Now onto the newest of things. I've got myself a new project *rubs my hands together in mischevious fashion and laughs maniacally* We now have a pop up camper. But before we get too into the new, lets take a few steps back. As you all know Heather and I absolutely love to go camping. I used to go a dozen weekends out of the year atleast growing up and now we still go as often as we can. The problem is that it never fails to rain atleast one of our trips every year and being as hard as it is to actually get the time to go, we suffer through it. Most times its not too bad, except for the "thunder storm of doom" as Heather puts it the first summer we were together. That was, until last year.
Last June we went on our annual camping trip to Bar Harbor for her birthday and as we packed up Thursday night the weather forecast was for showers Friday night into Saturday morning. Eh that's no biggy, we can deal with a few showers over one night out of 3 days. We arrived at the campground at almost exactly noon Friday, at 12:15 it started to rain and it never stopped til 10 am Sunday. When I say rain, I'm not talking drizzle, or showers, I am talking full on, god taking the mother of all leaks type rain. For 3 days. We spent 3 days inside of the tent. We wound up eating every single meal at a restaurant cause we couldn't keep dry or have a fire.
We decided that very weekend, we needed to upgrade. We aren't willing to stay home so we decided we needed a camper. We didn't want a huge camper, we still want to be somewhat rustic. I don't like feeling like I'm living in another house when I'm in the middle of the woods. So we decided on finding a small pop up. We looked around for a few weeks and didn't really find anything we could afford. Then came my birthday party. My godparents showed up to celebrate with us. Our house was already full so they decided to bring their new camper they had found. It was 25th anniversary 1989 Skamper pop up. It was the perfect size for what Heather and I were looking for, very basic but in good shape. It was going to be ours. The problem was, no one else but me knew that (grin). I begged and pleaded with them to sell me the camper or better yet, just leave it there for me but to no avail. So the search went on.
The fall came and went and I still couldn't find anything else I liked and I wanted that damn Skamper. Then out of the blue in February Gene (godmother) called and asked if I wanted to buy it. I told her I most certainly did if the price was right. She said all she wanted was what she had invested in it, which is $500.00. I told her it was a deal but I didn't have the money right now cause I was getting ready to go out for my surgery. She told me not to worry about it, we'd work something out. So we have a plan.
Fast forward to now. The other day I was talking to my Darrel (godfather) and he told me to get my ass up there and get the damn thing out of the way (litteral words). No problem, So Friday I hit the road at 5:30am ready for my 3.5 drive north. I returned at 7:30pm with the camper and was totally thrilled with the way it towed, having absolutely no trouble on the 200 mile drive.
So as I said before this is a 1989 camper. It's not in perfect shape. For being 21 years old it is in very good shape. It is in need of a few minor repairs and a hellaciously good cleaning. I am going to post some before and after pics on this post of the first cleaning I gave it and I will do so later on of the other things I do to it. Its my hope to start blogging about all the trips we take from now on. I'm hoping we can expand our horizons a little further now that we have something a little more solid to sleep in. It's first real test will be the first weekend in June for the Fiber Frolic and then a couple weeks later for our annual trip to the Harbor. Here's the first set of pics...
Due to some technical malfunctions the pics aren't in perfect order...so here is
After.... Before....
After.... Before....
After.... Before....
P.S. Tomorrow I am taking my nephew out to see Iron Man 2 after he gets out of school. Working on #53 of my list. Yeehaw
