Shakedown
Alexandra & Nicholas Tenbarge
Welcome to our family travel blog! This is our first post.
We’ll share tips, guides, and stories from our adventures around the world as we learn all the lessons along the way.
Our shakedown trip was short, close to home, near the dealer and several accessory-selling stores and yet was still frustrating nearly the whole time.
We planned to pick up our new Grand Design Imagine 2800BH from our local dealer and have enough time to bring it home for several hours to make loading up easier. However, due to several long hours of paperwork that we were promised wouldn’t take nearly that long, we ended up taking the TravelBarge directly to Mckinney Campground on Allatoona Lake.
The drive was short, and slow. I had never towed anything longer than a utility trailer (except the fateful trip from Indiana to Georgia with a 26’ U-Haul + flatbed car hauler - a tale for another time) so my wife followed behind and we had the third longest phone call we’ve ever had as she reaffirmed my good driving and coached when I could have done better.
Knowing that my first time towing would be tense I opted for a pull thru site to reduce the complexity. Spot 120 is a pull thru, however I did not see how I could actually maneuver my tow behind around the tight loop and the dread of leaving in a few days was already looming.
After several trips for supplies over those 4 days that either arrived late, were forgotten in carts online and ordered after we arrived, or items that after countless hours of research were still not on our lists we had a better prepared trailer. Not perfect, but livable and safer than when we pulled in on day 1.
Swimming in the lake with my daughters was a great early memory. Taking them fishing (but not catching) with my father in law was a cherished time. Having my first s’more with them is something I hope they both remember.
On the final day it rained all night and my rockstar wife went out first to start packing up and preparing to head out. She stood in the rain as we backed out the trailer, and then followed me home at a snails pace - and our youngest got car sick 🤢.
With anything in married life, having the right partner is what makes the journey worth it.
After arriving home, packing in the trailer, and unpacking - it was then time to clean it and tow it to storage for a few weeks.
Our next planned trip was to Jekyll Island here in Georgia and we figured we’d have plenty of time to sort out all the lessons we learned along the way during our Shakedown trip. Check out our next trip and see where we headed off to next!