Do you need to detach your camper trailer or caravan?
When you pull into a camp site, do you always detach your camper trailer or caravan? If we don’t have to, I don’t bother, and we’re much preferring this as it means you don’t have to spend time detaching and reattaching. I find the process is frustrating especially when you’ve been on dirty roads as everything is covered in mud, and we have to be very aware that the kids are out of the way.
Of course, you don’t often have a choice, and in many caravan parks you have to detach to fit in, but when you are camping in the bush your freedom is hugely extended.
Is your towing setup level?
One of the reasons you will have to detach is if your camper trailer or caravan does not tow level. If this is the case, you’ll end up with your bed sloping one way or another and at best this is unpleasant, but it can actually make you feel quite ill if your head is facing down a slope and you wake up with lots of blood having run the wrong way!
3 weeks in the Pilbara
On our recent 3 week trip to the Pilbara, we detached the camper only a handful of times, and when we were moving every day or two it made life much easier on everyone. We never had to work too hard about getting the camper level, and only detached when we wanted to take the vehicle away from camp, which was hardly ever.
This was easy because often we’d arrive at camp and just kick back doing nothing except enjoying the surroundings. If you are pulling up to a base camp then you will have to detach, and if we need to, we will too.
Taking the weight off your suspension
I have seen a number of people pull into camp and just put their jockey wheel down to take the weight off the back of their 4WD. I guess this would help your suspension out overnight, but we never bother.
If its not level, we’ll just detach and get it to the right height. I have seen people use the jockey wheel to level their van whilst still attached, but you are asking to overload the jockey wheel doing this!
