Newbie to Camping Checking In

My name is Dennis, retired completely a year ago. Previous Harley riders, my wife Shirley decided to try camping in our retirement years. We will take delivery of a 2015 North Trail 26RSS Caliber October 10. I've been checking over the Heartland Forum and found a great deal of information. Hopefully you all can give us some hints when we finally get started. Great to meet everyone!

You can get a lot of good information here. Just ask. Also, welcome to the Heartland family.

Hey there and welcome aboard!

Hi Dennis,

Welcome to the Heartland Owners Forum and to the family. We have a great bunch of folks here with lots of information and all willing to share their knowledge when needed.

When you go for PDI, do a very slow, complete inspection. Make sure you can operate everything and everything operates, from front to back and top to bottom. Have dealer hook up to electric and water.. check for leaks and make sure your tanks drain. Heck if possible even camp on their lot for a day or so. That way you can use everything like your camping. Then if you find anything, get if fixed before you leave.

Let us know how it goes and if you have any questions,, just ask.

Jim M

You also get complimentary Heartland Owners Club membership for 1 year,,, join us at a rally and meet lots of great folks.

Join the owners club and come to some rallys. They are a blast and you will meet some great people and learn a great deal from conversations with seasoned campers.

WOW...very warm welcoming...thanks to all those that responded. If this is an example of the Heartland family, I'm very impressed. Thanks again. Good advise!

Happy camping from one Michigan Caliber to another. See ya down the road!

Welcome Dennis! Also when you pickup your rig, have someone video the PDI. Particularly how and where everything is located for winterization such as water heater bypass valves and water pump. And take advantage of this wonderful group of people. Ask questions and someone will be along to help you out

Welcome to the Heartland family. As several has said, join the Owners Club and get involved with regional, district and annual rallies. The people and Heartland are the BEST. Hope to see you soon at a rally.

Welcome Dennis, I am an also a newbie signed up for the membership the first part of this year March or April and boy do we have a great time great people great food door prizes to hand out to everybody make sure everybody had one really great event I would recommend you joining welcome.

Newbie to Camping Checking In...Join the Heartland Owners Club ASAP!

I second, third, fourth, and fifth what everyone else is saying!

I made the rounds here in the forum for about 10 months before I joined 'The Club' (Heartland Owners Club), and wish I had done it as soon as I discovered this chat board!

The first year is free . . . so why not!

Had I joined sooner, we wouldn't have missed out on the Colorado HOC rallies the first summer we had our 2013 Trail Runner.

We've met lots of new friends and had a blast at both HOC campouts that we attended this year!

Here are a some shots from this years Colorado Springs 2014 HOC Rally:



The last shot is our rig at the Colorado HOC 2014 Fall Rally in Rifle, Colorado, which began just three weeks ago today (still editing the photos from that one).

Not only are we planning on going to the Colorado HOC events next year, but may try to fit in a different chapter rally during our out-of-state trips in the future.

Next year we are planning a possible trip to Lake Tahoe to visit my brother and may try to make that voyage around an HOC rally in that part of the country, and perhaps next year or the year after, a trip back to Michigan to visit family (and possibly squeeze in an HOC rally as well).

I see you are from Watervliet (love that Waffle House at the I-94 exit) . . . I've been there many times to Lake Paw Paw!

We are originally from Jackson, Michigan (where the big prison is/was)!

(Wow . . . just noticed that this is my 900th post)