I bought the camper from a older gentleman in Omaha. He had used it traveling for more then 20 years. It cost me a grand total of 500 dollars. A great deal so I thought. The camper was gutted of the original design. He had carpeted the inside and added a double bed. In general the camper was in
ok condition. There are no broken windows, the door operates as intended and the jack system was functional. My camper is an 8 foot non cab over design built in the 50's.
I loaded the camper into my F150 and home I drove - slowly. There are NO tie downs on this thing - the guy said he never needed them, but since this was my first truck camper I was nervous and took the old back roads home to Lincoln (60 miles).
The camper stayed in the truck for the month of October since I had no way to remove it. Poor planning on my part, but... I finally found a couple of used camper jacks in Iowa in November and my plans improved. I drove the wife's
Prius to pick them up and although the jacks where huge the
Pruis ate them up like usual. I am constantly amazed and what this little car will do.
I now had a camper and some scary looking jacks and nowhere to put the camper. We live in an old house with a single driveway and a model T garage. We do have an alley behind the house, but no backyard access from the alley. The wife and I had been discussing a back yard remodel in 2010 and the camper project seemed to be committing me too it if I wanted to store it behind the house.
Since this is supposed to be about my camper and camping, I will shorten the next part. November was a warm Nebraska month and in this month, I removed the 24 foot pool, cut off 1/2 of the deck around the pool, removed the fence, built a camper stand from the old deck material. rented a roll off to dispose of the deck, and finally removed the camper from my truck to a spot behind the garage.
So where does that leave me. My backyard is a
disaster, the camper is ready for work, and the wife expects a nicely sodded backyard with a pond in the spring. I finally got rid of the pool after 7 years and now have to maintain a pond...great
December rolled around and Mother Earth decided Nebraska was where all the snow intended for CO needed to fall. We received over 2 feet of snow in December; which is 2 more feet then usual - that I can remember. Now, Nebraska is cold, but snow like this? Not since I was a kid. I do not like cold and I hate shoveling snow. So that camper sat for all of December until finally, I could not take in any longer. The weekend of Jan 30, I was determined to work on the camper.
