Hey…It’s Saturday!

8am!  Everything is quiet in the house. Molly has been outside and came in again, for thereafter establishing herself on my bed, where she joined Bea in a Who-sleeps-longest contest. Meanwhile I have been up and about since 6:30 stoking the wood burner in the basement, starting coffee, and finally reading through this mornings blogs, leaving my comments. No school bus is breaking the quiet of this morning as it is Saturday. The sky is partially grey and the air seems to have a winter temperature of some sort.  In order to assist the wood burner I have turned on the electric furnace for a while. Reading the various blogs I see that the Bayfield Bunch has reached Arizona, while Jim and Sandie are already established at Apache Junction. “Sassie” is hanging out in Nevada’s valley of fire and has asked in a comment why we aren’t on the road yet. Well, it’s like I said before, there are plans which will delay our departure indefinitely. Also we consider a different pattern of travel. Ever since we discovered the Holtville Hot Springs we have been returning there. We always had big rigs to travel in. Our first one was a 37ft Fiver which I hated to drag across every mountain. Next was a 40ft. Diesel Pusher which was really nice to drive but very expensive as Diesel prices are always half a dollar over regular gas and well….the mileage wasn’t great either. Now we are having a 27ft Travel trailer which is nice enough, has lots of room but there is still the issue of having to pull this thing almost 7000 miles through the country. We have been thinking of downsizing even further but would we have to sacrifice our comfort?  If we really plan to move around more than what we have done in the past we need to be small and light weight. Small also means that we can get to places we couldn’t reach with our big rigs. Light weight as in saving on fuel. Is there a trailer out there which is medium sized and low weight? We don’t want to be cramped in a tin can. European trailers are much much lighter, but they are just not available here. Our 27footer Flagstaff has a dry weight of 6145lbs – an outrageous weight for any European travel trailer. We once had a 23 footer in Norway and the GVWR weight was only 2600lbs. One of the reasons being that under carriages are of aluminum and not heavy duty steel.         We would be happy with this 1990 HOBBY trailer with 2600lbs. GVWR Th above 2014 version of the same brand is the same size than our  Flagstaff and weighs about 2500lbs LESS and no “crazy” graphics on the side either! The somewhat “boxy” design of our Flagstaff trailer showing how far U.S. manufacturers are behind the development of modern solutions. It is beyond me why import restrictions prohibit those trailers entering the North American market. Molly emerged as the winner of today’s sleep-in contest as she was the last appearing for breakfast. We are expecting boondockers Jill and Thayer from Seattle, WA visiting with us today. They are members of “Boondockers Welcome” and have been traveling through the Maritimes for the last weeks. Thanks for stopping by!