Practicing...

We’re SO new to towing a trailer. Like, we’ve never done this ever before. We’ve camped, but only with a tent. And a box on top of the car. And a couple of kids. But our Airstream adventures won’t include our kids - they’re not interested (what?!).

It had been a few weeks since our trip home from London and Holly was patiently waiting for her next adventure. And we desperately needed practice hitching, unhitching and backing up. As with anything, the longer you go without doing it, the harder it is to overcome the fear of messing something up or doing it wrong!

It only took us about 4 hours to “prepare” Holly. We knew we wanted to just do a short day drive to try things out, so we spent the morning in the driveway, reading manuals, turning things on and off, lighting the stove, opening and closing things, flushing the toilet, running the water… you get it.

We spent another hour, at least, hitching her up. The first time on our own was so hard, but the video we took at Cam-Am RV was a life-saver!

We live close by to the BEST coffee shop!

No trip of ours begins without a stop at our favourite coffee shop, so it only made sense to introduce Holly. Lucky for us, the parking in front was empty (a rarity!) and we were able to pull up close by.

It took about two hours to get to Smiths Falls. We didn’t take the major highway, but instead opted for the smaller 2-lane highways, which were not busy and pleasant to drive. One of the things we forgot to do, was to get gas before hitching up. We had trouble finding a gas station since there had been a gas shortage earlier in the week and the first one we went to first didn’t have the right type of gas. Of course, murphy’s law says there’s never a gas station close by on the route, so we ended up going out of our way to find a gas station and then had to figure out how to maneuver in it! Baby steps…

We finally arrived in Smiths Falls , parked on a side street, took a walk around Victoria Park. By then it was late afternoon and SUPER hot, so we headed back home. It didn’t take quite as long to get home, thank goodness!

We accomplished a lot on this day: we learned about the many different systems that our small bambi has (who knew such a tiny trailer had so many!), we figured out how to hitch up and unhitch all by ourselves, we managed a gas station while hitched (mental note: next time, fill up the car before hitching up!) and we went out for a drive on a beautiful, hot and sunny day! Success!

Next up… Our inaugural trip to Murphy’s Point Provincial Park!