Take Your Bikes with You To the Campground

Our dual hitch extended has been an excellent upgrade!   If you love to bike, you need to do this!

Long before our camper and our little man, I fell in love with biking.  We were on a beach trip, and I decided to rent a bike for the week.  Eventually, I bought my own bike.  This led to a bike rack and trips just for biking.  Once Peggy Sue came into the picture, I no longer had a place for our bike rack.  Until now.  We solved this problem with a dual hitch extension, and you can too!

Installation

The Dual Hitch Extension from Maxx Haul slides right into the tow package location on your tow vehicle.  Secure the extension with a Hitch Pin.  This can be done in a matter of minutes.  My husband, who dreads installing anything even says this was easy.  I did not actually install the hitch.

The dual hitch extension has two receivers.  In the lower receiver, you can tow your camper.  In the top receiver, attach your bike rack.  The only adjustment that we had to make was a longer safety chain for our camper because of the extra length of the hitch extension.  This seems to be a common issue when adding a hitch extender, but a new set of safety chains is only about $20.

Our new safety chains are a little long.  To keep them from dragging the ground, I attach the chain to itself like you see above.

With extender connected, I have 2 receivers.  The bottom receiver is for the camper.  The top receiver is for the bike rack.

Hitching Up

When you are ready to actually tow your camper and take your bikes, you need to do the following:

1. Install the dual hitch extension.  
2. Back up your town vehicle and connect your camper.
3. Attach your bike rack into the top receiver.
4. Add your bikes.

Be sure that your bikes are securely attached to the rack before taking off.

There is a place on the hitch extender for the safety pin on the bike rack.

Be sure to lock your bike rack and secure it properly before adding the bikes.

Performance

On a pop-up camper, the dual hitch extender actually performs double duty.  While this product is designed to allow you to take your bikes to the campground, you can back up and maneuver your camper with ease! The extra length of the hitch is an added bonus for this task. 

On our recent trip, I was able to back into our camping spot and down our driveway easier and faster than any trip so far.  My husband was both surprised and elated at this bonus.  He is more excited about this functionality than actually taking the bikes.  I'm actually happy about both.

For less than $50, we are able to take our bikes camping.  I feel like a boss cruising into our campsite and down our driveway.   And we are able to do some outdoor activities that we all love while we have the time.

We have another trip planned for November.  Our bikes will be traveling with us once again.  Easy solutions always make me regret not making these changes sooner.  

How do you take your bikes to the campground?  If you are looking for camping gear, check out the gear we love and travel with to the campground!  Until next time...

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