The Adventure Begins... 7/1/12

 

For as long as I can remember, I've loved to go camping. Love. it. As I've gotten older, though, I would find myself looking longingly at the beautiful RVs parked near my tent and dream of sleeping with air conditioning. I even took a small window unit with us one particularly hot Fourth of July and ran it with the tent door zipped around it! (It worked pretty darn well, shut up.)

I gave up camping when J was about five or so because I hated the heat so much and it was just so much work. (Of course, then she started riding and we basically starting living outside on weekends anyway, so I don't know why I bothered.) I started missing camping a few years ago, but by then I couldn't go much of anywhere in the summers because of Mom.

Last year, I decided the time had come. I bought a nice, big-enough-but-not-too-big tent. It's big enough for two queen air mattresses, or more typically, one queen air mattress and all of J's stuff. It's easy to put up and can be done by one adult. It came as a package deal with two sleeping bags and an air mattress! Sweet.

We broke it in last summer by taking it and the horses to James River State Park for a three day camping/trail riding trip. It was hot, hot, hot! but I had a blast. Dave came down one day and we went tubing on the James, which could be an entire blog all on it's own. Dave got separated from us, leaving me to tow J AND the cooler tube on my own. I barely made it back across the very wide expanse of river in time to make the take-out spot. Not fun, at all.

This year, we took the tent and the dog and spent three days at the beach at First Landing State Park. It was awesome! The first day was hot, but then it was rainy off and on and cooler. I did a great job, if I say so myself, of keeping things dry and covered. We had the EZ Up and the tent with a 10x12 tarp stretched between the two. It was fine. Still, there were those lovely campers parked next to us with lights on inside while we made do in the rain with an LED lantern...

 

When we came home from that trip, I initiated a serious discussion with Dave about my RV envy. It took a couple of casual conversations but before long, HE was starting to bring it up. He did some looking around online and sold himself on the idea. We knew we wanted a travel trailer, not an actual RV, and we started looking for used ones. Lo and behold, we stumbled upon the PERFECT camper about an hour from here for a really decent price. Here it is:

We went, we saw, we bought! The dealership is doing some minor repairs we asked for, cleaning it up although it looked great to me, and adding a hitch receiver on the back so we can put our hitchhiker on it to carry bikes, grill, etc. It will be ready for pick up in just under three weeks, and we've already booked a trip to Bear Creek Lake State Park as our maiden voyage!