We love camping with our kids. And while we’d love to take our tent and our canoe all the time, the reality is we have a small pop-up tent trailer… and we love it just as much as our tent. (Ok, I love it just as much. Our kids would tell you the tent-trailer is better!)
We’ve had the trailer now for more than six years, and it’s been a godsend on a number of occasions. Like when we crossed Canada in six weeks, or when we went up to La Verandrye Wildlife Reserve and it rained the whole time. While it’s pretty straightforward to hook up and set up, there have been a few times where things haven’t quite gone according to plan.
I thought I’d impart our (my) six “memorable mishaps” over the last few years. Hopefully this will prevent you from making the same mistake I did (if you haven’t already!).
Lesson 1 of tent trailer camping: Keep an eye on the crank.
We were in the last stretch of our cross-Canada trip. We’d left Grundy Lake Provincial Park and had arrived to our next site in Algonquin Park, about a 400 km journey. I parked the camper, unhooked everything and opened the trunk to grab the crank to “pop-up” the trailer. But the crank was nowhere to be found. It had remained at Grundy Lake. Now what? The first solution was to ask neighbours. Surely one camper out there would have a crank I could borrow. No such luck. Seems like all camper crank systems are different, kind of like smartphone plugs.
Our camper is the style whose roof latches onto the sides, so in order to open the door, you need to lift it. I found a pair of pliers and was able to lift the roof about three inches. I crawled in and grabbed our stuff, including the tent and we were able to finish the trip that way. Thank goodness we had brought it with us.
Lesson 2 of tent trailer camping: Don’t forget the pin.
Our SUV has a hitch… of course, but it’s not a built-in hitch. That means when we don’t use the camper, we don’t have an extra foot of metal at the end of the car. That’s good. When we go camping, I just insert the hitch and secure it with a small pin… except for the time we went to Murphy’s Point Provincial Park, about a two-hour drive from Ottawa. I connected the wires, put the camper on the hitch and we were off. Miraculously, we actually made it to the campground without any mishap. We figured out the mishap when I was backing up down a hill to park the camper and everything just slid right off!
I borrowed the pin from our friend, parked the camper, and drove to Perth, to pick up a pin at a nearby Canadian Tire.
Lesson 3 of tent trailer camping: Stabilizers are important.
Our camper trailer has two little jacks at the back. They are important and keep the camper stable. If you forget to engage them, and then all climb on the bed at the back, the trailer effectively becomes a seesaw. You quickly drop and the front end goes up. Not a satisfying feeling!
Lesson 4 of tent trailer camping: Loop the wires.
The wiring system is important. It connects your car’s lights to the camper so your flashers and brake lights work. If your camper wiring is long, like ours, it’s probably a good idea to raise it off the ground more than an inch. You want some loose when you turn, but you don’t want it dragging on the ground for 60 km and shredding the whole thing, scrambling to find a garage in the middle of the countryside that a) will have the parts you need, b) will have the time to fix it there and then c) won’t charge you and arm an a leg.
Lesson 5 of tent trailer camping: Really, the wiring is important.
When heading out with your camper for the first time of the season, run a check through a couple of days before you head out. This includes tire pressure, opening up the trailer to inspect the canvas and yes, checking the wiring. Don’t wait until you are about to head out to do so. And when you find out that the wiring doesn’t work, and before calling around to see which garage is open and whether they can check it, take a couple of seconds, blow some air onto both connectors. Sometimes, it will save you a good hour and some embarrassment. It could just be that there’s a little bit of dirt preventing a full connection.
Lesson 6 of tent trailer camping: Don’t leave the computer on the camper.
When stopping on the side of the road, rummaging in the trunk for something (food, clothing, wipes, etc.), ensure to put everything back into the trunk. EVERYTHING. Don’t leave something on top of the trailer or on the propane tank platform at the front, like a computer, for instance. In particular, don’t leave a computer on the propane tank platform for more than an hour while driving through the Rocky Mountains. And if you happen to leave a computer by any chance, make sure it’s not your wife’s work computer. But if you do, make sure you are lucky enough that it doesn’t fall off and break. We (I) was lucky!
