What’s a dinghy, anyway?

We enjoyed another adventure this past week and tried out two new things in the process.

First, we travelled over 500 miles.  That gave both of us some experience driving the big rig on the highway and the back roads too.  It’s gonna take some additional experience before we are both comfortable driving this thing, but, each outing makes it a bit easier.  Practice, practice, practice.

Second, we towed our Jeep Wrangler with us.  In this RV world that we’ve thrown ourselves into, the vehicle you tow behind your Motorhome (MH) is referred to as a dinghy.  I’m no expert, but, I’d guess this is an idea hijacked from the boating world.  We had the Jeep outfitted with Blue Ox towing equipment and the SMI Play-N-Stay Dou braking system.  (Maybe we’ll do a review if this stuff in the future.)  It worked great, once we got it adjusted properly.  Fortunately for us, during our check-out prior to departure, Siobhan noticed that the brakes where going on and off when we used the turn signals.  Turned out that an adjustment was necessary on the braking system within the Jeep that automatically applies the Jeep brakes whenever the MH brakes are applied.  It most definitely was not drivable the way it was.

We contacted our Service Specialist at our dealership who connected us with the manufacturer.  Kyle, the technician at SMI, was excellent.  He walked us through exactly what needed to be done (twice – really patient guy) so that we could get underway safely.  So, it took us an extra hour or so to get through the situation but it was smooth sailing from there on out.

Our destination on this trip was Mount Dora, FL to visit my Dad.  We found a beautiful county park called Trimble Park to stay at for two nights (only $17.25/night with the senior citizen discount – yeah, that was weird…) and it was only seven miles from Dad’s place.

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This gave us some practice at disconnecting and reconnecting the dinghy (Jeep) and, trust me, it’s a good idea to set the emergency brake before you disconnect the Jeep from the MH.  Luckily, the surface was pretty flat so it didn’t roll too far before Siobhan caught up with it!  Bet we won’t make that mistake again.

It also took us longer to get ready to hit the road for home than we thought.  There are a few things to do that we had not planned on, like washing all the splattered bugs off that big, huge windshield and stopping at the dump station on the way out of the park (they did not have a sewer connection at each site as they did at the previous place we stayed) and getting the dinghy lined up “just so” behind the MH to reconnect it for the return trip.

But it’s all good.  We had fun, learned some more things about this lifestyle and made it home safely.

We are going to stay home this week and then visit with family and friends up north for a few weeks so it will be a while before we head out on our next adventure.

We hope you all have a great Thanksgiving holiday.

As always, please send us your questions or comments.  We do enjoy hearing from you!

Ttyl,

K&S