I can’t even tell you how many years we have thought “What if we had a camper…”
There is a lot to be said for tent camping. But here’s what I don’t like about it. It’s hot in there. You are sleeping on the ground – or at best an air mattress (although it’s likely go no air by morning). We got smart and purchased a frame for the air mattress we were up off the ground, but the mattress would still leak air. But my number one reason for not wanting to tent it anymore: you are subject to whatever weather Mother Nature throws at you.
This photo should have been our breaking point. We pitched the tent, loaded bags and totes of stuff into it (clothes, food, coolers, air mattresses, pumps, sleeping bags, pillows, etc.) and then saw the clouds start to roll in. We skipped into the nearby town to get a few things so we could let the rain roll through. About 45 minutes later, we return to this. Poles were bent and snapped. All our stuff was soaked and/or ruined. It was a disaster. Yet for some reason, we went out and bought another tent and continued to torture ourselves.
Fast forward several years, and we were still thinking “What if we had a camper…” We had gotten a little better and switched to lean-tos, or cabins (when available). We were still on air mattresses and sleeping bags, however we were out of the rain. But we were in an open ended structure. There were bugs. There was wind. It was raw and damp. Cozy, yes. But still a little too much roughing it.
A year ago this month (July 2023) the lean-to photo was taken. It rained 3 of the 4 days we stayed there. We made the best of it. But before we left the campground that weekend, we walked the entire state park. We looked at all the sites and weighed the pros and cons of each one with one goal in mind: what site would be the best one to park our camper on next year. We had had enough of soaking wet camping gear. We picked a site that was waterfront so we could bring our kayaks and paddleboard, yet was big enough for a camper. What I was afraid would happen is we would end up not getting a camper and we’d be stuck again with a beautiful site and our little tent, in the rain. Either way, we had site 27 booked.
What we didn’t take into account a year ago when booking the site was the dates we booked. We looked for anytime that site 27 was open that was a few days including a weekend. Well, that time was the middle of June – the kids were still in school. No wonder there were openings still! They did have to play hooky for a few days, but we made it work.
At that point we started researching campers. This involved mainly Jesse watching YouTube video after YouTube video of every camper imaginable. (Quite frankly, it annoyed all of us that there was constantly a camper video being played. But because of his obsession to learn and watch them all, we now have a camper). It was quite overwhelming to see all of the different campers out there. All we really knew is that we wanted one about 24 feet long (to pull with our jeep) and that it needed a bunk bed for the girls. There was one we thought we liked, so we pulled into a local RV dealer and got a tour of one. Seeing it in person changed our view of it completely. If I hadn’t seen it in person, I would have never known how much we wanted/needed a window in both the top and lower bunks. This one had no window in the lower bunk and it was like getting an MRI. That became a new search criteria for us. Secondly, the camper had a dark brown wood looking interior. It was dark. I like light and fresh looking. This was not that. It looked good in the photos online, but not so great in person. The search continued.
We finally had our heart set on one of the Jayco travel trailers. It had a murphy bed in the front for us, bunks in the back, u-shaped dinette for plenty of seats, and a rear door for cargo. What we disappointedly found out at this point – our Jeep would not pull it. So do you look for a smaller camper the Jeep would pull? No – you buy a bigger truck. You betcha our GMC will pull that Jayco! However, we then looked at every dealer in the area for one of these Jayco’s so we could see it in person. No one had one. We went to a local RV show – none there. We traveled three hours away to another RV show. None there. However, it was at this RV show that we went inside each and every one we could. We sat at dinettes. We laid in beds. The girls crawled in bunks. And we were talked to by every salesman from RV dealerships in about a 300 miles radius. We learned that we did not want a murphy bed that had to go up and down, but rather a stationary one. We learned that we did not want a u-shaped dinette because someone would constantly be having to stand up to let all the others slide out from the end. But had we not gone to this show we would not have had our future camper steal our attention.
There was only one camper at this entire show that we loved – and bought that same day. It had the light interior. It had bunks for the girls. It had a spacious interior and lots of kitchen counter space. And it had a separate bedroom in the front with our queen size bed in it, with doors that shut. It was us.
We are happy to say, that with some research, some shopping around, and some penny pinching – we finally have our 2024 Forrest River Surveyor and love it. We were probably never so proud as we were to pull this 29 footer into site 27 this year.