OK, so this really isn’t a post about our experiences in our motorhome, but it’s related. In the 1980s and 1990s, we spent a lot of time camping with the kids in our Coleman pop-up camper, including an incredible 2-month trip around the country. (My wife and her dad did the driving, I flew out and met them for Grand Tetons and Yellowstone.) Our family getaways were usually nothing more than a quick drive up to the local Corps campgrounds at Lake Lanier, and our big vacation every year was a Thanksgiving trip to the Fort Wilderness campground at Disney World.
Twice there have been circumstances where my belief about the quality of those experiences have been validated. The first is when my older son, about to be deployed to Iraq, said that the one thing he really wanted to do before he left was to go camping with the family. The second occurred just a few weeks ago when my younger son said he and his wife had decided to buy a pop-up so that their family (two young boys) could have the same experiences.
Unfortunately, he’s stationed out in California, so he asked if we could check around and see if there were any nice units within his price range near us. We found one, a brand-new 2012 Jayco Model 1007 pop-up. Perfect for a young family and within the price range.
The problem, of course, is the unit is here in Atlanta and he’s 2100 miles away. The solution? I’d take a couple days off of work, the DW and I would hook up the camper and head west, he’d leave on a weekend as soon as he could and head east, and we’d meet in Tucson. The result for us was a 5-day, 3500 mile road trip. What a great experience! And the best part is that we now have a new generation launched on the camping lifestyle.
