Hi, I'm Mike Horrell and recently purchased a new, optioned out, 8.1.
We used it for the first time a week ago and are really pleased with it.
If anyone has any tips for use or maintenance, please let us know!
Welcome Mike! You've come to the right place for tips! Can you camp year-around in your part of NM?
[quote timestamp="1478017881" source="/post/25664/thread" author="@sandroad"]Welcome Mike! You've come to the right place for tips! Can you camp year-around in your part of NM? [/quote]Hi, Merlin;
Except in real snow, yes. At least most of NM aside from the mountains is campable
year-round, but it can get quite cold. Most NM state parks allow winter camping but I
would think that water hook-ups are shut down and perhaps electric as well. Trailer
camping is completely new to us so I don't have direct knowledge of that.. Yet!
Unlike in most areas, Spring in the SW is potentially the worst camping season due to
frequent heavy winds in AZ, southern Utah, all of NM and West Texas. It's not bad *ALL*
the time, but can be bad for a few days at a time.
Until this year, we were car / tent campers, but aging joints finally caught up with us.
We've tent camped relatively comfortably in 20F and below and expect to continue with
the 8.1. We camped several days last week at Conchas Lake State Park about 30 miles
NW of Tucumcari and I think the night temps dropped to about 40-45 giving us a chance
to try out the excellent heater..
Sounds like great fun. We also have a Subaru Outback; nice cars! There are a few state parks open all year even here in Michigan. They have electric all year and heated restroom buildings. I'm very tempted to winter camp except that I pretty much refuse to tow on snowy/icy/salty roads, so that limits us to only a few possible times per winter for trips.
Welcome. This is a great place for questions.
I tow my 6.0 with an Outback as well though mine is older. I'm hoping to take mine when I do grad school in NM this summer and see how it goes camping in the mountains on weekends.
Quote from: @idlerockfarm" source="/post/25671/thread" timestamp="1478056120Welcome. This is a great place for questions.
I tow my 6.0 with an Outback as well though mine is older. I'm hoping to take mine when I do grad school in NM this summer and see how it goes camping in the mountains on weekends.
We had a 2012 Outback that we really liked, but it only had a 2000lb towing capacity so we sold it with 51k miles on it
and the next day bought a 2017 which can tow 2700lb. Two days later, we bought the 8.1 over the phone from a Denver
dealer and picked it up two weeks later.
If I were single, I might have gotten a 6.0, then I could have kept the 2012 Subie.
I'd been looking at Quicksilvers for several years so this wasn't quite as precipitous a series of moves as it looks.
Pic taken in the RV dealer lot. Since then I've added a large, weatherproof, "rubber" storage box on the rear deck.
[attachment id="1838" thumbnail="1"]
Awesome rig!
You'll probably appreciate the extra room in the 8.1. the bed is big.
Speaking of the bed, I bought a dual memory foam mattress for our 10.0 and it's awesome. The stock one is far from awesome...and you cannot double them up like we can.
A couple of these thingies have really made our QS rock solid.
https://www.amazon.com/Valterra-020106-RV-Stabilizer/dp/B001UGJPXQ
Thanks for the info, catmanriff. We are definitely going to have to do something about the beds
and that stabilizer looks interesting..
We had a 6.0 and the stock mattress was a tad thin. A foam topper made a great improvement. Another option is to get a 5.5 foam matttress and cut it down to fit the camper.
For some reason all the mattresses used by LL are thin. We had to upgrade our mattresses on our 16 TBS.
An added benefit of a thicker mattress is less condensation build up under and around the mattress.