Aron
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Last week, we pulled the 6500 lb travel trailer the 500+ miles from Northern Virginia down to Charleston, SC for spring break with the Powerboost.
We started out on Friday (3/31) after the kids got out of school, and got a few hours of driving under our belt before stopping for the night at a Cracker Barrel south of Richmond. Apparently everybody is on the road on the Friday before spring break, so we mostly crawled down the highway for those first few hours. I was prepared to plug the trailer into the truck to get power that evening, but we ended up not needing it. On the plus side, we tended to get better towing mileage that night at 12mpg.
We finished the rest of southern Virginia, NC, and SC on Saturday April 1, through some rain and lots of strong wind. There was less traffic south of Richmond, so I could get up to 75 or more once the wind calmed down. Still, between the wind and the faster speeds, I spent that day in the 8-10mpg range. Also, we were amazed at the number of cars and trucks we saw with huge wheels like this:
That’s not something that we see much of in my area, so I’m guessing that it’s a regional thing.
We stayed the week at the KOA in Ladson, SC. It’s a serviceable enough campground to use as a base of operations for touring the attractions, but I’m not sure that I would recommend it if you’re planning on spending much time in the campground itself. Our site’s picnic table was squeezed in between our neighbor’s water and sewer lines, so it felt kind of cramped to be hanging out in the campground. But it had a pool and clean restrooms, so I’d rate it as “average.”
We toured the USS Yorktown aircraft carrier, the SC Aquarium, Fort Sumter, the downtown historic area, Boone Hall Plantation, and spent a day at Folly Beach south of the city. Finding a space to park the 157” wheelbase truck on street parking can be challenging, so we parked in the city garage (on the top floor where there’s more room) near the aquarium when we drove into the city itself.
Unfortunately, my son stepped on a jellyfish while at the beach, so we spent part of Thursday at the local ER after his foot swelled up. After that, we decided to drive the whole 11 hours back all on Friday so that he could avoid an overnight in a walmart parking lot while hobbling around on crutches. We averaged about 8-9mpg going 75-80mph up to Richmond, and then slowed way down north of that (some parts of I-95 were signed for just 35mph), but got 12-13mpg as a result.
When towing, I generally kept the truck in tow/haul mode unless I was in stop & go traffic (when I shifted over to Normal to take advantage of coasting on electric power). Tow/haul mode seemed to get the best gas mileage when pulling a 3-ton wall. I tried locking out gears to keep the turbos from engaging too frequently, but when going 75mph they seemed to engage in every gear, so I ended up enabling all 10 gears for most of the trip. I also found that the automatic lane centering was really fighting the wind gusts, so I turned that off when towing. The cruise control, on the other hand, was really nice to have, especially when the traffic got more congested.
All in all, Charleston is a destination that I would recommend to tour, especially if you can reserve space in the other KOA campground near Charleston (the one closer to the beach).
We started out on Friday (3/31) after the kids got out of school, and got a few hours of driving under our belt before stopping for the night at a Cracker Barrel south of Richmond. Apparently everybody is on the road on the Friday before spring break, so we mostly crawled down the highway for those first few hours. I was prepared to plug the trailer into the truck to get power that evening, but we ended up not needing it. On the plus side, we tended to get better towing mileage that night at 12mpg.
We finished the rest of southern Virginia, NC, and SC on Saturday April 1, through some rain and lots of strong wind. There was less traffic south of Richmond, so I could get up to 75 or more once the wind calmed down. Still, between the wind and the faster speeds, I spent that day in the 8-10mpg range. Also, we were amazed at the number of cars and trucks we saw with huge wheels like this:
That’s not something that we see much of in my area, so I’m guessing that it’s a regional thing.
We stayed the week at the KOA in Ladson, SC. It’s a serviceable enough campground to use as a base of operations for touring the attractions, but I’m not sure that I would recommend it if you’re planning on spending much time in the campground itself. Our site’s picnic table was squeezed in between our neighbor’s water and sewer lines, so it felt kind of cramped to be hanging out in the campground. But it had a pool and clean restrooms, so I’d rate it as “average.”
We toured the USS Yorktown aircraft carrier, the SC Aquarium, Fort Sumter, the downtown historic area, Boone Hall Plantation, and spent a day at Folly Beach south of the city. Finding a space to park the 157” wheelbase truck on street parking can be challenging, so we parked in the city garage (on the top floor where there’s more room) near the aquarium when we drove into the city itself.
Unfortunately, my son stepped on a jellyfish while at the beach, so we spent part of Thursday at the local ER after his foot swelled up. After that, we decided to drive the whole 11 hours back all on Friday so that he could avoid an overnight in a walmart parking lot while hobbling around on crutches. We averaged about 8-9mpg going 75-80mph up to Richmond, and then slowed way down north of that (some parts of I-95 were signed for just 35mph), but got 12-13mpg as a result.
When towing, I generally kept the truck in tow/haul mode unless I was in stop & go traffic (when I shifted over to Normal to take advantage of coasting on electric power). Tow/haul mode seemed to get the best gas mileage when pulling a 3-ton wall. I tried locking out gears to keep the turbos from engaging too frequently, but when going 75mph they seemed to engage in every gear, so I ended up enabling all 10 gears for most of the trip. I also found that the automatic lane centering was really fighting the wind gusts, so I turned that off when towing. The cruise control, on the other hand, was really nice to have, especially when the traffic got more congested.
All in all, Charleston is a destination that I would recommend to tour, especially if you can reserve space in the other KOA campground near Charleston (the one closer to the beach).
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