Camping at Chatfield

I was initially planning to leave the camper on the back of the truck all fishing season. It recently occurred to me that that will be a huge pain in the ass. Most of the season I will be camping a few miles away from the boat ramp. This means every morning I would have to lower the roof on the camper, unhook power, etc all before I head to the lake. This would not be much fun at 5:30am. Instead I have decided to just take the camper off the truck when I first get to the site. Most of the time I will be staying at a site for two weeks, so taking off and loading the camper once per two weeks is not a big deal.

To help stabilize and support the camper when it is off the truck I bought some jacks and stable sticks. Diane and I tried them out at Chatfield Saturday. The camper was very stable, even when we were in the cab over sleeping. Getting the camper back on the truck was not too hard either. My new bumper camera setup made getting the camper centered pretty easy. The only thing that kind of sucked was not having electric jacks. I had to use my drill to control the jacks and that make the whole process a bit slow.

Taking the Camper to Cherry Creek

To get familiar with the new camper I plan on staying at Cherry Creek State Park three or four times before fishing season. Saturday was our first night staying the camper since we brought it home. I unloaded the camper a week or so ago so I could have airbags and a heavy duty sway bar installed on the truck. So my first job was to get the camper back on the truck. This was my first time loading the camper and it was very challenging!1 To load the camper correctly the camper needs to be square and centered in the bed. This is much harder than it sounds... I did finally get it, it was not exactly centered but close enough. I bought a framers laser to help me out next time. I hope it makes the job a little easier.

Once the truck was loaded everything else was easy and fun. It got pretty cold at night, probably in the teens, but we stayed plenty warm. I slept very well.

The truck seems to perform a lot better with the airbags and sway bar. The real test will be when a diesel blows buy me at 75mph.

Sam is excited

Sam C [1:32 PM]
started holding my pole last night

felt good

Jason Davis [1:32 PM]
er...wat

Sam C [1:32 PM]
just jerking the tip to practice