Ladies' Week Part 1: Kathy Lordier Lets the Dogs Out

Kathy is shaking hands with Joe Petkovich, from Camp Quest, after purchasing her Host Camper	Kathy and Ken’s first camper was a Six-Pac D650	Kathy camped a lot as a kid - here she is with her brother, Greg, at the Grand Canyon
Kathy decided on the Host Bachelor because there is lots of floor space for their two Ridgeback dogs	The Six-Pac D650 at Collins Lake – their maiden voyage was on April 15, 2005	The Pismo rally was where Kathy and Ken learned how helpful truck camper folks can be
Their Host Bachelor at the Bonneville Salt Flats	Kathy and the Host in Wyoming	Their Host Bachelor in Park City, Utah

Get ready for a new perspective!  This week we’re celebrating the ladies of truck camping and bringing you their super fabulous stories of adventure.  Our first Ladies’ Week interview is with Kathy Lordier.  Kathy is one lady who’s definitely not just along for the ride.  Kathy conducts the research, drives the truck, and even loads the camper.  With Kathy, it’s her husband, two dogs, and a bird who are the passengers.

TCM: Tell us about yourselves and how you got into TCing.

Kathy: When I was little, our family went camping all the time all over the west.  My parents, my brother, and I went on long trips to Texas, Oregon, Utah, Colorado, New Mexico, and Idaho.  We even went tent camping in the winter several times.

From the time my husband, Ken, and I met we’ve traveled.  We went on a trip up to Idaho together so that I could get him camping.  He thought Idaho was a flat and boring place.  I showed him a picture of Lake Stanley.  So, we went camping there and then he thought Idaho was great.

TCM: Why a truck camper?

Kathy: Well, we didn’t want something difficult.  Neither one of us are mechanical, so we didn’t want anything motorized.  Plus, we already had a truck.  We also knew we wanted to tow our horse trailer or our boat.  In California there is no registration fee for truck campers and we have a nice yard where we can store a camper, so the decision was easy.

A few years ago I started thinking about the "luxury" of a potty inside.  I already had a truck that could handle something, so it was a matter of research, and I'm the queen of researching. 

That’s when we decided a truck camper was the way to go.  I went to the Sportsmen’s Show in Sacramento at the end of 2004.  I ran into Stan Kennedy of Six-Pac at his display.  I liked that Six-Pac was a nice quality camper.  It had a bathroom, shower, two-burner stove, sink, refrigerator, and even a queen-size bed.  So, I thought, “What the heck?”.

TCM: So, what research did you do for your Six-Pac D650?

Kathy:  I checked our truck’s stickers to see what the carrying capacity was.  With that information, I started looking on RV.net using their search functions.  There is a huge supply of information there including information about carrying capacity.  I then went to different truck camper websites and asked their opinions to find out what campers people put on their trucks.  I found that I should add 800 to 1,000 pounds for water and gear.

We went to a couple more Sportsmen’s Shows and Horse Expos in the Sacramento area.  They were good for us because they had four or five manufacturers of campers there.  We looked at Lance, Four Wheel, Northstar, and Six-Pac.  It all came down to the bathroom.  I needed a bathroom with a full-wall.

I found that the Six-Pac D650 would fit in my 2500 short bed truck and I'd get everything I wanted.

TCM: When did you get your first camper?

Kathy: We ordered our Six-Pac D650 from Stan Kennedy in February of 2005 and received it in April of 2005.  We dedicated the camper to our dog, Akina, who had unsuccessful cancer surgery on the day we picked up the camper, and passed away two days later.  The Host we now have is the "Akina II". 

TCM: Tell us about your current truck camper.

Kathy: We went to the Sportsmen’s Show in Sacramento, again, in January of 2007, not even thinking that we would buy a camper.  We just went to the show to look.  Well, we went inside the Host and said, “Look at all this floor space!”  For a short-bed camper it was amazing!  With our dogs, this gave us much more floor space and storage room.  We bought the camper on the spot.  From the top of a nearby camper, Matt Ward from Hallmark RV took a picture of Joe Petkovich from Camp Quest and I shaking hands on the deal.

TCM: Do you drive your truck camper?

Kathy:  I do the majority of the driving.  I actually consider our truck camper mine.  Plus, it’s a girl’s truck.  I am very proud of myself as a driver.  We had a tire blow out when driving the Six-Pac to a local lake.  I was on a two-lane highway in Friday afternoon rush hour traffic and I was driving the truck with the Six-Pac and our nineteen and a half foot boat behind us.  The trailer tire blew out, like, “Bam!”.  It was a single-axle trailer, so I was white knuckled trying to get to the shoulder of the road.  Once I pulled onto the shoulder, I was able to back the camper and boat on a backwards curve.  There was only about a foot of clearance on either side of the camper.  It was quite an accomplishment!

TCM: What do you do to prepare for your trips?

Kathy: I have a seven-page checklist that I use before we go out.  I usually start packing on Monday when we leave for the weekend.  The list all started from an RV.net checklist that was under the motorhome section.  I cut and pasted it into an Excel document and adjusted it to fit my needs for truck camping.  I have kept it with me adding and crossing off stuff to get it the way I want it.  It’s always a work in progress and I have shared it with other truck campers that I have met.

I have added things to the list like turning on the headlights on the truck while packing up.  Once I was driving on the highway and nobody was letting me by.  I pulled over and realized that the brakes and signals were not working.  So, we unloaded the camper partially and connected the power again.  So now I turn on the headlights while packing up so that I know the electrical part of camper is plugged in before leaving on a trip.

TCM: Where do you like to go when you go out truck camping?

Kathy: Ken and I work full-time.  We go out on weekends and on at least one two-week trip per year.   We sometimes take a half-day on Friday and go within an hour or two of home.  There’s many forest service campgrounds an hour and fifteen minutes away because the Sierras are also close.  We can go on a Friday and come home Sunday morning.

TCM: Do you have any memorable truck camping experiences?

Kathy: One of the craziest things that ever happened occurred on I-80 on our way to Ogallala.  We pulled over at a gas station and went into our camper to get something.  We opened the slide about six inches to get in.   Then we finished up, locked the door and went on our way.  I was driving down I-80, going 60 mph, and looked in the mirror to see that the slide was still open.  I didn’t want to pull over on the side of the freeway, so I went to the next exit.  I was slowing down when a dog came running out into the freeway.  My husband, Ken, jumped out of truck and grabbed the dog.  I was going slower because of the slide being open so I was able stop before hitting the dog.  Some things are just meant to happen.

TCM: How do the dogs like the truck camper?  Do you have to do anything special to accommodate for them?

Kathy: My husband, Ken, and I camp with two Rhodesian Ridgebacks each weighing about 100 pounds.  In the Six-Pac it was Ozzy and Angus.  Ozzy was our first ever Ridgeback and he passed away at age ten this summer after only a few trips in the Host.  So now we camp with Angus and Annie, a Ridgeback rescue from Washington State.    As a matter of fact, I used the camper to pick up Annie back in November.

We do have an extended cab truck so when we’re driving the dogs stay in the truck with us.  Our dog, Ozzy, was older and more difficult to get in the camper.   He didn’t like the scissor steps so we got a ramp for him.  I couldn’t lift a 100 pound dog into the camper.

TCM: Have you attended any camper rallies?

Kathy: We attended our first rally with the Six-Pac.  It was the first Pacific SW Rally in Pismo and we camped on the sand.  That was a great weekend with lots of folks from RV.net and some from NATCOA. 

There's a funny story about that trip.  There were about sixteen truck campers in a circle.  About 100 yards from us was a 5th wheel owner who started using fireworks.  Well, we think they caught the dunes on fire.  Soon, the fire was really going and the fire trucks showed up.

That’s when I learned how helpful truck camper folks can be.  During the Pismo fire, Sean and Russ were in our camper working on our inverter that couldn’t keep a charge.  People at the rally donated a couple of fuses to help us out. Within a couple of hours it was fixed.  This all happened during the fire, so I missed most of the excitement. People were standing on the roofs of their campers trying to see what was happening.  The fire trucks even got stuck in sand.  That was exciting evening entertainment.

I also worked in a "girls weekend trip" to meet up with two wonderful ladies from NATCOA, Sally and Marlene. Well, one of Marlene’s cats got out the day we were going to meet, so she never got to meet up with us.  Sally was coming down to meet her son, Ryan, coming in from Iraq, so we met at Pine Flat Lake near Fresno.  During our visit, we saw a tarantula and the rest of the evening we were there with feet off the ground.

The Hope Valley gathering was the most awesome for me because of the information I learned from Reddog1, Sleepy, and Bigfootford.  They educated me on batteries.  Reddog1 gave me a volt meter.  Bigfootford taught me about battery levels and found that my batteries weren’t connected properly and tightened them for me.  And Sleepy taught me about the trimetric battery meter. 

The rallies have been a blast! We’ve made so many friends and it’s so much fun to have a bunch of truck campers in the same place.

TCM: Have you made any modifications to your truck or camper?

Kathy: I will admit that when I bought the Host I did very little research.  We got the camper and decided that we needed to upgrade our truck.  We got SuperSprings, Ricksons, and air bags.  The SuperSprings and air bags were put on at Camp Quest and then we bought the Ricksons from LooneyBin who was selling his with only 5,000 miles on them. 

TCM: What would you tell yourself if you could go back to the beginning when you started to TC?

Kathy:  I would tell myself to get a truck camper sooner.

TCM: What’s next?

Kathy:  Someday, we would like to full-time like Jim and Sue Szabo.  We’re planning on retiring and traveling at an early age.  We would go full time now, but we know that we wouldn’t want to go back to work after an extended trip.

Through the people we’ve met on the road and in NATCOA, we know that international travel is very possible one day.  We’d like to do it sooner rather than later.  I want to go to Australia and travel around other places in the world like Europe.  When I was a kid we camped through New Zealand in a Vanagon.  We each took a single carry-on bag and traveled from San Francisco to China, Hong Kong, Australia, and New Zealand.  In the Northern Hemisphere it was the summer and in the Southern Hemisphere it was winter.  We had to pack one single carry-on bag for all of that.  

TCM: Is there anything that we didn’t talk about that you’d like to add to your interview?

Kathy: Truck Camper owners are special people who are easy to get along with.   We wave and chat with other people who own truck campers.  Owning a truck camper is one of the better moves that we’ve made when it comes to lifestyle changes.

If you’d like to see more photographs, visit Kathy’s photo album at http://s35.photobucket.com/albums/d193/klordier/.