Fall Camping in Watkin's Glen, and a Kimbo Experience

Our last camping trip of the year is usually a long weekend In early October someplace in New York’s Finger Lakes area. 

This year we were able to get out for an early October trip with the Avion to Watkins Glen in New York’s finger lakes region. This was a good test for how well Avion would work with little prep work, other than food and some clean clothes everything was pretty much ready to go from our previous trip. The weather was good, but we did make use of our Olympic Wave propane heater which seems just right for fall camping here in northeast US. We visited a few different wineries to do tastings, and bought a few bottles of our favorites to take back home. My brother was racing in a sailboat regatta nearby, and was able to join us for part of our visit and a nice hike in the gorge. The number of people hiking the gorge has been pretty crazy the last few years, if you go choose a weekday and plan hit the trail early in the day to avoid the crowds. 

While driving between wineries we saw a new Kimbo truck camper and pulled into a parking next to it and met it enthusiastic owners. We had some good conversation and then did quick show & tells to compare the two rigs. From a distance the Avion and Kimbo almost look like they might be related, but up close they are quite different. The Kimbo is a lot smaller allowing its use with a smaller half-ton truck, but the interior space is also significantly smaller. Inside the Kimbo has a very contemporary feel and has simpler water and power systems, and a multi-function modular approach that is more like a modern camping van, the Avion is more classic camper. One way to think about it is that the Kimbo is like a super fancy tent and Avion is more like a tiny home. Stepping into the Avion after looking at the Kimbo our camper seemed huge inside. We liked the removable fabric panels that the Kimbo uses on it walls, and the small mud-room floor area just inside the entryway. The tiny Dickinson propane fireplace/heater is super cool, so cool that we may look into to incorporate something like that in our camper someday. It was really great to have to chance to see a Kimbo in person, and meet its owners who host a website called Kimbo Experience. Hopefully someday we’ll run into them on the road again and can share more stories of our travels! In addition to Kimbo there’s several new companies, including Scout, Supertramp, and Radica Moonlander that are building small contemporary truck campers, and while we love the size of our Avion and being vintage. We also think this new bread of small truck campers is also very cool and relevant today, an amazing resource for these types of rigs is Truck Camper Magazine, check it out if you are looking for more info truck campers of all types.

Loading the Avion camper onto the Truck

 

Getting the camper on and off the truck is the most stressful thing we have ever done with the Avion. Even more stressful than replacing the floor.  When the camper is raised up on the four tall jacks it's just very uncomfortable and something we hope that we don't need to do very often. I know for some people one of the advantages of a truck camper is that you can unload it at a campsite then use your truck without it. That was never part of our plan and based on our experiences loading and unloading it's not something we desire to do. If we ever plan a trip where we want to leave camp set-up and drive a vehicle around we will tow a second vehicle to use for that purpose. 

For us loading the truck camper usually means getting it out of the garage first.  When it is in our garage the Avion sits on a dolly that has castor wheels on it.  It's easy for just two of us to move the camper around on the flat concrete pad of the garage floor, but much more difficult on our slightly lumpy asphalt driveway. We recently swapped the caster wheels out for some larger diameter ones which helps, but it's still pretty difficult and needing 3 or 4 people to move it around. We've also made use of an electric boat trailer winch for move the camper around when its on the dolly which works well at times when there is something to attach the winch to.  Once the camper is out of the garage and on a relatively flat area of the driveway we use the tall truck camper jacks to raise the Avion up high enough to back the truck under. I find it interesting that this type of camper is sometimes called a "slide-in truck camper", when in reality its more of a "back the truck under camper while praying a lot camper".  

To raise or lower the Avion two of us each work one side of the camper, alternating between the front jacks and the rear jacks. We count the crank turns out-loud to keep in sync so the camper is raised and lowered evenly so it doesn't sway to one side or the other. This helps keep the weight evenly distributed across the 4 jacks.  The last inch of lowering when loading on the truck so far always seems to take some work cranking one corner or another while doing a lot of looking at clearances and such.  Before we lower the camper we back the truck under then get out and look, then move the truck to get it centered the best we can, so far this has taken several tries each time but we seem to be getting better at it. 

When the truck is backed under the camper except for the last foot or so we connect the 7-pin wiring harness for the running lights and also another plug for the campers house battery. Our house battery sits in a box that is secured to the side of the truck bed in-line with one of the fender wells. This saves space inside the camper, but limits access to the battery when the camper is fully loaded into to the truck. 

Getting the camper out of the garage and secured to the truck is a long process for us, the fastest we've been able to load it so far has taken 3 hours. We know that we are probably more picky than a lot of folks when trying to get the best alignment between the camper and truck bed, but we feel that if it is loaded straight then it be more obvious if it moves or something starts to go wrong while traveling. For us loading and unloading the Avion once a year is enough, and hopefully at some point we wont need to do that much that if we can figure out a solution for indoor winter storage that allows the truck and camper  to stay mated together. 

Propane lines and Heater!

 

I recently Installed new propane lines and a Camco Olympic Wave Heater in the Avion C-10 truck camper. For this work I used 3/8” copper refrigeration tubing with flare connectors. With a little practice I found that making the flares using a hand-held flare tool was pretty easy. It’s an interesting process compared to running the PEX water lines, I tried to use as few connections as possible and used a very simple spring style tubing bender to keep the copper from collapsing when going around corners. It’s takes some tubing wrangling and pre-planning to get the propane line to go where you want, but it’s very satisfying when a segment is done. I used soapy water to test for leaks and found that only one connection needed to be tightened a bit more. I also included two gas shut-off valves one for the left side line and one for the right, these are both accessible from the outside of the camper just inside the fridge rear access door. Our Avion C-10 was built with a propane cabinet that is sized to hold one common 20lb propane tank, and I also installed a new dual-stage propane regulator which I mounted to the wall in the cabinet. I'm glad that it uses a standard tank because when we are on a longer road trips we could easily make use of Blue Rhino or other tank exchanges if needed instead of looking for a place to refill. After looking at a few different options for heaters we decided to use an Olympic Wave 3 propane heater. The Wave 3 is a small catalectic heater similar to the popular Mr. Buddy heaters but made for use in an RV, for us it seems like a good choice to extend the camping season into the fall which is our favorite time of the year to camp here in the northeastern US. Inspired by another Avion C-10 owner I mounted the Wave 3 to the inside of a cabinet door where it stores when not in use. The cabinet I’m using for this is the one that is mostly taken up by the hot water heater, the Wave 3 fits perfectly into the shallow space that is left over. To use the Wave we simply open the cabinet door and will secure it in the open position with a hook. When the door is open it is out-of-the-way being flat against the bathroom wall and the heater faces the dinette and sleeping area.  We also made a cover for the heater to keep dust out of the elements when not in use during most of our camping season, from what I've read a cover can help then maintain their performance. Having the propane system and heater up and running has been great over the last couple of months as I’ve been able to use it to keep the Avion warm while continuing to work on the camper during the winter months.