Living the entire summer in a '23 ft trailer with 2 kids means every centimeter of space is taken up! The boys are outgrowing this sleeping arrangement as I speak, but we managed to make it work one last summer! The couch folds out and the arm has storage for their games. Under couch storage holds toys, tools and a first aid kit. In the galley we always put the most important stuff on the top shelf
Systems and Running Gear
We have two solar panels, we don't have access to electric where we do most of our camping and don't want to deal with a generator. We thought with almost 24 hours of daylight Alaska would be the perfect place to utilize it, however there was often a lot of cloud cover and the solar just couldn't keep up even though we were only recharging a sat phone and a couple walkie talkies and running the heat fan periodically at night. We ended up getting a generator when our batteries couldn't recover. We are still researching a solution to this and hope to ditch the generator.
Other Information
State Forests Rule! All this beauty & quiet for only $11! This one's near Glacier National Park. We "staged" ourselves here the night before we wanted to score a space in the park early the next morning.
Who says only kids melt down? Your bearings will too, if you don't get them packed in the right place. Count the wheels, we lost one right outside Chicago after having them packed near Grand Coulee Dam, Washington. It fell off at a gas station right after we got off the highway, how lucky were we? The trailer drove fine the entire time, we didn't notice a thing. We got the axle replaced and repacked the bearings twice since with smooth sailing. We are upgrading to a 25' both for more room, and to escape the chore of needing to repack every 5K miles.
Tow Vehicle
2011 GMC Yukon XL
This car is a work horse. Our 23' trailer (GVWR) is 6,000 lbs, the GMC towed it happily across the country and back twice, Alaska, too. It can tow up to 8200 lb. With the limited storage of our trailer it was nice to have all that room in the back.
We bought it used with 40K miles, and it came set up for towing with a trailer brake controller right on the steering column.
I only wish it ran on water.
Impressive!!!!!
I have a 23' Flying Cloud, too. Did Alaska in 2011. I'm impressed that you did it with children. Wow!!!!
__________________ Benjisgal WBCCI #1122 Top of Georgia Unit #52 “I don’t want to get to the end of my life and find that I lived just the length of it; I want to have lived the width of it as well.”
---Diane Ackerman (Author, poet, essayist, naturalist)
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