Dad Came for a Visit...

...but we don't have a spare bedroom for guests.

Well, we do now!  We just plugged in, slid out the slides, and gave Dad his own digs for the night.

We were afraid he might feel like we were sending him out to the dog house, so we made sure to offer him a bed in the house, but he was all for having a little place of his own.

If you have a camper, have you ever used it in your own backyard?

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Parked in our backyard in
Belton, MO
August 3-4, 2012

Buying The 5th Wheel

May 2012 saw us at Watkins Mill State Park in our hybrid travel trailer for our first camping trip of the season.

We'd had the camper less than a year.  Although we were the second owners, it was still just like new inside, and such an upgrade from our previous pop-up camper.  We loved it, but we were beginning to have some concerns on how well Shane's work truck was towing it.  It was doing the job, but we felt the load was putting a strain on the truck.  We decided on that first trip that we needed to either get a bigger truck or sell the camper.  We didn't want to sell the camper, so we began our search for a new truck.

We did our research, decided what we needed, what we didn't need and where we were willing to compromise.  A short while later we found a truck on craigslist that was just what we wanted and needed.  It was an older 1999 Ford F-250, but it had fewer than 38,000 miles and the price was very affordable.

What we weren't expecting to find was the 35 ft. 1999 Prowler 5th wheel camper that had been purchased new along with the truck, at an unbelievable price.  We just couldn't pass it up, so we ended up trading our mini-van in on the truck, buying the 5th wheel, and listing our hybrid trailer on craigslist.

Here is the new-to-us set up:

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Parked in our back yard
Belton, MO
June 12, 2012