Some mistakes we made on our first trip. The first mistake was that we ended up in a rush, my fault as I had too much scheduled before our trip. The second mistake was that we abandoned our check list because we were in a rush, which is exactly when checklist are the most useful. When we were finally ready to leave we hooked the trailer to the truck and pulled it into the street to attach the weight distribution hitch. As I pulled out of the driveway I noticed that I had left the door grab handle extended. I also hadn’t swiveled my mirrors to the towing position. Because we were rushing I hadn’t reviewed the hitch instructions and was attaching it for the first time from memory, I got it right mostly. Our next big error before we’ve even left the house was checking that the trailer lights were working properly. We ended up on small back roads with lots of stops and turns, with each one I wondered if the line of cars behind me were surprised by each one! I discussed in a previous post that I hadn’t studied my route to the campground, this caused us to be on roads that were more precarious than we needed to be on. Another mistake which could have been caused by not using the checklist was that I didn’t chock the wheels before disconnecting the truck, this let the trailer slide a few inches. My last error was in the final dump of the tanks. I didn’t pay attention to which handle I pulled and started to dump the grey tank before the black, not a big deal but not the correct way either. Let’s see if we do better next time.