I took lots of photos of it so
we could sell it. I was certain I could strike a good deal on Craig's
List. If that failed, we could sell it on the garage sale in May. I
knew it would sell in a minute because it has been pristinely cared for over
the years. And while it is old, it isn't outrageously ugly. Lots
of campers have flower upholstry. Good thing we didn't ditch it
back in March before we got an alternate camper.......
To make the sink work, one must tote
water in a jug, put it under the dinette seat, hook up a small hose from the
jug to the pumper, and then laboriously pump the water up. Hence:
Worthless Sink
Two
under seat compartments for clothes with a wheel well in the middle.
 |
Around about February when we seriously
started to plan our Wild, Wild West Trip, we started to get an idea that we
might need a different camper. Our camper is the world’s smallest camper
ever made. To give you an idea of just how small, it is truth to say that
the four of us cannot stand on the floor without touching each other.
That is pretty dire. Additionally, because it is a pop-up camper and so
small, there isn’t any room to store anything in the camper while
traveling. The tents consume all the space in the camper when it is
folded down. Honestly, we can’t even pack our clothes in it for a
weekend. When one is pie-in-the-sky dreaming about a trip one will take
months from now, one tends to be unrealistic about what one might be able to
tolerate. Ha ha ha. As we started to seriously plot our journey,
Mike and I began to squirm in our desk chairs thinking about what we will need
to endure on a daily basis by camping in our trailer.
So Mike started stalking Craig’s
List. There were a few campers in rather bad shape available.
However, we are pretty good at taking a piece of dirty junk and reforming it
into something nice. So Mike set up a meeting with someone in South Bend
to see a camper that we thought would be the cat’s meow. Why, yes! I would love
to have a shower, sink with water heater, refrigerator, microwave, toilet, two
dining rooms, 2 king size beds, and a couch! The refrigerator was really
the key component. So we planned to go up there after church with cash in
our pockets with the intention of bringing a new toy home. On our
way home from church, Mike got a text from the guy that said he
couldn’t get the camper out of the ice in which it was stuck. Could we
come next weekend? This is where I felt a strong presence of some
supernatural force yelling in my ear: Too good to be true! Camper
too big! Rethink this! I told Mike that I was getting messaging
from God telling Mike to rethink this and make sure it was something we
could really use. He had done some research on it already and felt
we could pull that camper. However, to appease me, he did more that
Sunday. And more. And more. He found a mathematical
formula for pulling trailers through the mountains...... And found
out that not only could we not pull that behemoth through the mountains, but we
couldn’t even pull it through Indiana!
If we were taking the pick-up truck
this would all be a non-issue, but we chose not to get a backseat in the new
truck because then the new truck wouldn’t fit into the garage. Well, with
the door down, anyway. So our Wild, Wild West Trip must be executed in
the car as we don’t plan to leave the children home for 6 weeks.
So back to the drawing board-with even
less on it to choose from this time. With specific size requirements in
mind, we drove 3 hours south to a place called, Camper World. Yep.
It was just as the name implied. Cheesy-greasy camper salesmen, who could
pressure talk an old lady into buying them a pickle. We knew it would be
like that and were ready for it. We planned to just swoop in get a
camper, lay down our cash, and drive home with it that day.
Mr. Slick called us three times to make
sure we were still coming before we arrived there at 1:00. Then can you
believe that he didn’t have that camper anymore that he listed on Craigslist
when we arrived? Yeah. We couldn’t believe it either. But he
really did want to show us a new pop up camper. Actually, I was pretty OK
with seeing the new camper because for just 2,000.00 more, we could get something
that no one else had messed up. It was very clean, which is important to
me. It was very “new house” looking inside. The décor looked like
the modern houses that Mike has built a lot of lately. It was
pretty flimsy. Like if you touched the back of a chair, it fell
off. But you know how you kind of get caught up in the décor and the new
camper smell……
We looked at the rest of the trash on
the lot, then decided to buy the new camper. Here is what happened.
Mike said, I’ve got the cash right here with me. We want to take the
trailer home today, but we need to hook it up and test drive it around the
block. The man was like……No, they can’t have it ready today. No, we
want to sell you trailer brakes for 350.00 on your car (same brakes are only 150.00
at home….besides, we don’t let greasy strangers touch our brakes!) No, we won’t
let you test drive it. No, you have to fill out a bunch of paperwork and
come back tomorrow. It is too close to closing time (Still 4 hours until
closing time!) Hmmmmm……..OK……see ya! Or not. He practically
strong armed us to come into his office and “put money down” to “hold” it for
us. I think he could feel the sale slipping away. It was
slipping away because when I am giving you 10,000 dollars in cash, we will play
by my rules or you can look for a different buyer. I firmly told him “No
camper. No money down.” That jerk cried on the phone to us for over
a week trying to coax us back. We very wisely ended that trip with
a visit to Walmart to buy all kinds of stuff for the camper we didn't
buy! Crazy. I know. We bought new folding, top-of-the-line
lawn chairs, a plug in cooler, cast iron cookware that we wouldn't even use on
this trip under any circumstances! It was kind of like a promise to
ourselves that we were REALLY going to do this no matter what!
Even without a camper!
So our third try on buying a camper was
closer to home. Mike found it first then took me to see it. It
wasn’t pristine clean, but we could make it so. Mice had eaten the
canvas, but insurance had paid to have it all replaced so it was very new
looking. The salesman was nice and very professional. The side of
the camper had a metal plate stating its tow weight. It seemed right
on. Mike took his big pocket of cash the next day to go buy it. But
first, being the smart kind of guy he is, he made arrangement at the trash
transfer station to drive the camper across the city and have it weighed.
Just to be sure. He also checked with the Ford dealership mechanics to
make sure he could pull the camper up the mountains with our Ford Escape.
Then just to be super sure, he checked with the mechanics, who would be putting
trailer brakes on our car, just to be super, super sure we didn’t get 6,000
miles from home and have a transmission breakdown. Everything looked good
to go! He hitched up the trailer and set off across town........ At
a whopping 10 miles per hour. The car couldn’t pull it. The other
drivers on the busy road didn’t appreciate that the car couldn’t pull it,
either. Once Mike made it to the weigh station, he weighed in already
over the weight the car could pull, and the car and camper were empty. No
can do. He limped it back to the dealership.
There really weren’t any other
campers available because they just don’t make very many pop ups or small
campers because they aren’t very popular. People who want a camper want a
fancy one. So that was the end of thinking that we were going to upgrade
to better digs.
Losing 3 camper sales was almost a deal
breaker. We were cognizant that we probably couldn’t make the big trip in
our tiny camper. It just wasn’t feasible. Besides not having a
fridge, the kitchen folds down on the floor when you are taking the camper
down, so there isn’t even any room to slide a small suitcase etc. into the
camper when traveling. The back of the Escape can’t hold all the food and
clothing for such a long period of time. We seemed to be at a
stalemate.
Being a fan of Pinterest, I had pinned
some wonderful things on my camper board when I thought we might buy a junky
second hand camper and would need to fix it up. There is a post by the
Pop-up Princess that I was loopy over!
http://www.thepopupprincess.com/pop-up-camper-remodel/how-we-sleep-comfortably-in-our-pop-up-camper/
When I saw her beds, I knew I
could camp for 6 weeks if I could just do what she did. I sent the pin to
Mike, and he went loopy over it too! In fact, I could almost hear his
brain chug to life when he started viewing these posts of people remodeling
their campers! Mike is a carpenter by trade, so camper remodeling seemed
like child’s play. He said, “I promise we are going to go on this trip
one way or another. If you come out here to the camper, I will share some
of my good ideas with you.” And so it began……
Up next: Remodeling the camper we already own!
Up next: Remodeling the camper we already own!
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