Maiden Voyage of the Offroad Teardrop

[old_man]

Finally got time to actually take the teardrop out for a shake down run. The wife and I headed out Friday afternoon for Buena Vista. With the new tune on the stroker, the trip went very well. I did give up a bit on top end pulling the passes but it wasn't at all bad. The round trip had us going over 6 passes. I still averaged 16 mpg towing. We got to Buena Vista at 10pm and rather than head up the mountain and try to set up in the boonies in the dark, we stayed at our favorite campground (Chalk Creek). In just a couple of minutes we crawled in for the night.

The Styrofoam insulation meant that the night was quite comfortable, even though it was in the low 40's. We headed up to St. Elmo after a great breakfast at Jan's. After taking a few minutes in St. Elmo, we headed up Hancock Pass. The swivel hitch with the rubber isolation worked even better than expected and the airbag suspension yielded a nice smooth ride.

We set up camp at 12,000+ feet elevation. All was working well. About 8pm the wife started feeling crappy. She ended up with a splitting headache, uncontrolled chills and shivering, upset stomach, and four trips to the porta potty in three hours. By midnight she had enough with having to scrape the frost off the porta potty and we broke camp and headed to lower elevation.

Other than her getting sick, it was a perfect maiden voyage. The aspens were beautiful and the Jeep and trailer worked great. In 36 hours away from home I got cornered 6 times by people wanting to see the trailer and asking where they could buy one. It was hard to get some quiet time.

I am fighting with photo hosting at the moment and don't have time to set my own up on my server, so I will post up some pix later.

[DaJudge]

Awesome Tom! I have been waiting for you to use it!