Our Maiden Voyage in the Geo-Pro

We couldn't wait to go camping! Between the time of putting the motor home for sale, and then doing our research to buy another RV, it's been a long time since we've been on a camping trip! So we picked a nearby lake for the maiden voyage of our new Geo Pro trailer. Mark was a pro at backing our big old motor home into a camping spot. Of course, he also had nine years of practice. Let's just say that the first attempt at backing the trailer into our camp site wasn't pretty. It's a whole different process backing a pickup with a trailer that can pivot in strange directions, and Denisa had no idea of how to help with this new process. But we eventually got settled into our new spot and got practice in leveling our trailer. In the motor home we were used to pressing a button, and the automatic levelers took over from there. Let's just say it's a little less automatic with our little trailer. But we'll be able to get into and get level in much smaller spots now (once we have some practice).

We walked down to the dock at Clinton Lake where we were staying. The water was perfectly still the first evening when we arrived. We found out that we should have jumped in the kayak right then, as we had some wind the rest of our stay.

We weren't the only ones stopping in at Clinton Lake. The white pelicans were migrating through, and the locals told us that these birds usually stop in during their trips between their summer and winter homes.

 While Canadian Geese are large birds, they look small when they are hanging out with these big white pelicans.

We have camped at Clinton Lake before, but it was on the north side at the state park. Since we are older and wiser this time, we are staying at the Cedar Ridge campground on the south side of the lake. We are older (so we now have our national park senior pass) and wiser to take advantage of the half-price senior rate at this Corp of Engineer Cedar Ridge park. We are enjoying $11 per night camping rates on this maiden voyage! 

On this maiden voyage Denisa was dusting off the camera and taking way too many pictures of the water birds we saw. So forgive her for randomly sprinkling in those pictures.

Our trip to Clinton Lake several years ago was during a time of too much rain, when the boat ramps were flooded and we couldn't get on the lake. Even though it was windy on this big lake, this trip we put our inflatable kayak on the water and did some paddling through the dead trees in the water.

Perched among those dead limbs were a flock of vultures. They were drying their wings in the wind as we paddled by.

On another day, we made a ten-mile road trip to Lone Star Lake. A smaller and quieter lake, it had some protection from the wind. We kayaked around the entire edge of the water.

Speaking of water, we have to get used to the new holding tank sizes in our new Geo Pro trailer. In the motor home we had a 90-gallon fresh water tank, a 70-gallon gray water tank, and a 50-gallon black water tank. In this new trailer we have a 31-gallon fresh water tank, a 27-gallon gray water tank, and a 27-gallon black water tank. Yeah, that's about a third to half the size of the tank capacity we were accustomed to. That means we will have to monitor our water resources a lot more carefully now.

Speaking of turtles--well maybe we weren't talking about turtles. But Denisa was taking pictures of the turtles sun-bathing at Lone Star Lake.

During this maiden voyage, we spent most of our time outdoors. But we were anxious to try out the trailer's amenities. We can report that the RV mattress it came with is as bad as we thought it would be. But purchasing a nice four-inch memory foam topper made it quite comfortable.

We also wanted to try the cast iron grill that attaches to a rail on the side of the RV. We cooked most of our meals outside--which included grilled pork chops and fried potatoes one evening.

We also had pancakes on the grill for breakfast. We're still trying to decide if this heavy cast iron grill is worth its weight. It definitely has some hot and cool spots. But it plugs into our propane tanks easily, so it seems to be a good addition for boondocking trips. But it is really heavy in a trailer where we are trying to keep the weight to a minimum.

It's been more than a year since we've had smores at a campground, and that seems to be a sweet way to finish up this first camping trip. The maiden voyage in the Geo Pro was a success!