On the Road Again

This post isn't exactly about gardening.  Okay, it has absolutely nothing to do with gardening.  However, it does have to do with our families love of the outdoors and our desire to foster that love in our daughter.  I have always loved camping, something the rest of my family didn't share.  Camping is the only reason I stayed in Girls Scouts through a phase with a less than awesome leader.  As a child we spent a lot of time outside and visited many of the National Parks, but my parents don't camp. 

Up until I married my husband I've always tent camped.  In fact to celebrate our first anniversary, we went on a week long road trip through New York, New Hampshire, Vermont, Maine and Rhode Island.  We tent camped along the way.  My husband, as it turns out, is not a fan of tent camping.  He grew up camping in a popup camper.  So when the opportunity arose, we purchased his parent old popup on the cheap.  We got in a few camping trips before a rotten floor ended up caused the lift system to break.  Exploring what we would need to do to fix the rotten floor and reattach the winch that lifted the roof, lead to additional problems coming to light.  After letting the camper sit in our garage for over a year, half taken apart, we decided that we were in over our heads.

Not what you want the interior of your camper to look like. (Ignore the shoe)

So we decided to start looking for a new camper.  Less than a week later we found a great ad on Craigslist that was in our price range and only an hour and a half away.  Even better, it had mostly been kept in a garage.  Water is the death of popup campers, so dry storage is a big deal.  So we packed up our toddler and headed down to check it out.  We ended up purchasing it and driving it home with us the evening.

Our new (to us) Coleman popup camper

Then we had a little dilemma  We still had our old Jayco half taken apart in our garage. So we placed an ad on Craigslist.  A VERY honest, VERY detailed ad.  In less than 24 hours we had it sold and gotten it out of the garage.  We were afraid we were going to have to pay to get rid of it, so the fact that someone wanted it for pieces was exciting to us.

Interior Before

  

The interior of our new Coleman Redwood was in really great shape considering the age of the camper.  The previous owner even made covers for the majority of the cushions.  We don't do off the grid camping (or boondocking as it's called), so we don't need a cabinet for a toilet.  You can see the cabinet in question in the picture above.  The current plan is to remove it and put in a cabinet we bought at the Habitat ReSale Store that is longer and narrower.  It should be more functional, and serve as a set-up onto the bunk for both our daughter and our two dogs.

Quick trial run in the camper.  No complaints so far.

The other side of the camper is shown below.  We didn't cook or use the sink in our previous popup.  Well, once we cooked in it when there was a crazy rain storm, but we used a griddle, not the stove.  So we decided to remove both from this camper.  The cook top was easy.  It had already started to fall off before we bought the camper.  We're removing that entire cabinet and replacing it with some drawer cabinets that should be easier to access.  The cabinetry in campers always seems to be inefficient and difficult to access.  Plus, like I said, it was already breaking.

Interior Before

The sink is going to be a bit more of a project.  We aren't sure if we want to modify the cabinet or not.  Right now were leaning toward just modifying (removing the sink and adding a new counter surface).  Regardless, the water storage tanks will be removed and since in this camper they are under the bench seating for the table, we will gain a bunch of storage for larger things.

Construction has begun

Construction has begun...well, really demolition has begun.  Cabinets have been removed and the new ones have been tested out.  Now we need to prime and paint everything.  We've had a run of rainy humid weekends this month, so this work has had to wait.  Fingers crossed we'll have good painting weather soon.  Our first trips to a state park has already been planned and reservations made.  Can't wait till we can start camping again!