My Conqueror and Rig!

slocamping

New member
Hi - I am new to this forum. We are in the market for an off road trailer and the Conqueror Companion is a good match for our family's needs. The Kimberley/King Kampers, which are being imported to California, are cool, but none of the models have the right combo of features for us. You are obviously very familiar with the Conquerors, Dendy. Do you have any leads on resources for importing them to the US?

Thanks,
Melanie
San Luis Obispo, CA

I have dispatched an e-mail to the prospect. Thanks! D
 

Dendy Jarrett

Expedition Portal Admin
Staff member
Hi - I am new to this forum. We are in the market for an off road trailer and the Conqueror Companion is a good match for our family's needs. The Kimberley/King Kampers, which are being imported to California, are cool, but none of the models have the right combo of features for us. You are obviously very familiar with the Conquerors, Dendy. Do you have any leads on resources for importing them to the US?

Thanks,
Melanie
San Luis Obispo, CA

Melanie:
Contact from Conqueror in South Africa is poor to non-existant at best. I have owned two different models now, and know about 30 folks with various older (2004) models.
I know two (and three with you) folks that are looking to bring a conqueror in to the US. Both have posted on this thread. If you are interested, I can link the three of you together, and perhaps shipping would be heavily reduced if you guys shared a container.
Let me know.
You can e-mail me at: dendy@expeditionportal.com
Thanks
D
 

Dendy Jarrett

Expedition Portal Admin
Staff member
Mounting CO2 alarm (Carbon Monoxide Detector) - where should it go ... up high, ... or down low?

Love some feedback.

Thanks
Dendy
 
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Campndad

Essayons!!
Dendy
My boats factory mounted co2 detector is mounted head high on the bulkhead. It is also close to the engine
Compartment, so you might want to take in consideration where you think the source of the co2 may come from.
 

FFMessick

New member
Up high is the best, CO is lighter than air, so up high will give you the quickest detection of CO in your camper. The safest thing of course is to not sleep with the heater operating. What type of heater are you running again? I own a buddy heater and a zodi tent heater, both seem to do the job. I wish zodi would start selling their heaters again, I would like to get the larger tent heater.
 

Dendy Jarrett

Expedition Portal Admin
Staff member
I just have a medium heater buddy.
It works great- We ran it all night in our conqueror that had the drop down room and roof top tent, but we kept the triangular windows at the top peak of the tent cracked for ventilation.
Now that we have the enclosed space, I just want to be safe!
D
 

XJBANKER

Explorer
I just have a medium heater buddy.
It works great- We ran it all night in our conqueror that had the drop down room and roof top tent, but we kept the triangular windows at the top peak of the tent cracked for ventilation.
Now that we have the enclosed space, I just want to be safe!
D

That's what we did in our trailer but now my daughter likes to sleep in the trailer. I sealed it off into three different areas like you had in your conqueror and we leave the door open into the tent, she calls it her bear cave. I just worry with her being so close to the heater now and not up by the Windows like the rest of us. Also the heater is on the open door and worry that she might get up in the night and knock it over so we just heat the tent up test good and turn it off while we sleep.
 

Dendy Jarrett

Expedition Portal Admin
Staff member
Well, typically this time of year we enjoy getting out and doing "cool" weather camping. NOT THIS YEAR! Dang, supposed to be a record breaking 86 degrees in middle Tennessee tomorrow! We went from Winter to Summer - no cool weather camping! Although I did clean the trailer up this week and dusted out the cobwebs!
D
 

TheThom

Adventurer
I just read this. entire. thread. for the first time. I just want to say thanks for taking the time to take pictures and explain your process. I'm rebuilding an old pop-up camper from the frame up and plan on using some similar ideas to tweak mine.

I'm also glad you finally came around to team Jeep :ylsmoke:
 

Mark Harley

Expedition Leader
Dendy: I read the full build,AWESOME great build, tow vehicles and a lovely family.
You are an inspiration to us that are just getting our feet wet on the expo trailer builds.

Love the sanky too!
 

Dendy Jarrett

Expedition Portal Admin
Staff member
Hi, Mark:
I am slow to keep up with my own thread! Thanks for the good words. Sadly, the sankey was purchased with the DI by a Brain Surgeon in Alabama!
He wanted both! Can't complain as it paved the way for the AEV and the Commander trailer!
D
 

Dendy Jarrett

Expedition Portal Admin
Staff member
Well, life sure can get in the way sometimes from doing the very things in life that you want to do!!

For a few years now, I have struggled with the fact that there are so very few places on the East Coast/MidWest where you can truly get out in the back country and remote camp as so much of the land is privately held and you run the risk of being shot by doing so!
Who knew that right up the road from me, held a place!
It is known as Land Between the Lakes (www.LBL.org). There is a Tennessee side and a Kentucky side. To coin a phrase from Andy Griffith, there are "200 miles of untrammeled loveliness! This wilderness area offers a place called Turkey Bay where there are rated trails, but then much of is is just roads that have been forged through the years and many of them take you only where your level of truck build can take you.

We did some initial research and called one of the Rangers I took Tread Lightly! training with who maintains the offroad portions of the park.
While he offered several places where folks tend to "gather", ... he said ... if you really want to get away from others that are camping, your best bet is to just turn down a road and drive and scope it out.
Well, as you will see, sometimes that can come with a price ... but in the end ... it worked out great.

We arrived there last Saturday, and went first to get our back country passes ($5 per adult, no charge for children, ... so a whooping $10.00 for three days or $25 for the year). We then drove to several of the places he recommended but indeed there were too many folks and while primitive (only steel toilets), just not for what we were looking for. So we started driving, more and more remote. We finally found a road that I knew had not been traveled in a while just because A) too steep a turn off for the average rig, and B) the level of growth on the road, showed that it had not been regularly traversed.

I'll digress by saying that at the Ranger Station, they mentioned that the lakes were way low, and that camping at waters edge held no risk of sudden water rise as they would be low through the summer.

So we started down this road- lots of low hanging trees and branches — had to get out several times to push a branch up and over the jeep and trailer. And lots of pin stripping that luckily buffed out! Lots of major mud holes! Then we arrived at what appeared to normally be a deep cove so we stopped. While I knew I was going to go through it anyway, I gave my 8 year old the thrill of making the call! We pushed through! And on we went until we driving along what would be the "bank" of the lake on one side with trees hanging and the lake on the otherside. A gravel bar if you will. Then it it us- dead end! I don't know how long my trailer and truck are together- never really thought to measure it, but I am guessing 20 feet ... maybe? The challenge, the area we had to turn around was about 12 feet wide. I don't know why this freaked my bride out, ... but it did. It took roughly over an hour of 3 point turns and backing the trailer into 5 feet or better of water to get turned around. It wouldn't have been as big a deal but as you'll see in the pics, there was a log that had banked itself in the water and despite trying to leverage it to move and backing the trailer wheels up to it and nudging, ... it refused to give up it's position! But I finally got us turned in the right direction so when or if we needed to exit, we'd be poised to do so.
And my what a spot! We literally were camping where water once was and probably will be again. It was about 2 miles into this rugged road, which was about 18 miles down some lightly graveled road!
The weather was awesome as we are experiencing a low humidity spell in Tennessee this past week where temps are in the high 70's during the day and mid to upper 50's at night, so it even got chilly at night.
We quickly set up and began our three day stay. Cell services was spotty at best and forget checking internet or this place. I did send a PM but it took over an hour to post!
Below are some pictures of a spot we will be going back to. In the three days we were there, we only saw 4 fishing boats, and only 1 stopped to chat (they smelled my bacon cooking)!

Here are some of the shots:

Here is the lightly graveled road (about 18 miles of it). There were sections of this road, that if I took a picture, you'd have said, we could have been in Alaska or anywhere else!
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Here is a picture of the water we crossed. This is actually a picture as we are leaving. It had rained before we got there, so the water going in was higher than the water going out!
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Here is what we were facing trying to turn the trailer around!
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And Our Spot:
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By the way, we'd move the "outhouse" based on the time of day so that it wasn't in the direct sun. It didn't stay right there where we sat!

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The view out of the trailer window where we sleep:
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And (for whatever reason) a blurry night shot, but hey ... you get the idea!:
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All in all it was great to finally get some real primitive camping in and have the kids learn about being without electronics, and phones, and traffic, etc.
I'd say Land Between The Lakes is a jewel for this side of the Mississippi, as it is one of those rare areas where you 'can' get remote and enjoy what nature has to offer!
Me and the kids:
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