Worth the Hassle? Realities of ADDING the Bronco to our RV Life

Today is our first travel day with the new towed setup. It's going to be different, and I hope my fears don't come true with a more complicated travel day setup. Oh my gosh. Well, I've never heard you say that you have those fears, but when we got into this motorhome and we weren't towing anything, the stress was way down. Very easy to drive, very easy to take anywhere, and I want to make sure the travel days stay fun and towing doesn't change that feel. And that's exactly why when we first started in this motorhome six months ago, towing a vehicle behind us was not even part of the equation. I didn't want to do it. I wanted to go back to the simplicity of our old van days, just traveling wherever we wanted to in our RV. So first, as normal, we got to do the motorhome. We have some tasks on our list today. Yep. This is all stuff we'd be doing anyway. So motorhome started, slides in. We both have an easy job on this one. Yeah, it's really easy from a motorhome on the inside part, but now I got to go out because of the levelers and the blocks that we used. If not, I would just hit retract all and normally we'd be ready to back out and hit the road. But with the new towed vehicle setup, there's some extra steps. So what I like to do from this step is use my phone to lift up the front, pull the ramps out so that we don't have to worry about backing on and off them. It's just a little bit easier like that instead of, you know, the Bronco's behind it. So we can't even move it if we had to. Then from here, I can hit all retract, which will let me get my blocks out. So normally from here, we'd be all ready to rock. I would stay outside, help Chris back out of the spot, then I'd get in and we'd go. But since we have a Bronco here now, this is where the new steps are going to come in. Okay. For the record, we would be 10 minutes down the road on our travel day. Am I being dramatic? So hopefully all this kind of having a towed vehicle outweighs, you know, the setup and hassle of it. I think for most people, it's a no-brainer. I need my towed vehicle, otherwise how am I going to get around? For us, you've seen us get around for many months in the motorhome without it. So here we go, changing it up again, and we'll see how this goes. Turning radius in the Bronco is pretty crazy. So now we're trying to get water and hook up the towed vehicle at the same time. We'll kind of see how this goes. First time I'm having trouble with my quick disconnect on here. There we go. If you watch your app for the fresh fill, then I can kind of focus on setting up the towed and hopefully I remember everything I learned yesterday. Well, you definitely gave me the easy job. Now I just need to not get distracted by watching you because I'm obviously curious and excited and eventually I need to learn the steps too, but right now I need to focus on the water fill. Okay, I don't know exactly where we're going to park, how far away. It's all going to be a little bit of a learning curve. I see we're at a little bit of a slope too, so hopefully that doesn't matter. We'll see if I nailed the distance. It looks like you need to get closer. Well, these arms extend out. Oh, I didn't know that. Yeah, but I still am about a foot off, so. This one needs to go on the outside. Yes, you're right. So that's foot float. That's a good catch. She did mention that this needs to go on the, like that. These are supposed to support themselves a little bit. I don't know if this needs to be tightened. I think we're going to make it. Oh yeah. Tow bar, safety cable. It's pretty easy. Got the alignment up, lock, safety cable and we got the breakaway and then the last part, the electrical cord and I like this about the tow bar where it's got a little spot to hang it and that way you can just plug it right in and not worry about it. So from here, I'm just going to double check all my points. Tow bar, safety cable, breakaway, power cord, tow bar, safety cable and then check my safety cables down here, power cord. That part's pretty easy. And now that we're safely hooked up to the RV, the all important tow mode, which is pretty easy in the Bronco. I would say just as easy as the Jeep, but I think it's a little bit more electronic. So there can be some variables at play. Since I'm new to this still, I'm going to double check the owner's manual procedure, which I took a picture of. Accessory mode, push the two high button, so brake, neutral, settings and neutral tow. I can hear the shift and neutral tow enabled. I just rolled forward. That was a weird feeling. I saw you stopped because this one reached its limit. Okay. Yeah. Whenever we're on an uneven surface, that's something to keep in mind. And that's why it's really important to be hooked up first, then go into tow mode. And when you get somewhere, get out of tow mode and then unhook so you don't accidentally roll into something. Yeah. Well, if it was a race, the tow hookup beat your water fill. Well, if it was a boredom contest, my water fill creamed your hookup. But it looks great. Yeah. I like how clean the cable management is. The safety cables are built into the tow bar. It has that spot that holds the umbilical cord. This is how it's supposed to be right here? Yeah. That holds this cord. And you pin it in? Off the ground. Yep. Because a lot of times, if you look at some other setups, that'll just be hanging or on top or on the bottom. Newsflash. We're up to 70. Yes. It is really simple. It's just, if we didn't have to dump, fill and hook up the Bronco, we'd be 30 minutes down the road now. Well, I'm not going to blame hooking this up. I'm going to blame the water, because the water has always been our painfully slow thing to do. Normally, we like to fill up the water while we're on the site, so Aaron can leisurely do that while we're at the site. But since we were using this bargain-priced $15 per night at Quiver River. Dry camping. Dry. There's nothing. So having the water on site, if you're in a hurry, like if you know you have a big honk and travel day, having that water on site is sometimes worth the extra $20 or whatever it might be. Well, and even the sewer too. We would have dumped water and we would be on the road. It's a convenience fee that's sometimes worth it, especially in these winter hours where your daylight is short. So if you have hundreds of miles to cram in from dusk till dawn, it's worth it. Right turn, hazards. So now on that little bullseye screen that I conveniently tucked away for you on the vent there, tap the drive mode on the right. That's an obvious thing to push right now. Just push that down for like three seconds, and I'm going to watch the brake pedal depress in the Bronco. Oh, so this is actually a manual brake. It's like an emergency if you needed to tap the brakes or you're going down a big hill and it wasn't braking enough for you, you wanted to brake more. We're at 80% FYI. 80%. Still going. Okay. Go for it. There it goes. Battery zero volts, RV 14 volts, amps zero amps. That's not what it should be. So it's detecting the RV at 14 amps, but it's not detecting, oh, I totally forgot. There's a switch inside the Bronco that I shut off at night so that it doesn't drain the battery and which is the kind of the electrical part of it. So it's not detecting that. You got to flip the switch. Yeah. Man, these are those steps that you forget about. Not every vehicle has this, but I wanted an extra switch so that we could shut the power off because sometimes we don't drive our tow vehicle for three, four days. It instantly switched to charging battery, 11.5 RV, 12.7 amps, 2.5. Okay, perfect. And it's fluctuating. That's why it said low voltage because it was detecting basically no voltage, you know, it just went to green. So that's something that I can check for while I'm in the driver's seat is making sure that there's no... There's a lot of steps to this, isn't there? Yeah. I know it sounds like everybody goes, ah, it's the easiest thing in the world. Not towing is the easiest thing in the world. Not towing is... This might be the second easiest thing in the world. I will say it's probably the easiest thing in the world after just a few repetitions of it. Like any other simple process, it's a simple process, but the first time, the first few times, you have to make sure you're not missing anything because that would be an uh-oh. So I was debating going with a portable system and not the built-in RV system. So portable lights, portable braking system for the Bronco, just to keep it least intrusive as possible. You wanted it to be 100% reversible. Yeah. And just, you know, I don't know what's going to happen in the future. You know, it felt like getting it all hardwired was kind of like a permanent decision. Yeah. But we are full-time RVers. We are going to be doing this multiple times a week. And if I had one more thing where I got to set up the brake or I got to set up the lights, that can be a lot. And as you all know, I'm trying to make this as simple as possible. Yeah. We want to keep your list short. Yeah. Oh, it just hit full. Nice. Champion. I don't want any more boredom today. You did it. Okay. That's how we lock the arms. Okay. You just got to do a little S-curve wiggle to get those to lock out. Because if you don't and one locks and the other one doesn't, it can put weird pressure on them and bend or break an arm. Dude, that's my seat. Okay. Everything looks good. Okay. Wheels are moving. Great. Both arms locked out. Great. We're going to go six blocks to the dump station and then I'm going to check it for a fifth time. Perfect. Here we go. All right. We're about five hours in. Chris Power drove almost straight the whole time. We did a quick little stop to go to the bathroom. I checked on the Bronco one more time. Give us your first thoughts on this. Let's start out with the emergency stop situation that we kind of had to do at the yellow to red light. It was the kind where you're going like 45 or 50 and these light signals change to orange pretty quick. Short cycle. Short cycles. Short notice. It was one of those situations where I had to react and I chose to stop. In that situation, I definitely felt a change in my brake, meaning I didn't slow down as fast as I would have expected to like in the past where I knew I would have made that stop a lot cleaner. And that was the first time where I didn't like go into the box or anything, but I would have liked to have come to a complete stop about two feet prior. This Ford 600 is a beast. Power wise, I don't feel like I'm towing anything. There was only one hill in Quiver River. The Quiver River is notorious for the steep hills. Big hill. Right here is where I felt it without towing. Yeah, a little bit tougher with the Bronco back there. I feel it a little bit. Not terrible though. And we made it. That was it. That was the hardest part. Okay, because this Asada 6 has a really high towing capacity, right? Yeah, I think it's like 15,000 pounds. I was going to guess 30. No, those are like the big super, like the Cascadia we were in. Is that why? That was like 30,000 pounds. So a big one ton pickup truck weighs 9,000 pounds. So the only way you're towing more than 10,000 pounds is if you have like a big trailer with maybe a car inside of it and some other stuff. Not the same as towing the old fifth wheel, huh? No. Okay. Okay, so when you're towing the fifth wheel, it's a much different feeling because the size of the fifth wheel is so wide and so tall and so heavy. And when you're pulling it, not only do you have to be aware of all of those things individually, but you also need to watch the wheels on your fifth wheel. So when you're making a turn, you have to clear the wheels on your truck and clear the wheels on your fifth wheel. Now on this, it's the opposite where the Dynamax is the big thing. And as long as I clear my side mirrors, everything else behind me is going to clear. It's within that line, especially the Bronco. Like that's so tiny back there. I don't have to worry about the width. I don't have to worry about the height or the weight. And I don't need to worry about where the wheels are tracking. So I just need to do my normal driving, watching the wheels of the Dynamax. And I know that the Bronco wheels won't rub on anything in normal conditions. Yeah. The difficult part, or more difficult I should say, is how now we can't back up. And our overall length is now back up to like 50 feet. So we're no longer this 34 foot class C that we can drive downtown anywhere and basically turn into any parking lot and back our way out if we need to. Now it's more like, okay, we need exit and entrance strategy. Right now we're at a love. So before towing, we could reverse and change lanes if something else opened up sooner. That's probably going to be the most realistic time that we would be like, oh dang, we can't back up anymore because we're just stuck in this lane until this person in front of us is finished. I will say the number one biggest thing that's different though is the length. On the highway, interstate, changing lanes, and even that's a really easy thing to adjust to because what are we adding on? 10 feet? We've always been around 50 feet in our travel trailers and fifth wheel. So you know, did it change our travels? Did it change how we're going to travel now? Like is it now back to always having these extra steps and these extra things to worry about and less spontaneity? You know, instead of like, Hey, let's just whip here, go there. We'll see how all that travel pans out. You really can't judge it in one day. It's too fresh. So we'll see how it all goes. More fun stuff coming up. Since we were so close to our good friends, Jeff and Deb's new base camp, they're building in Arkansas. We had to make a quick detour for a couple of days. We had a lot of fun testing out their flexibility, climbing into the backseat of the two door And they were thoughtful enough to give us an abbreviated tour of the Bentonville area while we were there. We saw the Walmart campus, got some airship coffee in the middle of a nature trail, went to the amazing and free Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art. And of course, since we're still on the barbecue kick from St. Louis, we had to try the best that Bentonville had to offer at Wright's barbecue. And I have to give it to them on these bacon burnt ends. And yes, they taste as good as they sound. Yeah, it's chilly out here. Windy. Rained all night. Lay her up. Okay. Well, last night was Cracker Barrel. And this was a good one. This is in Tupelo, Mississippi, the birthplace of Elvis Presley, which if we had more time, we would drive a couple miles to go check that out. Yeah. But. But we're back to back, pushing in the miles on this one. We're in some big drives today. So yesterday was 450. Today is almost 450. And tomorrow is almost 450. So having the new towed setup, it's different. You know, going to the Cracker Barrel in a 34 foot Class C, you really don't have to worry about much. You can fit in the RV slanted parking. You can pretty much squeeze your way into anywhere. But now that we have the Bronco on the back, we can't fit in the traditional RV slants. We're too long. And we were too long in the fifth wheel too. So you got to park on the perimeter, which is fine when nobody's here. But when it gets busy, somebody could have parked right in front of us and we might have been stuck this morning. But luckily, nobody was here. And there's the new consideration that we can't reverse. So when we were towing the fifth wheel in here, we could reverse if we needed to back out of a sticky situation. In this RV, you just need to loop around and make sure you don't get stuck in a sticky situation. Worst case scenario, if you do, Aaron hops out and detaches. But we try to avoid that, obviously. So tonight we are heading not to another Cracker Barrel, although that was the option that we could have done. But we are headed to a Harvest Host, which we also haven't done for a while. That's true. And Chris might have fun at this one because it's got spices and smoked meats. You know, the key to my heart is definitely food, meat, spices. I'm sure they have some other grocery items and I really look forward to arriving and poking around. We need to look up what time the store closes. It's a big travel day and we're also traveling from Central Time to Eastern Time, so we lose an hour on top of the big travel day. Let there be light. A little bit of window fog we need to evaporate. So our power usage last night was about 30% of our battery we used, which is good because sometimes on a heavy day, or overnight, we can use like 50% of our battery, which is a lot. That's a lot, yeah. That's a lot, but we didn't use the air fryer a whole ton and we kind of tried to keep it to a minimum. We should charge up on the drive today, but there is no sun out here, it's like cloudy and rainy. Yesterday was a full day of rain, the entire drive. Yeah, it was not a fun one. I'm hoping we get some better weather today. Yeah, but I now need to head outside to check on the toad and make sure everything's good. Double check my legs going up. This is where we need to leave room to be able to swoop out of here, but if there was another RV that came in right here, we'll see how much of a swing it actually goes into these spots here. But we might have been in a little bit of a situation where I had to unhook the toad because even though we have two extra spots back here to back up with a tow bar, you can, they say do not back up. Technically you can back up a little bit as long as you're watching and making sure nothing bad happens. But what I hear happens is the tires on the toad turn very quickly and you jackknife. So it's just like jackknifing a trailer and then you'll end up bending your tow bar. So you gotta be really careful. So if we were to back up, we could maybe go an inch or two before something probably happened because we're at this weird angle. And so we're still in tow mode, which is good, but what I hear can happen is your battery in your tow vehicle can drain and die. And that would be a really bad situation for our flat tow mode. And so here we'll check and see, you know, if somebody parked in these spots or maybe an RV was backed up in here, that could have been pretty bad for us. It's got a good turning radius. We know that, but you can see it. Yeah, we would have been in somebody's space for sure if you look at that. That wouldn't have been good at all. If somebody parked there, if a big fifth wheel backed up and parked in that spot, we'd be trapped. We would have been trapped. I would have had to unhook this morning. Yeah. We're learning. Yeah. Sometimes you just, you know, that was our best option. And we knew that going to bed, we said that's a risk we were willing to take. Yeah. Worst case. Unhook. Move. Not a big deal. Plus when people are here for an overnight stay, they're usually up and leaving earlier than we are because we're a little slowed down with walking the dogs and everything. Also, you know, on an overnight, probably be a good habit to double check, you know, your pins, safety cables, power cables. Now, if the power cables were out, it would tell us on the inside, which is good. And I like how it's, it's only six connections here. It's very, very clean. One, two, three, four, five, six on the tow vehicle side, super easy. And then this side, again, I'll always have, I'll always keep connected to the RV. So that stays pretty permanent. But I do like this setup so far, super clean, works really well. So when I was outside, Chris heard some water rushing from the back and she said the slide back here, water was coming. This is kind of dark to see. Water was dripping out of the corner of the slide here. One other time this happened when it rained and I thought it was just the way that we were positioned that somehow water either came in with the slide or is holding somewhere. I mean, it rained really heavy last night and the slide toppers hold tons of rain. Like gallons of water. And that's kind of why we don't like slide toppers very much. So as you push the slide in, gallons of water just come rushing over and drain like right onto your slide front. And if for some reason, you know, the tilt is pushing it, water finds a way to move right through the slide openings. Not good. You ready to go? I am ready. Yes. We're also starting our day out today, needing to refill the DEF. And we just went to the truck stop before we got here last night. And I was going to fill up the DEF because they did some work while we were in Indiana on the DEF fill angle issue that we had on this prototype here. So we can now fill up at the truck stops. But the problem, the new problem is the DEF fill is about eight feet forward of the diesel fill tank. So if you put your diesel in first and then it asks you if you want DEF and you say, yes, we can't reach the DEF from where we're at. And you might say, well, why don't you just back up? That's because we have a toad now and you can't back up when you're in, you know, situations like that. Well, typically on a pickup truck, the diesel fill and the DEF fill are right next to each other. So you just fill them up right next to each other. Obviously in RV builds, you know, in different chassis, they can be in different areas. So since we have two tanks and a DEF fill tank, you got three tanks that are, you know, in turn 12 feet from each other, you know, from the front to the back. It's kind of an interesting situation. Worst case, we just get boxes and fill it up that way. Now that the DEF angle is fixed. But when you're on big travel days, like, you know, you're driving thousands and thousands of miles. You're going cross country. Really? Yeah. You go through a lot of DEF. You do. Yeah. We're burning through the DEF on this thing. Anybody that has a new diesel pickup knows that you burn through DEF, especially when you're, when you're towing. And you know, it's just something that you got to deal with in modern diesels. So the DEF is right here. Let's see how far this... It doesn't move very far. It's like sleeting out here, babe. Keep going a little bit, a little bit. Okay. Stop there for a second. Go a little bit further, a little bit. Okay. Stop right there. Okay. So the tricky thing is we need to be able to reach the DEF and the fuel at the same time. So you can't just choose DEF. That's what I was... Yeah. Diesel, refurb, both. I don't know. It just says hose 2 prohibited. I don't know what that means. I hate truck stops when they're just so finicky. It's like their stuff works 50% of the time. It's the DEF nozzle wasn't hung up all the way. It was my fault, my fault. I did that. It works. And I could put the jacks down if I need to, to raise it up a little bit, but we're going to see what this does. Little bit of a drip. I'm going to go really slow. Yeah. I'm just, if I go too fast, it spills. But if I go slow, it works the, it was 21 bucks for five gallons at the pump inside the store. It's 20 bucks a box. That's two and a half gallons. So it's, it's twice as much in the store than at the pump. Good job. I'm just happy that it worked. Yeah. Um, and now we can hit the road again. We're topped off on DEF and fuel, bathroom break and food break breakfast. Yeah. What are we eating? So, okay. This is a three day travel stint that we're doing. It's four 50 miles each of the three days. And so I wanted to make sure that we didn't get hangry on the road and go into loves for fast food. So I cooked, Aaron really likes his breakfast sandwiches. So I made him six breakfast sandwiches, two for each day. And he just likes to pop them into the microwave and his breakfast sammies. I do a ciabatta roll with ham, egg and cheese and he loves it. And then for me, I made roasted cauliflower with sirloin steak for each of the days. And I like to have a little cup of cottage cheese. So it's nice and simple. We also have things that I prep, like I chop up green peppers and red peppers and snap pea pods, things that we can snack on raw veggies along the way too. But for breakfast, that's what we got today. And true test, this loves has a McDonald's in there and we were pulling up, I'm like, Oh no, Aaron, are you going to want a McDonald's Sammy over my Sammy? Once or twice a year, I get McDonald's breakfast and it's good. Guess who's Sammy he picked? Mine! Yes! Another long day, day number two. We only have 45 minutes to park, walk the dogs and get inside and do some... Spend some money. Some spice shopping, right? We're five to six inches nose high, which is a land that's on the edge. Yeah. Might be able to make it work. Single beep. Single beep is what I want to hear. All right. We're right on the highway. It's going to be a little noisy tonight. Right on highway 95 or whatever it is. We've been listening to highway noise for about seven years now, so. Not too bad. I found you. Thank you. Cheaper to go to the RV park. You don't leave the RV park with all that. Look at how... How beautiful it is? Yeah. How good that looks out there. Yeah. When I was coming in, it was a little bit later. The sun was popping just a little bit more. It was beautiful. That store makes millions. As they should. It's unbelievable in there. I love it. This is my kind of harvest host where you can go in, there's tons of everything in there. Something for everybody. They had... Oh my God. Where do I start? They had barbecue sauces, hot sauces, seasonings, baked mixes, soup mixes, jams, pickles, pickled goods, sausages, meats. They had an entire sweets section that I didn't even enter and an entire knickknacks store. Did you see that walking by? Yeah. They had a gift store. Gift store. Thank you. Yeah. They had wine. They had actual meats, like the actual meat counter. Yeah. They had a ton. Of course, we had 30 minutes to shop, which wasn't enough time in there. If you're going to come here, give yourself at least an hour in there. Of course, I asked the lady at the butcher counter, what are you most known for? What's the number one thing I should get? Can you take a guess, Aaron? Sausages. Carol's sausages. That's how it started. It's the name of the store. I do have a freezer full of meat, so I really don't need meat, but I couldn't say no to Carol's sausages. I figure these are something that are easy to just put in the freezer. If we want to do a grill out or entertaining with people, who knows? I got onion and cheese chicken sausages. These are ballpark bratwurst smoked sausages, so these are just like your classic bratwurst. We're from Wisconsin. These are pecan, pecan, pecan, however you say it. Those are dark. These are dark. I'm most curious about these because pecans are such a big thing here in the South. Then I got one more plain chicken, so I got two chicken, two pork. Then I got peanuts because peanuts are also a thing. These are really easy to gift. These were like $2 a package, salt and vinegar flavored and garlic flavored. Look how salty they are. Then I've been hankering for some pickles, so I got some pickles. I was specifically trying to get things that were branded Carol's sausage, like their house brand, so the pickles I'm already craving. You could say I'm craving salt. I think I've been a little bit dehydrated on this drive, but I'm super excited about it. Hit it up. It was $50 for all this stuff, which you're supposed to spend $30 is what the expectation is for Harvest Host Night. Usually we always spend more than $30. That's just the way it goes. At least these things are going to last a long time, right? Final thoughts on driving since I got to drive a little bit today. We just put a two-inch lift in this Dynamax, and we haven't really talked about it yet. We've really only driven a little bit on that. The two-inch lift we need to talk more about, because that completely changes how the RV handles, and it needs to get aligned after that lift, which we haven't been able to do yet. We have an alignment issue that we're dealing with, a different shock and suspension setup, so it's a little bit softer, I want to say. Towing the towed vehicle is like nothing. That's super easy. That really isn't a huge deal. The Asada 6 does not feel the Bronco. It tracks behind you. We have a big diesel engine. Braking, a little bit difference on the braking. You got to just plan a little bit, but the exhaust engine brake in this thing slows you down without even hitting the brake. But I did want to make note on the fuel economy. Day number one was like nine and a half miles per gallon, which I was kind of bummed about because we've been getting more like 11 to 12 without towing. 12 is pretty easy to do. And today we got over 10, or almost 10. We hit 10. Yeah. Yes. So 10 miles per gallon towing here in the flats of the deep south. Ever wonder where the name Irene Iron Travels comes from? It's actually named after my online fitness and nutrition coaching business, Irene Iron Fitness. I help people move better, feel better, and eat better with strength training and real food. No fad diets, no harsh restrictions, no counting calories, and absolutely no processed food in a package. If you want to get stronger and feel better at any age, check the description below for the links with my new client special. Or join in on our next and upcoming group challenge.