that’s where two of the valves were located.  The water heater bypass valve, however, was “behind panel on rear side of galley cabinet.”  I looked and looked, but that description just wasn’t making any since.

The cold weather wasn’t due for a couple of days, so I decided to stop where I was at and come back to it the next day.  That evening it came to me.  What if the valve was behind a panel on the inside rear of the cabinet?

Sure enough it was.

The heater bypass valve bypasses the hot water heater and the hot water heater is drained to eliminate the need to fill the hot water heater up with RV antifreeze.

One of the valves is winterization valve, which has a long section of poly tubing connected to it.  The tubing is stuck down into a bottle of antifreeze, the valve is opened and the RVs pump is turned on.  The pump will be taking a suction on the bottle of antifreeze.  All of the valves in the camper are operated to to make sure that antifreeze comes out of each faucet, from both the hot position and the cold position, which now that I think about it, I’m not sure that I did.  Oh well, too late now.

For our camper, this took a little more than a gallon of antifreeze.

When we get ready to go again after all of this cold weather, I don’t want to have to take the panel back off to change the valve back to its normal position, so, while I was still connected to the second bottle of antifreeze, I switched it to normal and allowed the pump to put the rest of the antifreeze into the hot water heater.  This way, I’m sure that the short section of line between the valve and the hot water heater is filled and that any residual water in the hot water heater is mixed with the antifreeze.

In revising the “Haw Creek” website, I moved some RV content to a new page: Fifth Wheel Camping Trailers – Some History.

A fifth wheel trailer is a camper that is designed to be towed using a special hitch mounted in the bed of a pickup truck.  In this arrangement, the trailer is attached over the truck’s rear axle and wheels, which then supports a significant portion of the trailer’s weight.

The phrase fifth wheel refers to the connection of the trailer to the hitch in the bed of the truck. –more–

Image from flicker
by Ergo Martini

Sand and surf in LA area for less than $40 a night – At Dockweiler State Beach in Playa del Rey campers get an occasional whiff of a nearby sewage treatment plant and the regular roar of planes from LA International.  But they also have sand and ocean views for a bargain price in winter.  Los Angeles Times

Fleetwood Enterprise Inc. stock drops to an all-time low – While the recreational vehicle manufacturer was showing off its new hybrid RVs at the National RV Trade Show in Louisville, its stock dropped to 12 cents a share.  Inland Valley Bulletin