Trip Began and Questions Answered

 Location: Intracoastal Waterway Park; Calcasieu Parish, Louisisana

First things first, Calcasieu is pronounced Cal-ka-shoe and whenever you see the word "parish" in Louisiana, think of county. The parish is located in the southwest corner of Louisiana and borders the Great State of Texas. Interstate 10 bisects the parish and its largest city is Lake Charles. The Port of Lake Charles can handle large ocean-going ships by way of the 68 mile long Calcasieu Ship Channel, not much different than other places like the Houston Ship Channel.

This is the first "thru windshield" picture from the new truck while towing. It is on U.S. 171 in western Louisiana. I promised someone many years ago that I would post travel pictures for them since they wouldn't be able to travel. Promise kept.

The campground is owed and operated by the Calcasieu Parish Police Jury (county commission)  and is located right on the Intracoastal Waterway (ICW). The ICW is a 3,000 mile navigable route that was built and maintained by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and is mostly located just inland of the Atlantic and Gulf coast. It begins in Boston, Massachusetts and ends in Brownsville, Texas. My campsite is about 50 feet from the water's edge of the ICW. I've been here about 15 hours and seen at least 25 tow boats , with their barges, pass by in both directions. If you're wanting to watch the tow boats work, this is the campground for you. Oh by the way, the cost is $12.00 per night for water/electric. Good deal Lucille. I've stayed here once before and have explored the area so this time will be used to visit with my oldest son who works and lives in the area just north of here. I will take the opportunity to drive down and see the Gulf of America which is about a 20 minute drive from here. I've heard it looks a lot like the old Gulf of Mexico but just more beautiful. :)

This is the view out my back window. I took this one while drinking coffee and writing this blog post. Nice, uh?

I took this one while I was setting up camp and noticed a tow boat approaching. I hadn't set up my starlink yet.

Same tow boat but now leaving.

This is the first trip in my new truck and I had some questions that couldn't be answered until we hitched up and started the trip. If any of these questions had a bad answer, the trip would have to be delayed. Fortunately, all of the answers were good, at least so far. There was no question that the new truck would be able to tow Liberty. In fact, even though the new truck is a 1/2 ton, while my old one was a 3/4 ton, the new truck has a little more towing capacity than my old truck. The question was about how much "squatting" she would do when hitched up. In other words, how much would the back end go down and the front end go up. Even if your payload capacity will handle the tongue weight of the trailer, there always remains a question of how it will handle it. If your front end goes up too much, then it's dangerous and hard to drive. The good news is after hitching up, the front end went up only 3/4 inches while the back end went down 1-3/4 inches. Both numbers were acceptable to me, but I still need to see how she handled on the road. She did good. The second question about hitching was how level the trailer would be in relation to the truck. There are a lot of opinions about it, but my preference is to have the trailer slightly "nose-down" after hitching. I have an adjustable hitch on the truck and can adjust it up or down to my liking but to do so means hitching up, looking at it from the side and if I don't like it, then unhitching, adjusting, re-hitching, etc. You get the idea, just a pain in the behind. I got lucky again, and after hitching, she looked just fine. I may have been looking at it with a "wish-full eye" so I wouldn't have to adjust it before leaving but I will re-look at it when I hitch up to leave this campground on Wednesday. 

The other big question was how my new wireless brake controller would work or if it would even work. When I bought the new truck I made sure it came with the tow package. What I didn't know was it didn't come with the "max tow package". I didn't know there was a difference but on the day I took delivery I noticed there wasn't a manual brake controller on the dash. I asked about it and two of the dealership salesmen lied to me and told me it was all electronic now. I was in a hurry to take possession of the truck and didn't google it at the time. I figured I could easily add one if needed since I wasn't planning a trip for a while. Come to find out, the integrated brake controller on the dash is part of the newly created and mis-leading Ford package called a "max tow package". Oh well, I started searching for a brake controller. It looked like an easy "plug-and-play" computer package. Ut-oh, all of them was on back order with a delivery date uncertain. That's when I stumbled across a wireless brake controller. I had never heard of one before. It was way less than half the price of the brake controller I was looking at and it was in stock at the local Camping World. I bought one and gave it a shot. I plugged it into my new truck and then plugged the trailer in to it. After downloading an app, I could take my cell phone to the trailer wheels and push the screen and hear the breaks working so I knew I was connected and the app/device was doing its job. Wow, dumbass me got it working right out of the box. I can adjust the gain and sensitivity through a bluetooth connection on my phone. There is also a manual brake lock-up like the dash mounted brake controller. Once you get it set-up, you can literally throw your phone out the window and it retains the last settings. After only a 3 hour trip, I'm happy with it but I will keep an eye on it. 

Curt echo wireless brake controller. I didn't take a picture of it connected so I'll do that another time. But it worked just fine. 

Although I will greatly miss my family, it felt good leaving on this trip. My homebase campground, that I just left, had filled up with pipeliners due to a large pipeline that was being built. It is crossing the entire parish (see above for definition). The campground had become a large work camp with diesel trucks starting up at 4:30 each morning and welders practicing their art. It sounds like I'm complaining but I'm not. I completely understand and agree with the work they are doing and the choices they made to live in an RV while traveling around the country working. They were all well behaved and polite with at least a fourth of them with wives and children. I just didn't like the crowded condition. Hopefully, they will have moved on before I get back in July.  

 

I took this the day before leaving. Of the RV's in this picture, 90% are pipeliners. Again, I'm not complaining, I just felt crowded. 

This post has gotten a little long but I wanted to do a first post of the trip as well as documenting the answers to a few questions. My time here is 3 days before moving east along the coast. It's time to go see the Gulf and maybe even buy some fresh shrimp off the boats. 

Ya'll take care of each other. Maybe I'll Cya down the road.