Picking Her Up
/Here We Go!
June 22 - 24, 2018
We packed up our clothes, some of our camping equipment, a bit of food and the dog and headed to London on Friday afternoon. It’s a LONG drive to London from Ottawa, but luckily, we missed the Toronto traffic and were able to sail through on the 401. Mental note, the new car is a fast and a really smooth drive, making it very easy to drive too quickly!
It wouldn’t have been an a real camping trip (even though we camped in the Can Am RV parking lot!), without lots of rain. We arrived in London in both the dark and the rain, but for once, we didn’t need to worry that we might get wet on our tent floor, since we have a trailer now!!
One of the best things we did was bring our own bedding. The bed in our little 16 ft Holly, is pretty cozy, so soft sheets, our own pillows and our duvet made sleeping a little easier (although, I was so excited, that I had a little trouble sleeping!).
Happy to have shelter in the rain
At home, Daisy was still sleeping in her crate at night, but we knew that she wouldn’t sleep in the crate without scratching and whining, so we didn’t bother even bringing it. We did bring a cozy bed for her, but that turned out to be a waste! We pulled the privacy screen across so she couldn’t see us and it took all of 30 seconds for her to wiggle underneath and jump up on the bed. So, our already cozy bed is now shared with our little Daisy!
It rained most of the night and during Chris’ walk with Daisy, but had mostly stopped by the time the car went in to be worked on. One of the things we didn’t bring with us was coffee, so Chris went on a short coffee/breakfast run first.
Prepping the hitch and brakes
We spent many months, emails and phone calls, deciding on our tow vehicle. We had some pretty specific requirements and CanAm was immensely helpful and patient with all of our questions and concerns. But, this meant our hitch set up is quite customized and it took most of the day to install.
We spent the day learning all about our new baby. After a few hours, I felt a little like I was having information overload! We also had a chance to figure out where some things should go and tried tidying up a little. Good thing, because ours was the only 16 ft on the lot and there were a few customers that were interested in seeing her, so we gave a few “tours” in the afternoon. We enjoyed chatting with people about camping and Airstreams! We spent the later part of the day learning how to hitch and unhitch our new trailer. Thank goodness we remembered to use the iPad to video the process! We’ve used the video over and over again since!
Hanging out with the big kids!
The sun was starting to go down when we were finally finished test driving, tweaking and having our questions answered. I’m sure the staff we dealt with were all as tired as we were, but there was never a time where we felt at all rushed. We said our goodbyes and had the parking lot to ourselves.
We wanted to get off to an early (for us) start on Sunday, so we stayed hitched all night. It still took us an hour to get the trailer ready and plug in the electrical (this shouldn’t have taken long, but we were still new and trying to be sure we were doing it right! Again, thank goodness for the video!).
More rain!
We drove home via the 401 in the pouring rain, for a good part of the day. Being new to trailer towing, Chris stayed in the slow lane and kept his speed between 90 and 100 km/hr. Did I tell you how much I love trailer driving Chris? So much less stress than when there’s no trailer behind us:)
It finally stopped raining and after a few stops along the way, we made it home and had to begin the process of backing into our driveway (which only took about 25 min!), unhitching and unpacking. And then falling into bed with exhaustion.
Home Sweet Home!
Look what a great job Chris did getting Holly into our driveway so that we could still park in it!
We’re SO excited to begin our adventures with our new Airstream, Holly!
Ottawa - London - Ottawa
Towing: 634 km
Driving: 1,268 km
