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Just his past week I saw a Coach House Platinum II . What a great looking unit. If and when I need to change from towing to driving my home away this brand will get a closer look. We just returned from the best trip ever. Dry camping at Mount Pisgah on the BRP. This trip was everything our previous trip there should have been. The Trailer, and tow vehicle performed perfectly and my new Andersen wdh made hitching up so easy. More on that in another post for those of you who remember my rants against Andersen when we had the Ollie. Solar was great when the sun was out and my Honda 2000i took up the slack on cloudy days. AC was never needed because the highest temp was only 74 during our stay. For now the AS has extended my camping years and for that I am grateful.

We would like to announce the location and dates for our 2018 Rally. The 2018 Oliver Rally will be held May 4-7, 2018 at Lake Guntersville State Park in Alabama. Lake Gunterville State Park offers many fun activities including an 18-hole golf course, fishing, hiking and biking trails, boat rentals, ziplining and more. More details to come. For now we ask to hold off on questions. We will update the webpage dedicated to the Rally as we get more information. http://olivertraveltrailers.com/rally/

Hi Everyone, I had this great idea.... Put the Dinette area in bunk mode to use as a couch. We never really use the dinette seating. It's not the most comfortable, so if we are relaxing inside we sit on the bunks, but that gets old so I figured let's try the new configuration. I quickly found that you are most likely NOT going to be able to remove the post by hand. There are 3 tongues that fit under the floor bracket that attach the post to the floor. You have to loosen the black flange and then rotate the post holding the table. Very difficult if not impossible to do by hand. Finally figured it would be best to use a strap wrench. $9 and a home depot trip later and I was able to get the post removed. I used the strap wrench on the flange first and then on the post itself. A rubber mallet and some blue language were also employed. :-) Pictures attached.... Comment appreciated... So far we like it this way and will probably leave it in this configuration. Safe Travels, Scotty

Many of the forum members will remember my frequent rants about the Andersen hitch while I owned Oliver #64. I almost lost my religion over the hitch and finally just removed it and towed with nothing other than Firestone airbags for leveling. When I bought my Airstream I did not even consider an Andersen because of my prior experience plus I did not know they offered anything with the capacity to handle the 1200 pound tongue weight of my loaded AS. I did some research and settled on a Blue Ox Sway control WDH with 2000 pound bars. This turned out to be a $500 mistake. On a 4,000 mile round trip to the Grand Canyon we encountered extremely rough roads on I-10 in Louisiana and East Texas. The jarring bounces and lurching of the trailer were very problematic and resulted in a reduced speed down to 30 MPH on an Interstate highway. As we made our way westward the roads improved but the large truck traffic increased. Each time a truck would pass the whole rig would lurch to the side. Even small vans had an impact on our rig. We did encounter some serious crosswinds and surprisingly the Blue Ox handled them well. When we returned I started searching for another solution and came across another Airstream owner who was talking about using the Andersen with his 34 foot classic and a Ford excursion...and very pleased with the result. After consulting with him via the Airforum I decided to give Andersen another try. First let me say that the hitch was easy to install. This in part because the A frame of the Airstream is open...not hidden by a nose cone such as the Oliver. Form over function what what. The brackets are visible, plus they are super easy to access for fine tuning adjustments. We set off for our annual trip to Asheville July 15 and what a difference in the towing performance. Instead of a jarring bounce when we crossed bridges with uneven expansion joints there was just a smooth springing sensation. The trailer did not move at all when trucks passed, or even when I sped up to 75 MPH to avoid a vehicle on an entrance ramp. Hitching up was easy because I watched some videos about raising the trailer to add some slack to the chains. Even when I had to back up and unhitch at a severe angle I was able to straighten the tension plate using the technique on the Andersen web site. So Andersen, my apologies for past sins. I love your hitch. O and the levelers are terrific.

Reed, Thanks for the schematics. Will you be heading back over to Safeway soon? John

Clair & Kathy, Picking up tomorrow? And, I notice that the Clever Beast is 100 away from the Flying Sea Turtle, hull # 145. Best of Luck and enjoy a safe trip home. Looking forward to seeing your pics. Say hey to Anita for us. Scotty

I saw this ingeneous table mount at a boat show several years ago. We need the table in the small dinette sometimes for cooking prep, paperwork, etc., But, I loved the Whaley's sofa... Any ideas on how to make this work with the sofa? http://www.lagunusa.com/ Sherry

Hi Sherry :) The Sprinter wasn't comfortable to sit in for long periods because it sits you up totally straight, where I prefer a small tilt in my seat for comfort. Then my knee's were hitting the dash and the stick shift, knocking it out of gear too many times on our test drive. You just can't beat an SUV for comforting the old bones...