We've been saving money and dreaming of this big road trip for years! We knew we wanted to take a month-long cross country trip with the girls while they were young, but also old enough to actually appreciate it and remember it. We thought waiting until the year Madeline turned 15 was the right time for us: the girls would definitely be old enough to remember the trip, but would be young enough that they weren't working yet.
At the end of the summer in 2015, we bought a used pop-up camper that needed some work. Okay, a lot of work. For one thing, we discovered that the camper had an ant colony living in the rotted wood of the roof. Obviously, both the wood rot and the ants had to be removed. Steve watched loads of videos on camper repair and spent many hours in the garage tearing the camper apart and rebuilding it.
A few minutes after we got it home, we set it up in the driveway. It was super exciting to have our own camper!
Here are the girls when we brought home the "new" camper. Lydia is trying to look sad because the
camper is dated and desperately needs a makeover. But both girls were actually very excited that we
had our camper now and our dream trip would be a reality one day! Madeline is trying not to let her smile show! At the time these pictures were taken, we didn't know there was an ant colony living in the camper. If we did, I doubt the girls would have posed so willingly.
It's not only very dated, but tiny too - we wondered how we would live in it for four weeks...
Seeing that it was a Starcraft with blue trim, and this was to be a good ol' tour of the USA, the girls and I decided to redecorate using a red, white, and blue theme. Not "country" style, mind you, just basic red, white, and blue.
Here are the new curtains and valances! MUCH better than the original color scheme. The seat cushions are still in progress but they will be a medium blue. We even gave our camper a name - Betsy, after Betsy Ross. A tiny sock monkey named George (after George Washington) is our mascot. We chose him because a sock monkey is a classic American toy. Lydia crocheted a vest for him so he could travel in style.
Here are the new curtains and valances! MUCH better than the original color scheme. The seat cushions are still in progress but they will be a medium blue. We even gave our camper a name - Betsy, after Betsy Ross. A tiny sock monkey named George (after George Washington) is our mascot. We chose him because a sock monkey is a classic American toy. Lydia crocheted a vest for him so he could travel in style.
Some of Steve's camper repairs: installed new wheel hubs, replaced the wheel bearings & grease, new tires, repaired the roof (replaced wood and metal), rewired some of the electrical to have different lights, replaced lights on the outside of the camper, sealed it all to protect against future water damage, painted the top, fixed the roof vent, built shelves for luggage, built shelves inside cabinets for storage, installed an extra spare tire holder on front and fixed the one on the back, rescreened the door, cleaned and waterproofed all the canvas, greased the cables for the lift system and built wooden safety supports for the roof, installed another electrical outlet (after the girls and I said we needed a place for our coffee maker). There are probably things we're forgetting. It was a big project and I'm glad all I did was ask how it was going from time to time. I'm not sure what all of these pictures show, but here's the evidence of many hours of work on Steve's part:
After all the repairs were done, and the weather got warm, we took the camper on a test trip in Michigan. It was for less than 24 hours, but at least we tested the camper once on an overnight before undertaking an 8000 mile trip.
And finally, we felt prepared to embark on our adventure!
Here's the plan! The red pins are overnight stops. Green and blue pins are places we plan to visit. White pins are just there to hold the map in place or to force the route to go through a certain city or stay on a certain highway.
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After we returned from our big trip, there were several more things we realized we still wanted to do to improve our camper for the next trip. And when I say "we" I mean Steve, of course. He fixed the plumbing on the sink so it would drain properly, took the old freshwater tank out and used that space for storage, and removed the heater to free up that cavity for more storage.
