White Mountains of NH in the spring snow

Back from a short shake down trip over to the White Mountains of NH. Lance and F-350 performed perfectly except for one slight glitch and one mystery. The glitch was one of the Lance cab over struts coming apart while driving in the only heavy traffic we encountered - well heavy for Maine. Suddenly there was one half of the strut hanging on the Lance and the other flopping around on the mirror of the truck. The little snap pins kept the halves from falling off. Joe got the halves back together but we don't have any type of cut sheet on how to care for them. Found one topic on rv.net about using motorcycle oil as a lubricant but have also written Lance for a PDF if they have one. The mystery is one of the power outlets on the F-350 dash works, the other doesn't. It's probably a fuse which we'll look into. We use that power for the laptop and DeLorme mapping software.

Very few campgrounds open in ME and NH right now especially after the devastating Nor'easter couple of weeks ago. Lots had roads washed out and trees down. We were going the Walmart route but found a site we'd used before on Ossipee Lake. It was like a ghost town which was great. The ride up through the National Forest around Mt. Washington was gorgeous and still capped with snow. We watched the skiers on Wildcat Mountain carve that last inch of snow. A National park ranger talked to us at a rest area and wanted to see the Lance. He hauled out his trail map and showed us several unimproved wilderness sites that a truck camper could get to once the snow and mud are gone. We'll definitely go back hopefully before black fly season.
Sure felt good to be back out on the road again.

Wonderful day! We loaded the Lance 1121 onto the F-350 dually on the first try. I expected yelling matches or divorce but it went so smoothly we were stunned. We'd read a lot of the back posts on Truck Camper forum about loading and unloading. We put masking tape down the center of the truck bed, hung a lightweight chain from the center of the Lance cabover, tape down the center of the Ford rear window, lined them all up and backed in. And this time we came in low enough I didn't ride up over the rubber roller/bumper. Next time might not go as smoothly but it went well this time.

Guess all that prep work in the winter to batten down the openings paid off with the generator. It started on the first try. Hose clamp over a thick plastic bag kept the insects from nest building in the exhaust pipe which is what plugged it up last year. I'll use the generator power this afternoon to vacuum to run it for awhile.

Now to de-winterize the water/sewage system, mild cleaning on the inside, load up the gear, etc. and hit the road. Great advice as always on the Truck Camper section of Http://www.rv.net.