THE TOAD (TOWED VEHICLE)

Cars towed behind motorhome are referred to as "toads". Our Ford Focus' front wheels ride on a tow dolly, while the rear wheels role along the roadway as they normally do. This vehicle is front wheel drive with an automatic, thus the wheels must be elevated when in tow so as not to damage the transmission of the car. The car's front wheels sit on a platform built into the dolly that swivels about 6 inches as the vehicle makes easy turns behind the rig. The front wheels are strapped tightly and winched down with nylon straps to the dolly's swivel plate and also are chained from the wheel to the dolly in the event of a strap failure. It takes us 10-15 minutes to load it all up. The rule is that at least every two hours one must stop and check and adjust the tension on the straps as they tend to loosen during travel. We do not plan to remove the car from the dolly and use it until we get to Yellowstone National Park . The only downside of this set up is one can never back up the rig while the car and dolly are attached to the motorhome. Backing such a set up would a cross up the dolly wheels and axles causing significant damage when backing- so thorough planning is required.

Fuel pump islands and turning movements at gas stations and campsites can be worrisome. We always demand pull through sites at campgrounds to avoid the tedious process of disconnection of the dolly  and unloading of the toad for a back in site. Unfortunately few service stations offer gasoline for RV's on their much longer diesel fuel truck islands, thus requiring tight maneuvering around fuel islands designed to offer gasoline for cars.

Toads following behind RV are frequently victims of flying rocks and debris kicked up by the towing motorhome. Generally this is not a major problem in the south as we don't suffer a lot of winter road damage with loose rocks and gravel. But in areas where gravel or surface material is loose, one can expect chipping, scratching and glass damage. We've towed about 6000 miles thus far and -knock on wood -not a scratch so far--- but it's  all been travel in the south. As this journey progresses through Wyoming, Montana , British Columbia, Alaska  and the Yukon Territory, we will- as we did last year- travel on many miles of unpaved rough gravel and dirt roads. Even those roads that are paved in the Yukon are often paved as "surface treatment"- merely sprayed tar with loose gravel aggregate thrown on top, and not paved with the smooth hot mix asphalt we are accustomed to in the south.

So to try to provide a level of protection for the toad we have made two modifications. We purchased a Protect- a-Tow system which amounts to a large screening device that is strapped to- and  lies parallel to the road surface between the moho and the front of the car. We'll begin using that once we get off the interstates in Wyoming. In addition we undertook a project of covering the windshield with a product called Reflectix which is an aluminized air bubble product that we hope will shield a deflect or absorb impacts of any smaller sized material.

We participate in the Good Sam's RV forum on the web.  One of the threads deals with travel to and from Alaska and is titled "Roll Call Alaska 2015".  Many of the folks that participates in this thread mark their vehicles to indicate who they are on the forum.  This makes for interesting conversations with other campers during our stops along the way.  Here's our sign.....

We are heading out in the morning.  Here's the first half of the route we will be taking.

This is the Canada and Alaska part of the route.  We plan on returning in a more direct route and will post the return trip maps once we have finalized our return trip plans.

It is a long way.  Minus the side trips it's a little more than 5000 miles of driving to get from Georgia to Alaska.  We will continue to update the blog as often as possible.