On Thu, 27 Dec 2012 08:59:42 -0500, "Eisboch" wrote:



"GuzzisRule" wrote in message
.. .


Here ya go!

http://www.rvwholesalers.com/resourc...aptor_2012.pdf

Everything you want in one place. Keep clicking the down arrow. This
is what's called a 'Toy Hauler'
fifth wheel.

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Looks familiar. We had the 377-SE version. Went "camping" once with
it and had the most miserable week of my life.

My daughter started it all. She and her husband were into camping and
were purchasing a new travel trailer. She convinced Mrs.E and I and
my older son and his wife to get a trailer as well for "family"
camping. I saw it as a good excuse to get a new truck, so I bought
the Raptor Toy Hauler along with a Ford 350 Diesel and had the fifth
wheel hitch installed. I had a Harley at the time and figured the toy
hauler would come in handy. My son bought a slightly smaller fifth
wheel and a Ford 250 with the V-10. We all picked up our new RV's
the same day at the dealership.

My daughter made reservations for all of us for a week at a campground
in New Hampshire that they visited often. I forget what the name of
it is. I call it "Marty Moose Land". We all had sites beside each
other. The trip to the campground was uneventful. The Ford pulled the
Raptor with no problem and I thought this was going to be pretty cool.

Well, that particular week in the mountains of New Hampshire was the
hottest, most humid week I've spent anywhere. Big thunderstorms every
afternoon kept us all huddled inside our respective RV's with the AC
units running at full blast. When it stopped raining and we ventured
outside, the mosquitoes were waiting to draw blood.

One humid, sultry afternoon, we were sitting at my son's site trying
to have a beer while swishing away the bugs and mosquitoes. His
young daughter was playing inside his fifth wheel. As we sat
talking, I looked up and saw water seeping out of the storage area
door under the master bedroom of the RV. Got up, opened the door,
and gallons of water started pouring out. His daughter had plugged the
vanity sink in the bedroom and had the faucets turned on full. It had
filled the sink and was overflowing everywhere, soaking the carpets
and draining into the storage area. I took off to find a hardware
store to get a wet vac while the rest started sopping up the water.

Gracefully, the last day of our camping adventure arrived. My son
and his family left, and then us by early afternoon. My daughter and
her husband wanted to stay a little longer, so we said goodbye and hit
the road.

By 8pm, I had just arrived home and backed the fifth-wheel into it's
spot at our house when the phone rang. It was my daughter. They had
just left the campsite, got a mile down the road and their vehicle
snapped a tie rod. They were sitting on the side of a busy road with
a broken SUV, their new, 28' travel trailer and two crying kids.

So, dear old Dad heads back to the New Hampshire mountains in his
truck to rescue them. Finally got back to their house by 2am, towing
the trailer.
Their truck was put on a flatbed and taken to a repair shop.

The next day I listed the Raptor "For Sale" in a couple of the RV
classifieds. Sold it a few weeks later to a buyer in Canada.

BTW, that wasn't our first attempt at trying the camping scene. When
I first retired and we wintered in Florida, we thought it would be fun
to make the trips back and forth in a RV. We tried a 37' Pace Arrow
class A motorhome, a Chinook Glacier and a Dodge Sprinter RV. Of the
three, I liked the Sprinter the most and we owned it the longest, but
we eventually sold the Florida house and rarely used the Sprinter. We
ended up selling it to a guy in Missouri who flew out and drove it
home. He and his wife still send us email pictures of their travels
in it.

Camping is great for some people. It's just not for me. I'd much
rather live on a boat.



Well, that's proof that '**** happens'.

I had the hots for your Sprinter, if you'll recall. Your wife, at the time, wanted to keep it for
whatever reason. If you'd had it on the market then, we'd probably have it instead of the fifth
wheel. Oh well!

We enjoy the hell out of camping, so we'll keep at it for a while. There's still a lot of the USA
we've not seen, and I've been told that driving across southern Canada is a 'trip' all unto itself.
We'll probably try the Alaska trip in a year or so. We've some good friends who spent three months
on the road a couple years ago, much of the time in Alaska. They're pushing hard for us to go with
them again. They now have a Winnebago Journey Express, which is a nice rig, but it's not as roomy as
their fifth wheel, cost a *lot* more, gets miserable mileage, but has a lot of really nice features!