Luxury and privacy on the open road
GM’s Sierra 1500 was tasked with pulling a 25-foot rig for long weekend excursion
This year, nearly 600,000 Canadians will buy a new RV. It’s a record high, and many of the purchases will be new additions to the 14 per cent of Canadian households who own one already. The great outdoors is a great place to be, but the last time I went camping, it was in a leaky tent and I came home with sunburn, permanently wet feet and a merit badge.
This summer, with some help from a GMC Sierra and a rented travel trailer, it was time to take this long weekend on the road with my wife and dog.
Nova Scotia is home to some of the best beaches and swimming in all of Canada, as long as you’re OK with a bit of a chill in the water. Even here, though, finding a place to stay on that water can be tough. If you’re looking for a hotel, cabin, or bed and breakfast, that is.
If you’re looking for a campground, the choices are near end- less.
After looking at the Airbnb map and the list of campgrounds, and then looking at the number of cases of you know what, staying in our own portable home sounded like an amazing idea. It had a great pet policy, too.
Even in this small 25-foot trailer, there was loads of room. Firstly, there was a shower and commode with enough room for this person who rarely fits into compact crossovers. The trailer also sported a full kitchen with a four-burner propane stove and microwave — and a slide-out section that gave us more than enough room to walk around in the middle. Oh, and air conditioning.
I’ve towed plenty of big things before — ranging from a car to a 35,000-pound anvil made of concrete — but this is the first time I was nervous about it. Nova Scotia has narrow back roads and the Sierra 1500 didn’t have any of the approximately 9,000 camera angles GMC offers on loaded rigs.
GMC has added a handy label to the door frame of its latest-generation trucks. Instead of flipping through owner manuals and online guides, you look at the sticker and it tells you what your truck is capable of towing. The max was 8,900 pounds. I had a 6,300-pound trailer, 30 pounds of propane, and about a third of a tank of drinking water, meaning I wouldn’t be close to the limit.
I averaged about 30 L/100 km with the camper on the back of the Sierra. That 2.7-litre makes boatloads of torque, but it takes plenty of fuel to do it. Left in cruise control, the engine was working hard. Once I shut that off, the revolutions per minute (r.p.m.) stayed below 3,000 on even the steepest hills. This truck is quite efficient empty, so the consumption’s probably not a big deal for a few weekends a year.
An RV trailer doesn’t tow like a car, an enclosed trailer, or even a giant anvil. It’s a massive box, with almost no considerations paid to aerodynamics, and that’s how it behaves. I had weight distribution bars — which shift load from the rear of the truck to the front — but the trailer was still moving in the wind.
Everything was fine when we arrived at the campground. Just ignore the family of seven across the driveway, where the five kids, mom, and dad were all eagerly watching me get ready to reverse this 60feet-plus of recreational freedom into a space.
Hooking up was simple once I found the power cord (a flap in the centre at the rear) and the clean water hose (hiding in a storage compartment). The hard part was the auto-levelling jacks. Three hours of YouTube troubleshooting
and I was no further ahead on getting the right-rear jack to move.
So instead, I used physics. I dropped the nose of the trailer to the ground, put blocks as tall as I could under the rear, and raised the nose until the misbehaving jack was pressed firmly into said blocks. Perfectly level, as long as you don’t drop anything spherical.
After the levelling, though, you’re done. Power’s on, beds made, fridge is already stocked.
We arrived late, because driving everywhere well under the limit takes longer than you think it does. And because of all of that time trying to make the jacks work, so we didn’t do much more that first night. We did cook a frozen local pizza in the oven (since the nearest delivery was 40 kilometres away), which was pretty handy.
Sitting on the beach, then driving down the road to sit on a different beach, followed by a meal at the best-looking seafood place we could find was our entire weekend. The campground had weekend activities
like bingo for the kids and live music on Saturday night for the grown-ups who were still kids at heart by the sound of it.
Sunday morning brought the task I had been loathing since the day I had booked the rental trailer. Time to empty the dreaded tank underneath. The one that was full of, well, nothing pleasant. With gloves and sanitizer ready, it was actually a simple task. Run the hose to the black tank, make sure it’s not trying to flow uphill, and open the valve. When it stops emptying, open the grey tank and everything flushes out.
Towing your own small hotel isn’t the most cost-effective way to travel — unless you have a particularly large family — but it let us get to places we couldn’t have stayed at otherwise. It also made the trip more comfortable for everyone who wasn’t driving. It’s easy to see why it’s such a popular pastime, though I might rent one a touch smaller next time and make the trip an easier one.