After having some crazy things happen in my life and being bored with constantly rebuilding my Camaro race car, I decided to make a drastic change. I had not travelled much as an adult and decided to sell my car, along with many other possessions, to purchase a 5th wheel RV and a truck with enough juice to haul it around. I wanted to explore the US!

After purchasing the RV, I discovered problems with the breaks and problems with the axle bearings. I contacted the previous owner to told me he had been through many bearing failures. After a little poking around, I found out this was actually an engineering error. The trailer was equipt with two 3500lb rates axles. After crossing cat scales, the camper totally empty weighed in just over 7000 lbs. This meant that at all times the trailer was overloading the axles without any of my stuff even in it yet. I opted to replace the axles with two 6000lb rated ones and at the same time upgraded the breaks from 10" to 12" drums. The last picture shows the new bearing left and old bearing right.

Above was a test trip where I hauled the trailer to a local lake for a weekend of camping and testing out the RV's facilities.

The RV is completely self contained. It has a large queen bed, oven, microwave, water tanks, and two waste water tanks, in addition to a toilet. It also has a refrigerator and a freezer, a 3 burner gas stove, a gas heater, a water heater, an air conditioner... What more could you need?

Time for the maden voyage! I headed toward Colorado and started passing through state boarders. The first night, I slept in the parking lot of a Wal-Mart in Jackson, Mississippi.

Next stop was Shreveport, LA. I had to stop and try some of the delicious food there. The roads were crap but the shrimp gumbo was absolutely phenomenal!

Crossing through Texas was a lot longer than I expected. After hitting the planes, I saw the most beautiful lightning storm of my life. You could see it everywhere, it was incredible!

The ligntning storm turned into the most intense hailstorm of my life. I almost went insane with it pounding on the roof of the truck. Moving on ahead, I encountered a flooded road. At this point, I almost lost everything trying to pass through. A semi truck was submerged to my left with the driver hanging out the passenger door begging for rescue. On my right was a bumper and headlights sticking out of the water of another submerged vehicle. I heard rumble strips so I knew I was on one side of the road or the other. I kept driving straight and keeping ahold of the rumble strips. It was really nerve racking but I made it. Following this was the crazies fog ever, I could see almost nothing ahead of me. Lesson learned, don't travel at night, it's just not worth it if something were to happen. Texas is pretty crazy.