 |
 |
                    
|
 |
              
  
|
| Ladies' Week Part 1: Anne Brown Takes the Wheel |
| Angela White | Monday, 01 February, 2010 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
Get into the passenger seat as Anne Brown charts a course, takes the wheel, and drives us to Northeast Jamborees, cross-country, and beyond. It's Ladies' Week!  Two years ago we had our first Ladies' Week and Kathy Lordier, Mary Ann Pugin, and Sally Stomberg told us about their truck camping adventures. This week we're going to feature three more adventurous truck camping women starting with self proclaimed "Maineiac" Anne Brown. We first meet Anne at the 2008 Mid-Atlantic Rally. We were immediately impressed with her truck camping knowledge as she shared some great truck camping tips and destinations. Anne and her husband Joe are prominant members of the Northeast Jamboree group and they have even hosted their own Jamboree. It should also be noted that Anne and her husband won the cover in last year's TCM Calendar Contest with an amazing photo in Capitol Reef National Park. If you haven't already met her, it is our pleasure to introduce Anne Brown.
TCM: What advice can you give other ladies out there who want to get into truck camping? Anne: My main advice to women is to learn how to load, unload, and drive your rig. A woman has got to know how to run the rig as well as a man. Get to know the systems and learn how everything works. You might get stuck if your husband has a broken leg. You need to know. Also, go to a truck camper rally. Find a group of truck campers and talk to them. Get into people’s rigs and learn how they handle the daily chores. Find out what works in a truck camper for cooking and storage. It’s just a piece of equipment. Women can do anything with their truck camper. It’s not a macho thing. It’s a safety thing. We need to know how to do everything for safety. TCM: How did you get into truck camping? Anne: On Sundays, my granddaddy would pile us in a green Nash Rambler and explore Virginia. We would go and visit old friends and we would play in the fields. I loved back roads. It was all so adventuresome and we saw new stuff. All of those experiences have translated into having restless feet now. I still love going places I haven’t been. In our small rig, we can go anywhere we want to go, places we could only go in truck camper.
TCM: How did you choose a truck camper over other forms of RVs? Anne: We had been looking at all different kinds of campers for a long time. My husband Joe thought we would be happiest in a small Class A. We talked and dragged our heels. Then, in March of 2006, we had to put my mom into an assisted living place. It dawned on us that our turn was coming. We got more serious about a camper for us to see the United States before we got into a nursing home. In New Hampshire, we stopped at a RV dealer. There on the lot was a gleaming white Ford F-350 with a Lance on it. As far as I was concerned, that was it. The first year from March to October we put 10,000 miles on it. We brought it back and forth to Virginia to see mom and the family. TCM: Tell us about the different rigs you’ve owned. Anne: The first truck and camper we bought had no problems. We were lucky to get into a good rig to start with. A man specifically put the rig together for truck camping and had the dealer do extra stuff. They took a 3,000 mile trip with it and his wife hated it. We bought that Ford and Lance rig from the dealer. We lucked out because we didn’t know a lot about truck camping. We have our second truck camper now. It’s a Host Rainier with the same Ford F-350 from our first camper. We just traded campers, not trucks.
TCM: What is your role with your truck camper? Anne: I do probably seventy percent of our driving, possibly more. I like the fact that the truck is easy to handle. I love to drive. I always have. We do pre-plan a major route before we start. I use Delorme Street Atlas. Joe rigged up a tablet for our laptop like a Jotto desk. It’s a stand for the computer that sits between our two seats with a GPS up on the dashboard. We take the small roads as much as we can. We only take the interstates when we have to get to places quickly. We like to take the back roads and get off the beaten path. I do some pre-planning with my Delorme software and Joe does the navigation as we go. “This looks interesting” he says or, “We need to turn here”. We always have a general idea of where we’re headed but change as interesting roads or sights come up. With the camper, I take care of the inside and he takes care of the outside. One thing I suggest is that after every trip you come back from take out everything that you didn’t use. Run your camper spare and bare to lighten the load. TCM: You’ve gone on a couple cross-country trips. How do you go about planning and preparing those adventures? Anne: The first time we just wanted to go west. Before hand, we did a lot of research on Custer State Park, Wyoming, and Yellowstone. That’s where we headed the first time. I suggest that you read Truck Camper Magazine and RV.net to look at where other people have been. You look at where people have been and say, “I’ve got to go there!” That’s how we find places to go. The guys talk about Jeep trails in Canyonlands. It just looked like somewhere I wanted to go and see. We’ve been to most of the major National Parks out west. TCM: Are there things that you were able to do because of a truck camper that you wouldn’t have been able to do on your cross-country trip? Anne: When we bought the truck it had 3,170 miles on it. Now it has 53,000 miles on it. It’s dedicated for truck camping trips. We’ve put 50,000 miles on our truck since April of 2006 and we don’t use it in the winter. That’s a lot of mileage. Some of the National Parks don’t allow anything over twenty-five feet. Most of the roads we go choose are because they’re off-road and winding. The more curvy the better for us. We love it!
TCM: What do you like to do while you’re out on the road? Anne: When we’re out camping, we’re interested in seeing dinosaur digs in Utah, geology, and archeology. We do research to see where the digs are. Joe likes history, so we also stop at the museums. We take our hobbies with us. I knit and quilt. We both garden so we find botanical gardens and visit those. When you want to stop, you have your camper there. Joe is a model train guy. He does layouts and puts them together. So, on our trips we are looking for model train and yarn stores. It’s so convenient to have a camper that can get into tiny towns with shops that we want to visit. TCM: If you were to go cross-country again, where would you revisit? Anne: We would definitely go back to Washington State and take more time to look around that incredible country. We would also get back into Wyoming, the Badlands in North Dakota, and the upper coast of Washington is incredible. TCM: Where do you suggest people go truck camping in Maine? Anne: Acadia National Park is a must visit for anyone who comes to Maine. There are no campgrounds in the park so you’ve got to stay outside of the park. It’s speculator. I believe it’s the most gorgeous place in Maine. Moosehead Lake in Western Maine is primitive and gorgeous. Most of the coast has been built up. Maine goes from mountains to ocean. Half of the state is wilderness with nobody living there. If you want to get out and fish and hunt and camp, Maine is a great place. Go to the campgrounds because there is not a lot of public land in Maine. Do research on where you can stay ahead of time.
TCM: Tell us about the friends you’ve made through truck camping. Anne: I think some of the best friends we have ever had are from truck camping. No truck camping people live that close to us. The closest one is about eighty miles away and we see them as much as our neighbors and regular friends. We have the same interests. Just to prove how great truck campers are, I’ll tell you about the first truck camper we ever met. We were going down south on the first trip we took to Virginia. We were near Carlisle, Pennsylvania on a horrible stretch of concrete roads; bu-bump, bu-bump. The rig was porpoising. So, we stopped at a rest area to check the tires and the truck. We pulled into the truck parking, went around another truck, and here’s a truck with a Lance camper. He popped out his camper to say, “Hi”. His name was Chuck. He got out his air compressor and showed us tips with our camper. We were like, “Holy cow!”. We couldn’t believe he got tools out to help us. Mike and Cathie are dear friends. They come up north and we go down south. On our trip out west this past year, we were going east and friends of ours were going west and we met up in Nebraska and ate lunch together in the camper. Cell phones and GPS devices are good for finding friends on the roads. I know if I pick up phone and ask for help, they’d be here for us. TCM: Tell us about the North-East Truck Camping Jamboree group. Anne: With the Northeast Jamborees, Mike Tassinari is the Jamboree master. It actually started from postings on RV.net. Our first meeting was in 2007 in Andover, Massachusetts. There were five or six rigs the first time. Then there was a rally in North Conway, New Hampshire and we had thirty people show up. The Jamborees just blossomed. There’s a desire to get together with other truck campers and be social. We hold three to four rallies a year. Everybody is welcome. You don’t have to be in New England or have a truck camper to attend. During the Jamborees, Mike will do a seminar on how to take care of your camper. He will answer any questions you have on maintenance and safety. He will conduct a safety check of your camper. He comes around with a gas sniffer. I’ve given seminars on using software for mapping trips out and given talks on places to go when truck camping. Basically Jamborees are a social, long weekend of food and yacking. It’s really a lot of fun.
TCM: What’s next for Anne and Joe Brown? Anne: After the 2010 Mid-Atlantic Rally at Tall Pines this April, we’ll head south. I’m an old southerner and have southern relatives, so we will head into North Carolina, South Carolina, and Florida. We’re thinking of going to New Orleans and into Texas to a couple of state parks that RVnet folks talk about. In Texas we want to go to South Padre Island. We’ll keep going out to see Albuquerque, Death Valley, Meteor Crater, and Hoover Dam. We always have a goal; a place we want to go. Right now I want to go to Alaska. It’s a goal of mine, but I need to talk Joe into it. I’m going to keep truck camping until I can’t drive anymore. It’s an ageless thing. TCM: Is there anything else that you would like to add to your interview? Anne: Do it while you can. A truck camper is an easy rig to handle. It gives you everything you need to be comfortable, yet you have the ability to travel the country and see the real back roads far off the interstates. Just get up and go! If you'd like to visit Anne's blog, go to otrafrommaine.blogspot.com. OTRA means On The Road Again.
For more information about the truck camper manufacturers and gear companies, please visit our Buyers Guide. |
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
