I say you just can’t have too many jacks. Took my 19 on a test see-run, to make sure everything was good for a bigger shoulder season trip upcoming.
I keep a small scissor jack in my tongue box along with a 2-ton hydraulic bottle jack. They came in very handy yesterday. Was driving to the Tent Rocks National Monument near the Cochiti pueblo. That’s 22 miles south of Santa Fe. Off I-25, 12 miles in, on a lonely paved road. Has about twenty concrete “dips” for channeling rain run-off across the road. These dips are well marked with signs, aren’t deep, but they make trailer towing across them a drag. Have camped at Cochiti before but had never gone to see the Tent Rocks.
After slowly crossing over the first ten dips I must have gotten impatient and did the next one a tad too fast. Bam! I was de-hitched! Couldn’t believe it. There’s no shoulder. Five cars stopped behind me, then went around. The tongue was nested in the emergency chains but was down real low, nearly touching pavement. Low enough so to raise it back up and onto the receiver the right tool was my low-profile little scissor jack. If the unexpected finds you unprepared, you are screwed. It didn’t get the tongue high enough, so wood blocks and the bottle jack finished the job.
The bigger question was, how come I got so easily de-hitched? Turns out because this was supposed to be just a little day trip test run I didn’t lock the tongue cup down with my padlock. Lesson learned.
Oh and I should mention two guys also visiting Tent Rocks for the first time stopped to lend assistance. Turns out they were from my same home town in New Jersey. Amazing.
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Myron
"A billion here, a billion there...add it all up and before you know it you're talking real money." Everett Dirkson
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