Winter Camp

Greetings from my Winter Camp! As you can see, I'm in a nice, open lot in a beautifully wooded campground. I'm quite happy with my location for the winter, just a few minutes from "downtown" Anacortes in one direction and roads leading to the larger cities of Burlington, Bellingham and Seattle in the other.



As you can also see, I've completely restructured my Road Rig -- aka "World Headquarters of Me Right Now" -- consisting of a new truck and a new trailer. This restructuring has involved a pretty complicated set of variables, constraints and transactions -- too much to explain in full -- but here's the gist of it:

I've downsized my truck to a Ford F-150, basically a smaller, lighter, more nimble of version of Darth's F-350 stature. Accordingly, I've named my new truck Anakin, a reference which I hope is fairly obvious. He's got plenty of interior room and comfort, plus all the modern technology with which I am trying to become familiar. He doesn't have the same hauling or towing capacity as Darth, but his twin-turbo EcoBoost engine has plenty of pep and power to meet my needs going forward. So far, I'm pretty impressed and happy with him.

Downsizing my truck prompted me to also downsize from my Arctic Fox camper and sled. Since there's no way I could ever put the camper in the back of my new truck, I could never use it as a truck camper again. Leaving it permanently on the sled and hauling that combined rig around all the time doesn't make sense either, mostly because it is very heavy for its size.

So, I traded in the combined camper and sled for a new, traditional travel trailer. At 20 feet long, it's just about the same overall length as my old rig, but it is less than half the weight and easily within the towing capacity of Anakin. It's also got substantially more interior space which -- after a little customization -- should suit me very well going forward.

The past month has been disruptive, exhausting and expensive for me, but I feel good about where I am now. I don't have the same configuration options or overall capabilities with my new rig, but it's lighter, more comfortable, lower impact and less expensive to operate. I'm looking forward to being in my winter camp for the next few months and will post current events as warranted.

I expect to hit the road again early next spring. Meanwhile… Stay tuned!