Our First Trip
Vermont, New Hampshire & Maine
Note: Nothing on this site is meant to offend Lance owners who are happy with their rigs.  I sincerely hope that my unhappy experiences with Lance are the exception.
Home

Having pulled trailers of various types for 20 years, in October of 2006 we decided that we needed to lighten our load for our first trip to the northeastern section of the country.  Dennis Trailer Sales of Lansing, MI had just what we needed... a Lance 915 pickup camper.  Those folks were great!  They installed the Happi-Jack tie-down system, Air Lift "springs" and an air conditioner (in the camper) in a single day.

We were happy campers... for awhile.  We had some troubles with the camper, resolved them (we thought) and went on with our trip. I just hope I never have to get the windows out of the door again!  The rest of the New York, Vermont, New Hampshire & Maine adventure went well.  Everything worked as expected (except for the leaks) and, even though we were a little cramped for space, we were well satisfied with our decision to leave the 5th wheel trailer at home for the trip through those three very scenic states.

NOTE: I definitely wasn't happy about having to drive through New York. New York doesn't honor my CPL (concealed pistol license) and I was feeling a little naked and vulnerable.  Vermont, New Hampshire and Maine all respect and honor our 2nd Amendment rights, but New York politicians actually think that gun laws protect law abiding citizens.  I guess they don't understand that criminals like gun laws because it makes committing crimes safer.  Canadian politicians are just as ignorant so we couldn't go that way.  Enough of that.  My blood pressure is going up just thinking about it! 
We had traveled through western New York, but hadn't been north of I-86 in over twenty years so it was a pleasure to drive scenic highway 13 north east to I-81.  I-81 was pretty boring, but we hooked up with U.S. 11 at Watertown and that took us on a very pleasant drive all the way to the top of Lake Champlain where we caught U.S. 2 into Vermont.  The stretch of U.S.2 between U.S.11 and U.S.7 is very scenic as it "island hops" through the middle of the upper reaches of Lake Champlain.  We arrived in Milton, VT in plenty of time for our granddaughter's 4th birthday.
Our granddaughter had a grand time at the Vermont Teddy Bear factory where you can have a custom bear made up for you or you can stuff one yourself.
We spent a very enjoyable two hours at the Shelburn Museum which is very nicely designed with many buildings and flower gardens along all of the walks. Of course, I stopped in at the Milton Fire Department and swapped a patch with the guys on duty there.  After a couple of days in Milton, we headed for Bradley, Maine to see some friends we camp with in Yellowstone.

In case you haven't had the experience, I need to tell you that there are no straight or flat roads between Burlington, VT and Bangor, ME.  I knew that before leaving home because I have the DeLorme Topo U.S.A. 6.0 computer program that lets you "fly" through a 3-D view of your route any place in the U.S.  Part of the incentive for buying the Lance 915 rather than hauling our 12,000 lb 5th wheel was the fact the we had "flown" the route using Topo U.S.A. a month prior to our departure. It's not that our Power Stroke diesel wasn't up to the job of pulling the 5th wheel under those conditions.  It was just much nicer to be able to pull into a normal parking space if we wanted to stop for meal or browse through a store. And, there was the fuel economy issue.  An extra 4 mpg isn't something to be ignored by retired folks on a fixed income. I do regret having to leave most of my outdoor cookware home, though.  If you haven't tried Dutch Oven cooking, give it a try if you have the space to haul the ovens. Click on the picture below and you will see that one afternoon in Yellowstone I had a 4-course meal cooking with my set of ovens.

Well, it took us awhile to cross Vermont and New Hampshire, but it wasn't just road conditions that slowed us down.  There are a lot of really interesting things to see in the small towns of Vermont and New Hampshire.  I'm always interested in visiting fire departments (I'm a N.S.F.D. firefighter/EMT) and my wife finds it hard to pass up a quilt shop (she's a "long-arm" machine quilter) or a fabric shop.

We always eat too much when we are traveling and the restaurants along the way were like magnets.  We had a bunch of food in the camper and most of it was still there when we returned to Michigan.  Along the way, we stopped in Johnson, VT, St. Johnsbury, VT, West Ossipee, NH (good ribs place there!), Gorham NH, Mexico, ME and Dixfield, ME.  We camped overnight in the Mountain View Campground north of Dixfield a mile or so and the next day we stopped in Skowhegan, ME before going the final leg into Bradley, Maine.  We very much enjoyed the October colors and the friendly people in these towns along our route.

Our friends, Gifford and Annabelle live on the bank of the Penobscot River where the fishing used to be pretty good, I guess. Both of them are retired school teachers, as we are.  There is so much to see in the Milton/Bangor area and most of it, like Leonard's Mill Park and the historical Thomas Hill Standpipe, is free.  You might even drive by a famous author's house in Bangor.

Of course, there are places to spend money if you must. The L.L.Bean Outlet store and a multitude of stores in Bar Harbor got a good chunk of mine.
Downtown Bar Harbor images compliments of http://www.freefoto.com/
Bass Harbor and Acadia National Park are definitely places we will return to someday with plans to spend a couple of weeks.
Our gracious hosts, Gif and Annabelle, treated us to local museums, historical sites and wonderfully fresh lobster that, back in Michigan, only the rich folks can afford.

Gifford is quite a craftsman. He builds guitars, mandolins and dulcimers in his out back wood shop.

He has crafted more mountain dulcimers than you could pile in the back of a standard pickup and, like the ones you see in the photos below, they have all been gifts to his friends.
Gif says he doesn't read music very well, but he is a wonderfully talented musician with at least a thousand ballads stored away in his head. A campfire without Gif and his instruments is pretty cold. We sure had a great time and we would love to spend more time in Maine if we could get there without going through New York or Canada.  I guess we'll have to fly the next time.

Yellowstone... our favorite place.
We have made an annual pilgrimage to Yellowstone every summer but one starting in 1996 when we got our first campground hosting job at Tower Fall Campground in the NE section of the park.  We were campground hosts in that area of Yellowstone for eight summers.

Here's a sampling of the hundreds of pictures I've taken in Yellowstone.
In case you haven't noticed,
Clicking on the picture will bring up a larger image.
For the whole Yellowstone "package", just click on this link and it will take you to my Yellowstone pages. In 2006, we gave up our hosting job at Yellowstone's Norris Campground

and stayed home to take care of my father-in-law.  We did so with no regrets because Sam was one of the finest men that ever walked the face of the earth and he needed our help. Aside from my wife, he was my best friend and a faithful fishing companion to the end.

In the spring of 2007 it looked like Sam was going to be in good enough health for us to get away for a few weeks so we started making preparations.  We had a decision to make... pickup camper or 5th wheel trailer.  The deciding factor was the price of fuel.  Hauling the camper instead of the 5th wheel gave us about 4 mpg better fuel economy, a savings of hundreds of dollars.  So, I ordered a couple of photo-voltaic panels (AKA solar panels), a bigger battery, some 10 ga. wire, some 6 ga. wire and a charge regulator. (There went the savings... and then some.)  I guess I should explain that most of our camping is in places where commercial electricity is unavailable and generators are prohibited. The solar-electric installation went well and with the addition of a car top carrier and other items to the roof of the camper, we were ready to head west.
For the first time, we took the S.S.Badger across Lake Michigan from Ludington, MI to Manitowoc, WI instead of going south around Chicago or north through Michigan's Upper Peninsula.

That is was one of the best trip decisions we've ever made.  It saved us time, money and blood pressure (We avoided the Chicago/Joliet experience!).  It was a beautiful day and we enjoyed the cruise, the good food and excellent service very much.

We camped the first night in the Rogers, MN Cabela's and the second night in the Glendive RV Park in Glendive, MT.  We arrived in Yellowstone on June 24th and were greeted by many of our friends who had already been there for several days.  They told us that fly fishing hadn't been good because of the high volume of snow melt water coming down from the mountains so we hadn't missed much.  We spent the first few days just talking, eating, watching the local wildlife and singing around the campfire at night.  Within a week the fishing got remarkably better and we made a good effort to educate the Yellowstone cutthroat trout who seem to forget how to tell the difference between real insects and fake ones over the winter.

Of course, we use barbless hooks and release all of the cutthroat.  A couple of times every summer, we take a trip over to Indian and Obsidian creeks to catch a mess of brook trout so we can have a fish dinner.  Brookies, rainbows (pure rainbows) and browns are not native fish so you can fill the frying pan if you're so inclined. Sometimes we even eat a few right beside the stream.
Lake trout are another story.  Yellowstone lake is polluted with lake trout (another non-native species) and you will be fined if the rangers catch you throwing one back alive.  One of these years I'm going to take my boat along and catch a few to bake over a good bed of coals.

Around the middle of July, when the water in our favorite Yellowstone streams gets too warm we head for the Gros Ventre River in Grand Teton National Park south of Yellowstone.

We have to leave anyway because, by that time, we've stayed the maximum 14 days (they count from July 1st).  The Gros Ventre campground is another campground with no hookups, but it is right beside the Gros Ventre River which is full of cutthroat.

The only downside to fishing the Gros Ventre is that one has to buy a Wyoming fishing license and they are a bit pricey.  We were lucky because the water conditions were just about perfect and the next morning we tricked a few with #12 stimulators and came home with lunch on a string. We enjoyed a week of camping, fishing, site seeing, shopping in Jackson and kicking back under the tall poplars that provide shade for the campsites.

On the trip back, we had a little extra time in Manitowoc, WI before we had to baard the ferry so we toured the WWII submarine, U.S.S. Cobia, which is docked near the ferry dock.  One of our tour guides, Charlie (last picture), was a torpedoman on the sub when it was active.

The 915 continued to be our home away from home for the rest of 2007 as we took a number of shorter trips.  We went back to Yellowstone and the Tetons in 2008 and plan to continue doing so as long as we are healthy and can afford the fuel.

The 915 Is Great For Shorter Trips
 We have also taken the 915 on several trips to North Carolina to visit our son and his family.  We have done considerable sight seeing along the way through Kentucky, Tennessee and North Carolina, all made easier by the maneuverability of the smaller rig compared to the 5th wheel which remains parked under it's shelter at home.  The pickup camper is also delightful for short 2-3 day trips around our beautiful state and if the need arises it now has power and antenna hookups for use as a secondary command center for our fire department or a mobile communications rig for our local ham radio club.
A Final Note
I still have to deal with the siding corrosion issue, but it's finally warming up in Michigan so I'll get to it soon.  Right now I'm thinking that if we upgrade to a camper with a slide-out next year, it probably won't be a Lance.

Tips Regarding Pickup Campers

BEFORE YOU BUY:

A SIMPLE LOADING GUIDE: I know that I'm "in the ball park" when the ends of these cable ties are just clearing the side of my dually fender.

You could substitute a small magnet with a tab glued to the top.  If my wife isn't around to help, I tape my wireless rear view license plate camera to the underside of the camper so that it gives me a view of one side of the pickup box as it moves into position.  There are all sorts of "systems" out there.  Do some searching of RV forums and Web sites and you will find something that works for you.

PROTECT YOUR PLUG: Mud dauber wasps like to lay eggs in the socket half of your camper to truck electrical connectors.  I rip the fingers off of a pair of Nitril gloves and stretch them over the plug several layers thick.  I wish I had done it in the fall of 2006 because it would have saved me a lot of time the next spring and prevented intermittant circuit problems in the summer of 2007.  Even after drilling out the mud, I still had bug guts corroding the inside of the plug.  I finally rolled up some thin sand paper and got the corrosion cleaned out.

Advice
#1:  Take your time mounting & unmounting the camper!  Think about what you are doing and go slow. There are dozens of pickup camper horror stories out there.  Take the time to read a few dozen and you will get the idea of what being in a hurry can cost you.

#2:  Make sure your pickup bed will clear all parts of the camper before you back under it or pull out from under it!  The jacks are strong, but the brackets WILL bend and eventually break.

#3:  Don't forget to move the license plate.  Some law enforcement types have no mercy.

#4:  If you have electric jacks, make sure you pack the crank.

#5:  Stabilize your camper when it's unmounted.  Think about what might happen if a 1,500 lb buffalo decides to rub his ribs against one of your front jacks.

Home

BENNSCI.COM