Last day at the outdoor Expo

If you're not interested in my opinion of other people's campers, you don't need to click the pics.

Some more RVs that have subscribed to the off-road look that's very popular nowadays. It seems to me that the more off-roadie an RV looks, the less time they spend off-road

To me when it comes to trailers the most important thing to driving on dirt roads is the frame that the trailer is built on has to be strong enough to resist flexing on bumpy roads. Because if the frame flexes, which most of them do, it will slowly tear the trailer apart. Everything else is just window dressing to make the buyer feel like they can go anywhere, even though the State Park is probably the only place these trailers will ever go.

I moseyed over to the Expo for little while this morning, but I had seen almost everything I needed to see yesterday. I mostly wanted to watch some of the mounted shooting again because that was the most interesting thing to me.

It could be just my imagination, but it seems to me the Outdoor Expo wasn't as big as it used to be. There weren't as many vendors, tents, and displays as I remember from previous visits. However, there were still plenty of people there, and as usual, they had to open up new roads from Ben Avery to the Highway, and the local police controlled traffic to get all the people safely in and out.

But I had planned on eating lunch at the Expo because, in the past, there were a dozen or more food vendors at the Expo, but this time I only counted three, but fortunately, I was able to walk to the Lance and make my own lunch.

Seeing the outdoor Expo was the main reason I came back to Ben Avery, so now that that's over, I can concentrate on doing something else. I think I'm supposed to leave here on the 30th, which will give me about a week after I leave here, to find a place to hide out till Easter is over.

Theboondork

This travel trailer looks rugged but to me its just macho fluff. Tough looking paneling on the side, which adds weight, and accomplishes nothing. Plastic windows that scratch easily, and worst of all the entire back of the trailer is a slide-out which is a serious point of weakness.

This is the back of that travel trailer. Notice the heavy complicated gadgetry that allows you to lower the spare tires every time you need to pull the slide out.

A box is a fairly strong structure, and this trailer is a box. But it's got a top that isn't all that securely fastened, and a slide out in back that doesn't offer much rigidity when it's closed, so you have a box with two of the sides that add very little strength to the construction. And with this you're supposed to go off-road.

And here we have a $30,000 tent on wheels by the same manufacturer. In this iteration you get all the problematic parts of a trailer, difficulty backing up, more tires to take care of, bearings to fail, etc. etc. And all the pesky parts of a tent, leaky, noisy in the wind, time-consuming to set up, and anybody with a pocket knife can quickly gain entrance.

So it seems to me you get none of the good parts of a trailer like a dry and secure place to live, that at least will slow down a bear. And none of the good parts of a tent such as inexpensive and highly mobile... I'm missing the point of this whole endeavor.

Sorry about all the criticism, but when the salesman was explaining all the wonders of these trailers to me I didn't hear a single thing that these trailers do that most any other trailer on the road doesn't do... It was all just macho fluff.

There were a few pontoon boats that a boat dealer had at the Expo.

I always thought pontoon boats were made for slowly putting around the lake, with a beer in one hand and the steering wheel in the other, and stopping every once in a while to fish. But I must be wrong because all the pontoon boats had 250 hp Yamaha engines on them. That's probably enough power to get that pontoon boat up on plane, if there is such a thing for pontoon boats.

This mounted shooter looks like he would shoot you in a minute, just for fun.

Five-year-old mounted shooter, I didn't make that up, that's what her mom said.

She didn't actually shoot her plastic guns, but she did ride around the arena on her full-size horse...which is more than most five-year-olds can do.