So we drove out to Bumgarner Camping in Lenoir on Saturday to pick up our Cricket. We spent about an hour with Darryl, one of the service techs, as he patiently explained the operation of all the parts. We’ve been thinking of the Cricket as a big tent on wheels, but some of it gets complicated — the Truma heater/hot water unit is quite complex, for example. Darryl had hooked up the Cricket to shore power and city water, and tested everything to make sure it all worked properly. He had also installed a pair of Group 24 AGM deep cycle batteries that should give us plenty of stored power for use off the grid.

After we finished the paperwork and wrote a really big check, Darryl and his team helped us buy the proper hitch ball, and helped me hook up the Cricket to my 4Runner. I haven’t towed anything since I was in the Army over 30 years ago, so it was useful to have someone look over my shoulder. We got it all hitched up, then pulled around front and found a few items we needed in their parts store. Then we headed home.

The 4Runner pulls the Cricket like there is nothing there. It tracks very well, turns easily, and acceleration is fine. Braking takes longer, and that’s when I feel the 1500 extra pounds. It was fine on the interstate at 65mph, but started to sway a bit at 70. The Cricket is no wider than the 4Runner, so I had good visibility with the stock mirrors.

We got home and I backed it into the driveway. Again, haven’t done that in 30 years, but it came back pretty quickly. We opened it up, checked out some of the systems, and got ready for the big test: will it fit in the garage?

It turns out that my very careful measuring of the garage door opening height and the closed height of the Cricket was correct: the Cricket fit in the door with about 1/2 inch to spare. Whew. Keeping it in the garage is more secure, and we can leave it connected to an outlet to keep the batteries fully charged.

This afternoon we pulled it back out and set it up again. I wanted to check some of the systems and see how they operate. I also wanted to remove all the pink RV antifreeze that the tech had run through the plumbing system. We don’t need it since the Cricket lives in the garage. (And the manual suggests that he should not have run antifreeze into the Truma heat/hot water system anyway.) So we hooked up a water hose, filled the Truma, and started up the heater and the hot water. Wow! In a few minutes it was very warm inside the Cricket. Hot water took a little longer; on Eco we had hot water in about 20 minutes. The Truma runs on 12v and the propane tanks. We also filled the fresh water holding tank and ran the water pump to make sure everything works when we don’t have a city water supply.

For our first meal in the Cricket, we boiled water on the stovetop, then made hot chocolate and served it with chocolate cookies. The stovetop worked well, but we discovered that our car camping/backpacking pot was not as useful and we’ll need to buy a tea kettle and maybe another pot or two with handles. We’ve been puttering around the kitchen area, trying to see what fits where, and what makes sense to bring. That’ll be the topic of a future post.

Then we sat and enjoyed hot chocolate inside our tiny, warm Cricket. After that, we packed it all up and put it back in the garage. Looking forward to our first real trip next month.