I guess the best place to start is at the beginning. When Trisha and I got married, we bought a big cabin tent at Sears. For some reason, we just never got around to camping in this tent. Now I had grown up camping with both family and the Boy Scouts. Trisha had never camped a day in her life unless you count that one time in her backyard growing up.
Fast forward to 2005, one Sunday afternoon, we were watching the movie The Long, Long, Trailer. I commented how I would love to get a pop-up and get back into camping. Trisha said she was game, but had to have a bed and a bathroom. So we started looking and as fate would have it, we found a 1974 Layton 25ft travel trailer from a work associate of hers. We went to look at it and it soon followed us home. This was a fixer upper for sure!! But it helped Trisha discover that she loved camping. But our poor truck, well....
Our tow vehicle at the time was a 1998 Ford F-150. It was not equipped to tow more than 5000 lbs max. It tried it's best, but by 2007, it's age, and the unknown weight of the Layton combined to help the transmission start to go south. In September of 2007 we traded for our current truck.
A brand spanking new 2007 Ford F-150, with the biggest everything, all the towing packages, payload package, and more buttons, bells and whistles than any truck I had ever owned!!
It pulled the Layton travel trailer just great. The first camping trip with the new truck was in May of 2008. Sharon a cousin of mine who has a T@B camper named SplashT@B called and invited Trisha and I to the Blue Ridge T@B Rally in Marion, NC. Sharon is the wagonmaster of the Blue Ridge Rally, and along with her sister Becky does all the leg work to organize these great events. Trisha had a workshop in Raleigh, so I went to the rally without her. Over the course of the weekend, I realized that while the new truck did a great job of pulling the Layton, that it was more camper then we really needed. Also, Trisha and I had been planning our trip out west, and it was this weekend I knew the Layton wasn't the camper for that trip. During the rally weekend, Sharon, Becky, and I went to Tom Johnson Camping in Marion, NC, where I checked out the pop-ups. The next weekend Trisha and I went to the Tom Johnson location in Concord, NC and well that's the next post now isn't it?.........
Stay Safe out there. --R,T,&J.
I could fit two T@Bs inside that big ole Layton! I'm glad you got something more manageable. Thanks for adding my blogs and following me! Now I can do the same for you...Sharon & SplashT@B
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