Trip to Rushmore - party of 9 - was awesome!
We all made it back in one piece.
9 of us (4 adults with 5 children between ages 6 and 10) slept in our 270BH, and it worked out great. We did book an adjacent campsite and put a tent up as an overflow/placeto change for the other family, which helped a bit. We weren't all ready to just change in front of each other.
Rafter J Bar is a great campground. I would recommend it to anyone. It's just a beautiful setting. We did feel that our children were a bit noisy for the place, though, and maybe they'd have blended in better at the Mt. Rushmore KOA. But the kids loved the place. We loved the place. There are definitely places that are more 'interactive' with activities, but that's not what we were looking for and so it wasn't an issue. But I mention it for anyone who likes planned activities at a campground.
Onto more technical things. I weighed the trailer just about every way possible, and I was really surprised to find out that my tongue weight was 1000lbs! I think I'm going to invest in my own tongue weight scale for the future. The trailer itself was only about 800lbs over the stated weight from the factory, and that weight certainly wasn't all toward the tongue. I'm not sure that that's correct, but I didn't really have a lot of time to make sure it was truly just measuring the tongue - though I really don't know how it couldn't be right.. sigh.. that's a lot of tongue weight, so packing may just be a tricky thing with this trailer.
We did make a few modifications before we left for the trip. We changed out the bathroom door knob to one with a lock and we changed out the bathroom faucet to one that you could actually fit your hands under to have running water flow over them. We also put up some hooks here and there for sweatshirts and such.
And, of course, the trailer towed very well. I have a 2010 F150 5.4L, crew cab, long bed with the max tow package and an equalizer hitch. The setup combined is great. Though, those winds hitting us after crossing the Missouri River going west did very unkind things to my MPGs. The trip east back home was much better. Another trailer-towing gentleman at one of the many gas stations we stopped at assured me that his chevy was getting just about the same, and he his trailer was quite a bit smaller and he was nowhere near as loaded down as we were. That wind was brutal. So it felt like a bit of a moral victory.
I won't review the tourist attraction (we went to Rushmore day and night, Custer State Park, Needles highway, 1880 train, gold panning at Wade's, Mammoth dig site), because there's plenty out there for that already. They were all great...though round trip on the 1880 train did feel a bit long for our tastes.
I really just wanted to share that the 270BH performed flawlessly for us - well, with the exception of one of the 'bedroom' privacy 'doors' coming off the guide at the top due to one of the kids being a little aggressive/careless. But I was able to pop it back in with a flat-head screw driver.
So far so good with our Sunset Trail 270BH!!
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