"When all else fails, read the instructions." Is that your motto? If so, you will soon learn the wisdom of another expression, "Experience is the best teacher. It gives the test first and the lesson afterwards".

We bought our first camping trailer over 35 year ago. It offered an inexpensive way for us to escape the city on our days off. We had already learned from a tenting experience that we did not like sleeping on the ground. Our first trailer, as it turned out, would provide even more experience.

Shopping for that trailer was not complicated. Our only criteria was that it be inexpensive and have a bed, a table and a kitchen sink. The classified ads led us to a 13 foot, $400.00 beauty with years of experience. It seemed to be everything we needed.

A bed stretched across the width of the rear of the interior. We discovered our first night out that the thin mattress was not quite a full size one.

The booth-type dinette at the front of the trailer could be converted into a one-person bunk. One of the storage areas under the dinette seats was accessible from the outside. The other was accessed by lifting the seat cushion and a board.

The kitchen, located on the street side of the trailer, consisted of a sideboard that stretched at least three feet from the bed to the dinette. There were shelves and cupboards above and below. A single sink dominated the center. We discovered while packing there were no drawers for cooking utensils.

Cross ventilation, whether we wanted it or not, was provided by a windowless entry door and the three hinged windows. The windows also managed to keep out most of the rain.

Plumbing was simple. A water hose could be attached to an outside pipe that led to the sink faucet. A hose at the sink drain directed the waste water to a bucket under the trailer. Favored trees and shrubs (meaning those closest to the trailer) benefited from the contents of the bucket.

Water hookups were not common in campgrounds, so the trailer came with a five-gallon jerry-can with a faucet near the bottom. The jerry-can was filled at the campground spigot, carried to the trailer and placed on the sideboard so it's faucet hung over the the sink. No need for a water pump here.

Cooking was accomplished on a two-burner, propane stove that sat on top of the remainder of the sideboard.

Interior lighting consisted of 12-volt lights over the dinette, the sink and the bed. 12-volt power was supposed to be drawn from the tow vehicle's starter battery. After experiencing a couple of dead car batteries while camping, we learned how to rig the parked trailer to a second car battery brought along for the occasion. Recharging the trailer battery was accomplished by connecting it to the car's battery with jumper cables and running the engine.

There was a 110-volt electric light over the sink. An extension cord could be plugged into the side of the trailer but we experienced an electrical shock every time we entered or exited the trailer so we gave up on electrical hookups.

We also had a propane light that hung from the wall next to the door. It provided a great deal of light but could not be used during the summer because it also generated an enormous amount of heat. Something we appreciated during the cold weather when we discovered the trailer was not insulated.

A single propane tank fueled the stove and propane light. A fellow camper showed us how to pour hot water down the side of the tank and run our hand on the tank right behind the water. The point where the warm metal turned cold was the level of the propane in the tank. We learned from experience to avoid pouring hot water on our hands.

Our tow vehicle was a mid-size station wagon. The manufacturer bragged about its fuel economy. It had a six-cylinder engine and automatic transmission. A local garage attached a hitch to the bumper and rigged up a connection to the trailer's running and brake lights (it never occurred to us that a little 13-foot trailer might need brakes). We were ready.

A number of weekend trips over level terrain taught us everything we thought we needed to know about driving, backing and leveling that trailer. We also learned how to stuff both the trailer and station wagon absolutely full of everything we thought we needed to survive. Now, we were really ready. Sequoia and Yosemite, here we come!

We earned a Bachelors Degree from the burn-while-you-learn school of experience during that trip. We were terrorized by the way our trailer wiggled whenever another vehicle passed us (and we were passed by everything on the road). The wiggling, we later found out, was the result of an inadequate hitch arrangement coupled with poor weight distribution of the stuff in both the station wagon and trailer.

The station wagon's rear tire was the first to blow out, a trailer tire suffered the same fate a hundred miles later. Overloaded and underinflated tires, we later learned, were the underlying causes.

The engine overheated repeatedly during our uphill pulls. The results of a "fuel efficient," underpowered engine and failure of the driver to put the transmission into a lower gear at the appropriate times.

The steep downhill grade into King's Canyon was accomplished in low gear and with overheated brakes. The combined weight of the overloaded trailer and station wagon was too much for the mid-size station wagon's brakes.

The climb out of King's Canyon was miraculously acheived in low gear with a number of stops to cool down the engine. It was late afternoon by the time we reached the top, so we decided to spend the night in a turnout. It was late May. Our elevation was close to 6500 feet. Snow lingered on the ground.

The night was bitter cold. That was when we learned that the mantles on propane lights disintegrate at the most inconvenient times and we should have brought spares. If the two burner stove was generating any heat, the uninsulated trailer wasn't retaining it. We piled on jackets, blankets and sleeping bags.

The next day the temperature rose into the high eighties. That, plus the grades into Yosemite and an accumulation of mechanical abuse, contributed to our station wagon's physical and emotional breakdown. The tow truck operator said it didn't look good. The mechanic in Yosemite Village confirmed the tow truck operator's opinion. He said the transmission needed a heart transplant. The good news, he said, was that he could do the job. The bad news was that it would take three days to get the part and two days to do the work. Experience, the best teacher, was now administering a post-graduate course.

A week later, at dawn, we had Yosemite in our rear view mirror. At mid-afternoon we were being towed into another repair shop. By sunset we had sold that trailer to a local farmer who said he thought it would make a fine chicken coop.

Within a week we traded that "fuel-efficient" station wagon for a new Suburban with a trailer-towing package. We made sure it had healthy weight carrying and towing capabilities. A weight-distributing hitch was installed by professionals.

Experience.Six months later, having read everything we could find on the subject of trailers and trailering and after talking to scores of experienced RVers, we bought our second trailer (our friends said we were gluttons for punishment). Close attention was paid to the weight of the trailer, weight distribution, brakes, insulation, water tightness, appliances, electrical, plumbing and propane systems. Experience.

We made sure the manufacturers of the tow vehicle, trailer and hitch all agreed the towing combination was a match made in heaven. Experience

We put 150,000 miles on that Suburban almost 100,000 of them with the trailer in tow (the trailer stayed in the family for 30 years). Since then we have put an additional 250,000 miles on three motorhomes. We continue to learn from experience. But thanks to the lessons we learned from our first trailer, our experiences today are positive adventures.

Learn from the experiences of others; read the instructions before all else fails.