Earlier this month my good pal Steve and I ventured over to the Barre, Vermont area to play some local golf courses for the week. After a lunch stop in New Hampshire, however, during my routine inspection of the camper before resuming the journey, I discovered this:

We had traveled two hours from home with the trailer hitch UNLOCKED! I hope you can see from the photo that there is a small hole visible to the right of the silver hitch lock; well, the lock’s shaft is SUPPOSED to be going THROUGH that hole in order to ensure that the lock stays locked down on the hitch. Obviously, it is missing the hole entirely, so I was able to simply and easily lift the lock and unhitch the trailer, despite the lock! Just as any big bump in the road could have done on the way here! Clearly, Providence was watching over us as, had I not checked it, I would never have known the danger we were in.

What to do? This was Sunday, so there would be no RV service places open to help us. We decided to use bungee cords (which I routinely keep in the truck) to strap the lock down for the remainder of the trip.

Here you can see our solution, which fortunately served to deliver us safely to the excellent Little River State Park in Vermont, another of the routinely outstanding Vermont State Parks which we have enjoyed on our golf travels. Abutting a large reservoir, the park offers swimming, boating and fishing along with two campgrounds separated by a small stream. Here are some views of our spacious wooded campsite:

Upon registering, however, we hit another snag: the campsite originally assigned to us for the week required an uphill back-in, too steep for the Little Guy to climb it — the trailer hitch dug into the slope as we backed up, and halted our progress. We returned to the registration office to discover that the only other suitable site was available only for five days — so we decided to shorten our trip, rather than move to a new site after day five for just two more days. I suppose my anxiety over the trailer hitch had something to do with the decision, as immediately upon arrival I had searched online and called mobile RV repairmen for help with the hitch. More on that later!

The next day we began our golf excursion at the lovely Williston Golf Club, distinguished by the superb plantings and gardens which adorned the course. Here are some views:

Lovely mountain scenery added to the charm of the course:

When we left the campsite that morning, however, I immediately got a “low tire pressure” warning on the dashboard of the Santa Cruz; the right rear tire was down to 27 pounds. On the way to Williston we stopped at a service station and re-filled the tire. However, the next morning when we prepared to leave, the “low tire pressure” warning read only 9 pounds, and the tire was clearly going flat. Steve corralled one of the park rangers, who came by with a portable inflator (mine was dead, despite my charging it the day before we left — guess I have to replace that, too!), pumped up the tire and recommended a tire shop in town called Budzyn’s. When I called there, I was told that it was no appointment necessary, first-come-first-serve; we called the West Bolton course, pushed back our tee time, and headed over to Budzyn’s for help.

This turned out to be the strangest tire shop I have ever seen. The shop itself consists of a garage which is full to the rafters with tires along with a tiny office which has clearly seen better days; the actual work, however, is done in the open and uncovered parking lot in front of the business! I asked one of the guys working there (it turned out to be a team effort to fix our tire) if they stayed open even in the bitter Vermont winters. “Yup”, he replied. “We freeze our *sses off in the winter and sweat our b*lls off in the summer”! Unbelievable! Yet, for only about $25 they pulled a screw out of the tire and patched it, in plenty of time for us to get lunch and make our afternoon tee time at West Bolton, to play a steep mountain course which provided an excellent challenge. So I can strongly recommend Budzyn’s for emergency tire work despite their distinctly unconventional approach. Here are some views of the excellent West Bolton golf course:

One of the very clever and unique features found at many of the courses we played here were these warning lights placed at those tee boxes which required blind shots (shots over hills after which one cannot see the ball hit the ground). In such cases, one pushes a button after teeing off, which activates a red light; those following must wait to hit until the red light turns green, which happens when we push another button after hitting our second shot and clearing the tee-shot landing area. This changes the red light to green, signifying to those following that it is now safe to hit. And should we forget to push the second button (despite generous signage instructing us to do so!), the light resets to green after seven minutes anyway.

Unquestionably the most spectacular course we played on this trip was Sugarbush, affiliated with the ski area of the same name. In fact, views of the ski trails were common over the course of play. This is without question the most incredible mountain course I have ever had the pleasure to play, outshining even the redoubtable Sugarloaf and Sunday River courses in Maine. Unbelievably vertiginous slopes lead to perfectly manicured greens and spectacular shot after shot. The photos come nowhere close to doing it justice.

Anyone considering golf in this part of the Vermont simply HAS to add Sugarbush to their itinerary. It is expensive ($160 for us on a discount day) but totally worth it! Although don’t plan to walk it, it’s so steep that only a cart will do.

As for the RV, it was Thursday before even one of the mobile RV repair places returned my call, only to say that they were too busy to help me. So we decided to say our prayers, bungee the damned hitch lock down again and head for home the next day. And thankfully, we were able to make the trip back without incident.

Upon returning home I took the RV to my local RV dealer (Call of the Wild, in Oxford, Maine — excellent!) and had it replaced, to the tune of $650 or so, an unexpected expense which I definitely did not need. Apparently (according to the RV tech who fixed my hitch), my tow vehicle (the Hyundai Santa Cruz) is built too low for the job, and the lift unit I use to elevate the hitch sinks when the trailer weight settles on it, so that there is a small angle between the vehicle and the trailer hitch, rather than the straight line required (see second photo above). Over time, that angle wore out the hitch to the point that the lock couldn’t be snapped down correctly and the locking hole came out of alignment. The RV tech told me that I would have a few years on the new hitch but, unless I replaced the tow vehicle with a taller one, it would very likely happen again.

So now I am faced with a decision — is RV travel worth enough to me to spend the money on a new, taller tow vehicle? Honestly, I have serious doubts. I like my Santa Cruz a lot, and I have discovered over my six years of RVing that I really don’t like driving that much, and towing really stresses me out. Not to mention that the thing is becoming a money pit, costing me thousands annually to keep running. And for a week’s stay in Cincinnati with my daughter (the reason I bought the RV in the first place), the cost to fly and take a hotel evens out against the cost of gas for the RV trip, not to mention the week saved in time by flying. So I am thinking that I will finish this season and then sell the RV in the spring. I will really miss these golf trips, but the investment in energy, stress and money is starting to outweigh the joy, if you know what I mean. I guess we will see. Steve and I have another trip planned for August — we’ll enjoy it and assess after that. Look for another golfing post from New Hampshire soon!