More hitch work

Today started early as we had to get our trailer all packed up and ready to move so we could take it to a trailer shop I visited yesterday. The hitch system we purchased has been some what "high maintenance". I really like it in terms of the control while on the road but the first place we bought it from put it on wrong and then after we had that fixed we found the bolts that hold the "swing arms" bracket were loose. I tightened them before one of our trips and two days later they were loose again but this time would just spin when I tried to tighten them.

After researching there were two options - drill holes all the way through the other side of the A frame on the trailer and bolt all the way through so we could put a lock nut on the bolt or we could just weld the bracket onto the A frame and not have to worry about bolts.

The disadvantage to the first route is that it could weaken the A frame more than it is, especially since we already have an extra hole from the first incorrect installation of the brackets. The bad part about welding the bracket on is that it will basically have to be cut off if we need to change hitches.

Well welding won out - I figure the next person to buy the trailer can worry about swapping out the brackets if they don't like the system. I don't want to have to worry about it for the rest of the trip.

Anyhow, we had to have the trailer to the shop between 8 and 8:30AM so they could get us done before the rest of their work. We made it out and on the road and arrived just before 8:20AM. I took off the propane tanks to avoid sudden death and within half an hour they had us all welded up and ready for the road.

When we got back to the campground we were not sure if the site we were supposed to move into was ready or not. Crazy thing was we were in site #1 and they wanted us to move to site #5. When we got back site #5 was open but only because the people that were in it had moved to site #1!  Seems like we could have saved both of us some headache and just stayed in the sites we were in.

We also returned our temporary vehicle this afternoon.
It was a good van, but we decided we didn't ever want
anything quite THAT big.

The rest of the day was fairly standard. The kids had a bit of a hard time getting back into doing school. The younger boys did make a friend and they had a good time playing together in the afternoon. I had a long but fulfilling day at work finishing up a project I had been working on for months. We decided to top off the day with an exciting trip to Costco for our Thanksgiving day dinner shopping. Due to some attitudes three of us stayed in the car while Stace and the other two kids went into the store. I got gas and it was 3.18 a gallon for regular. I decided to baby the Yukon and got premium for 3.45.

It was past 9:00PM when we got back so the getting ready for bed activities happened and we all headed for bed. No pictures for today as no real exciting things happened. Weather was great - sunny and low 70s. Sure does not feel like mid/late November!