RV Toads

Traveling by RV has been wonderful – passengers can move around, use the bathroom without stopping the vehicle, grab snacks for the driver, or even cook dinner to save time! (Be careful to observe seat belt laws!) We have discovered there are disadvantages to being a motor home owner, however. Once you arrive at a location and set up camp (leveling, hooking up to electric & sewer), how do you get around to see the sights?

Bicycles are fine for short distances, but not great for more than a few miles and not great for grocery shopping. Tobey thought he had solved our problem of a light weight "toad" by purchasing a 1967Baja VW. His search began and early in 2007 he bought the Bug. It only needed a little work – a "project" car – and it was the same year as his first car! He forgot one little detail – while he is great at a lot of things, car restoration is not his strong suit. He got the tow-bar installed, a roof-rack on the VW to hold our bikes, we were ready to go. Sort of.

Our first long-distance trip was from Colorado to Kentucky and back – 2-1/2 weeks. Off we went with our sleek, silver Bug behind. One of the first things we discovered about towing a vehicle behind the motor home was that you can’t back up. I’m sure that more experienced campers were trying their hardest not to wet their pants laughing at us as we pulled into our spots & unhook our little Bug. Oh, then there was the little detail of no air conditioning (unless you consider unscrewing a PVC plug in the floorboard air conditioning) – not the most pleasant in the humid Midwest summers! You also have to remember that we were traveling in June – and it tends to rain in Iowa, Missouri, and Kentucky during the summer – and our little car did not have any windshield wipers! We discovered that if we drove faster, we could see out better! Not the ideal situation, but we made it work.

After spending quite a bit of time and money trying to fix things on the little Baja Bug, we decided that it probably wasn’t really OUR best choice for a toad so we sold it.
Because our motor home is only 24’ long, we really need to consider our toad’s weight. We were back to the drawing board when Tobey thought we should consider a motor scooter. Test-driving several models locally, Tobey got busy and went online to look at less expensive options. We ended up ordering a 170CC Chinese BMS scooter from a distributor in California. It arrived mid-February in a crate – partially assembled. With the help of our mechanically-inclined son, they put our little Pathfinder together.

The first time we ventured out with RV & scooter, we borrowed our neighbor’s trailer and attempted to load our new scooter for a trip to the Great Sand Dunes National Park. Okay, where was the video camera for America’s Funniest Videos?

We had NO ramp, so we (Tobey) thought we could just use some plywood as a ramp, start the scooter & hand-drive the scooter into the trailer, and then tie it down with straps. Nope. Not a good idea. Our good intentions resulted in the scooter driving itself into the trailer and sliding sideways. I guess it is good to put the first scratches on your new vehicles right off the bat so you don’t feel so bad about it when it happens later! We worked out the kinks and finally found a way to make the trip with scooter in tow – however, once again, we were towing a vehicle. We were in need of a ramp/rack that would fit into the trailer hitch in the back of the motor home. Back to the computer & research for Tobey! He finally found a rack, had it delivered and installed locally where the welder recommended adding two additional supports for stability. It was perfect – except the ramp was too short to accommodate a scooter, so back to the phones to order a longer ramp! Once the new ramp arrived, we were in business.

Now we can load and unload our scooter in no-time, backing up is a breeze, and we have the flexibility of parking at our campsite, then heading out to sight see or grocery shop!

 

 

 

We still would like to be able to take our bicycles and are trying to figure out where we can attach those to the RV …