Everything you ever wanted to know about trailer tongue weight but were afraid to ask

Because of the size of our tow vehicle, we have to be very careful about not overloading our new Geo-Pro trailer. We know about GVWR (Gross Vehicle Weight Rating) and CCC (cargo carrying capacity). We also need to be sure that we don't exceed the tongue weight allowed so that our pickup can pull it safely. According to the specs on our Chevrolet Colorado (with V6 and towing package), our maximum tongue weight is 700 pounds.

"But what is tongue weight and how do you measure it?" you ask. Mark asked the same questions and here are some of the answers:

Tongue weight is simply how much the tongue hitch weighs. We need to know how much weight is being put on the hitch ball of the pickup. If you get too much, it will raise the front of the pickup and make it difficult to steer. If you get too little, the trailer is prone to whipping. Besides keeping it less than 700 pounds, we also need to keep it at 10-15 percent of the total trailer weight. Having the proper tongue weight is important to driving safely down the road. 

"But how do you measure tongue weight?" you ask. Well, Mark read about a system of boards and pipes that would allow him to weigh the tongue weight using our bathroom scale. That was a lot of work, and he still didn't feel like it was a very exacting method.

So he built an A-frame out of used lumber, and ordered a better scale. 

Now he can get better tongue-weight readings to be sure we're not over- or under-loading the pickup's hitch.

He weighed the trailer loaded for a camping trip, as well as unloaded. The trailer's dry weight (straight from the factory with no personal items in it) is 3,475 pounds. GVWR (Gross Vehicle Weight Rating) or the weight the axles and tires are rated to carry is a maximum of 5,000 pounds. When you subtract 3,475 unloaded weight from 5,000 pounds allowable weight you find that we can only load 1,025 pounds of our personal stuff in the trailer. That 1,025 pounds is called the  CCC (Cargo Carrying Capacity). You need to know all those numbers to stay safe driving down the road. The tongue weight that we have been measuring should be 10-15% of the total trailer weight. So we are hoping for a tongue weight of around 500 pounds (maximum of 5,000 pounds * ten percent). What will it be?

The loaded trailer tongue weight was right at 500 pounds!

Then Mark started experimenting with his new scale. He weighed the tongue weight after he put the bike rack on the back of the trailer without bikes. The tongue weight dropped to 469 pounds because he was adding weight behind the trailer axle. Then he added even more weight when he put the bikes onto the rack. 

The tongue weight got even lighter--429 pounds. This proves that tongue weight is not just affected by additional weight--it's also affected by where that weight is loaded onto the trailer. You put weight onto the very back of the trailer and the weight on the tongue decreases. But you run the risk of your trailer whipping because it has too much weight behind the trailer axle and the tongue weight is too light. Whew! This can be complicated.

Some additional weight was necessary for installing the lithium battery system that Mark engineered, and he needed to know how it would affect the tongue weight. This is a significant weight added to a side storage area in front of the axle. But he also removed the two regular batteries that were in a box near the hitch. All of those changes affected the tongue weight.

We also have to be mindful of the total weight of the trailer. Our Chevrolet Colorado's maximum towing capacity is 7,000 pounds. So our 5,000 pound fully loaded trailer is below that maximum. We've read that you should stay under 80% of your maximum, and so far we have accomplished that.

If you aren't confused enough with all this alphabet soup like CCC and GVWR, we should add that you must also consider the GCWR (Gross Combined Weight Rating) which is the combined weight of the vehicle and the trailer. That might be more than everything you ever wanted to know about trailer tongue weight, but obviously Mark wants us to be safe and within our limits when rolling down the road. 

We keep learning about camping on the small side with this little trailer. After nine years of full-timing in a diesel motor home, we thought we knew lots about living in an RV. But we're finding that there's more alphabet soup to towing a trailer and lots more new stuff to learn.

Truman Lake - Finishing our 4-state, 4-campground trip

The wind picked up, and it was a windy three-hour drive to our last campground of this trip on Truman Lake in Missouri. We pulled into the Thibaut Corp of Engineer campground, and it didn't take long to set up the hammock behind the trailer.

Our campground was somewhat protected from the wind, but the lake was not. We walked to the closed swimming beach to see white caps that looked like ocean waves. It looked like we wouldn't be kayaking today. Denisa was thinking it might not be a hiking day either when we almost stepped on this snake as we walked back from the beach. It feels like it might be a rest day in that hammock back at the campground. We cooked a nice meal and enjoyed cooling off with the air-conditioner since we have electric hookups here.

The next morning we drove 23 miles to Windsor, Missouri, to the trail head of the Katy Trail. We visited here last fall without the bicycles, and we were anxious to go further down this trail since we have our foldable bikes this trip. The trail is shaded for the first mile through a tunnel of trees.

Then we broke out of the tree tunnel, and into the blue skies. The Katy Trail stretches 237 miles from the town of Clinton in western Missouri, all the way to St. Louis in the east. Today we biked miles 16.6 - 21.7 of the Katy Trail. We only have 232 more miles to go to bike the entire trail!

The sky was lovely today, and this trail smelled of honeysuckle and spiderwort. It smelled like spring!

Our destination was the highest point on the Katy Trail, at an elevation of 955 feet. The grade is so slight that we didn't feel like we were really going uphill. But we knew that after the turn around, it was all downhill from there.

We were entertained by the birds on this trail. No pictures, but we saw red cardinals, blue jays, orange orioles, yellow warblers, and two quail hustled across the trail right in front of us. We also saw a hawk, dove, a host of sparrows, red winged black birds, meadowlarks, and even an eagle before we got back to the pickup.

After our bike ride, we headed out in the country to find some of our favorite Amish stores. We like the selection at Lilac Lane Bulk Foods. But it doesn't seem as authentic with their overhead electric lights and now they even take credit cards. Kuntry Bulk Grocery still has horse hitching posts outside, skylights provide the only lighting inside the store, and they only take cash. That seems more authentic, but they didn't have as many products that we were interested in. Since it's spring, we headed to Wagler's Greenhouse, with parking on the road and two litters of baby kittens in a box behind the counter.

We dropped off our Amish noodles, apple butter, fresh loaf of bread, cinnamon rolls, and a plethora of other favorite treats before we ate lunch at the trailer. For dessert we had strawberries just picked this morning, and a cinnamon roll fresh out of the oven.

We love home-grown strawberries that are red all the way through. They sure beat those white-centered strawberries we buy at the grocery store!

Then we were off to the next Saturday fun event--the Warsaw Outdoor Expo. The festival had free admission to see a few vendors and food trucks situated on Drake Harbor of the Osage River in Warsaw, Missouri. This river connects to the dam that formed Truman Lake and the Lake of the Ozarks. Missouri is blessed with lots of water! This afternoon we were blessed with some good music. A group named "Potter's Wheel Blue Grass Band" from Lebanon, Missouri, played three hours in the sunny 97-degree heat from 2:00-5:00. We were hot after just one hour, so we were impressed with their music and their durability.

While the band was packing up and the next group was setting up, we walked some of the trails along the river front. We crossed the water on the Dice Suspension Bridge. A version of this bridge has been at this crossing since 1904. They used to charge a toll, but now it is free to walkers and bikers, and connects to a network of Warsaw River Trails.

We couldn't miss the large nest sitting on one of the trusses of the suspension bridge.

When we zoomed in, we could see a single head bobbing out of the nest occasionally. We're guessing that a pair of ospreys are sitting on eggs right now.

Mark sure wanted to see better inside that nest, so he walked a ways up the side of the bridge. Even from that vantage point he couldn't confirm any hatchlings were in the nest. Then we walked the Bledsoe Ferry Trail for 2.5 miles to get a little exercise. The next entertainment group was set up, and we enjoyed the Dueling Pianos from St. Louis from 7-10. We saw lightning in the distance as the pianists finished up, and we headed to our campground ten miles away.

It was loud in the trailer that night with the lightning and thunder booming. We had planned to stay three nights at this campground. But the weather called for sunny skies the next morning, and then more storms the next evening. It was more pleasant to break camp and make the drive home on a dry morning, so we shortened our stay. This four-campground, ten-night, four-state camping trip has been a good test of our new solar/lithium battery system that Mark installed. We are more confident in our ability to camp without electrical hook-ups now.

After that camping trip, we were anxious to get back to our grandchildren waiting for us back home. Doesn't Grandude and Eli look good in their matching outfits?

 

And we have new baby chicks! Carter cared for the eggs while they were in the incubator, and we couldn't wait until they hatched. It was fun watching them peck their way out of their shells in the incubator.

Carter is enjoying mothering them. She's calling them free range chickens because she takes them out to play in the back yard. Life is good after our 4-state, 4-campground trip!

How will we do at Table Rock State Park with no electricity?

We were sad to leave our electric site at Beaver Lake, because our next stop had no hook-ups of any kind. But we were glad to move to an area on Table Rock Lake where we had some telephone service. Google maps gave us two routes for the trip between the two campgrounds. We chose the longer option when we realized the shorter route had roads so narrow they didn't even have center lines. We drove the winding and narrow Arkansas roads into the winding and narrow Missouri roads to Table Rock State Park. It was 85 degrees when we arrived, and without electric hook-ups we couldn't run the air-conditioner. We used our gas burner for the first time to cook lunch. We knew it was going to be hot in the trailer, so we opted for some shopping at the cool outlet mall in the afternoon.

We had tickets at the Sight and Sound Theater for the 7:30 performance. Even an hour before the show, cars were lining up to get into the parking lot. Yes, this was another sold-out crowd for these popular biblical performances. It was a spectacular show with immense set changes that filled the front and sides of the theater. We were on the fourth row and had to look behind us at times to see all  the scenes of "David." Fun facts that we learned from the program: 24,000 yards of fabric were used to create the costumes, Goliath towered in at 22 feet tall, and 32 sheep and eight goats were on the stage in David's flock. They also rode horses up and down and aisles, with one person in charge of cleaning up the horse poop before intermission.

The show finished at 10:00, but it took us 30 minutes to get out of our parking lot. Back at the campground, it was 85 degrees inside our trailer without air-conditioning. So we were glad we brought two pre-charged fans. We ran them both with the windows open, and slept comfortably. After ten hours without electric hook-ups we were at 96% capacity on our lithium battery. The solar panel generated 12 amp hours in a camping spot that was partially shaded.

We were up early the next morning to go for a bike ride before it got hot.

The water was like glass in the marina when we left at 8:00. But windy waves were breaking on the shore by the time we finished our ride at 10:00.

It was too windy to put the kayak on Table Rock Lake, so our best activity seemed to be eating! The camp host had strongly recommended Billy Gail's for breakfast, so we followed his advice. We ordered the five-egg omelet to share. The menu had a note attached that explained that they were adding $1 to the price of every egg entree because of the egg shortage. We also ordered a 14-inch cream pancake. That was the biggest pancake we had ever almost consumed. There's no way we could have finished both the omelet and the pancake! Everything was very good, and we will join the camp host in recommending Billy Gail's. We didn't feel like we could eat anything else today.

We definitely needed to work off that hearty breakfast, so our next stop was the Ruth and Paul Henning Conservation Area. It was already 85 degrees, so we appreciated the shade in the one-mile Dewey Bald Trail. At the half-way point we climbed the fire tower for 360-degree views of Branson.

We heard rustling in the dry leaves and spotted the orange cheeks of this skink.

He posed for us on a log showing off the wart-like bumps behind his front legs.

We also walked the 1.8-mile Glade Trail and Streamway. With more elevation and more sun, we realized we forgot to bring anything to drink. What a rookie mistake! So immediately after the hike we stopped for drinks and some groceries. It was a restful afternoon trying to photograph the blue jay that lives in our camping site, but Denisa was unsuccessful. So we'll settle for a picture of the bright yellow flowers that were blooming on the trails.

Even though we vowed not to eat anything else for the rest of the day, we broke our vow. We had read about the Pickin' Porch Grill that had free acoustic guitar entertainment from 5:00-6:30 some evenings. So we ordered the sticky ribs dinner and did a little dancing to some fine free Branson entertainment. This is the second eating establishment we would recommend in Branson!

We finished with a walk around the campground, and an evening watching Oklahoma City Thunder basketball on television. We were rooting for them to win the NBA championship! We were also monitoring how much electricity our solar panels were generating and how much electricity we were using. Mark installed a smart shunt, and the following picture is what a typical screen looks like when he checks it. Our lithium batteries were at 83% of their charge. This also tells us that currently we are using more amperage than the solar panels are producing (-0.39 amp). But at this rate and at the current state of charge, we can still have 10 days without our battery being drained to zero. Unlike lead-acid batteries, it is all right to let a lithium battery get down to 0%.

Mark was also checking the controller, whose screen looks like the picture below. The solar panels are currently producing 1.21 amps--which probably means it is late in the day or our solar panels are shaded.

We were completing two days without any electricity, learning how many amps it takes to run our water pump, and using USB charged fans and lights. Our battery was at 83%. So we used more electricity than our solar made, but our lithium battery can store enough to run our refrigerator on cloudy or shaded days. 

The second morning we woke to no wind and cool temperatures, so we took our bikes on the Table Rock State Park bike trail for another six miles. Our turn-around point was at the visitor center right next to the lake.

Our two days without hook-ups was a success. We learned that it is good to have activities away from the trailer in the heat of the day. By opening up the windows and running the fantastic fan, we can cool things off in the evening. Our 12-volt refrigerator is our biggest user of electricity, and so far the solar is doing a pretty good job of keeping up with that. We are learning about boondocking and solar, and we're ready to head to our next campground on this ten-day test run.

Tripping to Eureka Springs

While we were camped on Beaver Lake, we designated a day to do some sight-seeing around Eureka Springs. Among the stops in this beautiful area, was Thorncrown Chapel. 

A glass chapel in the woods is a nice place to sit for a spell, and enjoy the quiet. Their brochure calls this "a thin place" where the line between heaven and earth is thin.

The next stop was a 100-foot-tall CCC fire tower that is almost 100 years old. We paid four quarters each to open the gate for the privilege to climb all those steps for the view from the top.

Denisa left the tower first, and Mark took her picture from the top. She's the white dot in the middle of the green lawn at the base of the tower.

Denisa couldn't help herself from taking a picture of the flowers blooming at the base. The red, purple and yellow made a nice contrast in the flower bed this morning. 

The next stop was the Christ of the Ozarks statue. This 67-foot-tall statue is on the grounds of the outdoor amphitheater that houses the passion play in Eureka Springs.

Visitors can also walk through the grounds of the holy land tour and petting zoo. While we didn't take the tour, we did walk through the gate of the Jerusalem Wall into the biblical village.

A surprising display on these grounds is a piece of the Berlin Wall, which was taken down after the Cold War. The German words on this section come from Psalm 23.

The last stop inside this interesting complex is the Bible Museum. While our expectations were low, we both agreed that it was very interesting. We spent a surprising amount of time inside the museum. It held hundreds of rare and antique bibles, including the tiniest bible and the oldest bible. One bible was hand-written on deer skin, another on calf hide. But the one thing we took a picture of was a picture that included every word of the New Testament typed in such a way that the shading made a picture of Jesus.

A close-up of the face shows the tiny words that make up the picture.

Now that we've explored the outskirts of town, it's time to go downtown. We discovered that parking in downtown Eureka Springs is hard to find on a Monday afternoon in early May. We can't imagine driving, and then trying to find a parking spot on these curvy narrow roads in town on a summer weekend. One of the iconic sites of downtown is the narrow flatiron building.

Spring Street is the main drag through town, and is located in a valley with steep rock walls on both sides. We saw steep staircases on Spring Street, so we climbed the steps to see where they would lead. They took us to a trail that parallels the stone walls of the mountain. This is the only town that we can remember that has a trail that looks like it is in the mountains, while we could still look down on downtown. 

We let our noses determine where we ate lunch. After eating on the patio of the restaurant that smelled the best, we left downtown. We drove up the steepest road (in this town known for its steep streets) to get to the top of Eureka Springs. At the very top of town is the Crescent Hotel, built as the "crown jewel of all lodgings." It went out of business during the depression in the 1930's, and was a cancer hospital for some time. But recently the hotel was restored, and is once again lodging visitors to Eureka Springs.

Across the street from the Crescent Hotel is St. Elizabeth Catholic Church.

We enjoyed a walk around the gardens and through the stations of the cross.

The last stop of the day was just as unique as the rest of the town of Eureka Springs. This crocheted totem pole is actually a tall tree stump covered in crocheted granny squares.

Back at the campground, we couldn't wait to see how our solar panels were working. We had unplugged the trailer from our electric hook-ups before we left this morning, to see if our solar power could keep up with the refrigerator's appetite for electricity. Even with clouds and being parked in some shade, we were glad to see that the solar panels had kept our new lithium battery at 100% charge. It has been a successful trip to Eureka Springs!