withoutwhatifs

It’s taken me a long time to get to this post, but I think it’s well deserved.

Unfortunately, we only had our camper for a week before we headed out for the trip. That didn’t give us a lot of time to do anything major as far as fixing it up (thankfully it didn’t really need much) and it also didn’t really give us time to show anyone what we’d be living in for the next few months.

So here’s a quick rundown on our home with wheels.

The Camper – 1962 Shasta Airflyte

13′ long, 15′ 10″ if you count the tongue (the part that connects to the truck)

Originally sold as “Sleeps Six people”

There really weren’t many things that we needed to do before setting out, aside from a few minor fixes. It’ll eventually need a fresh coat of paint, but we’ll get to that later. So minor fixes… Tara wanted the backsplash changed, so we did that. Easy enough.

Add curtains. Compliments of Tara’s eye for dressing a place up and using everything, a couple of throw pillows, a blanket or two, a shower curtain, and my mom’s sewing. We got curtains.

We also replaced the overhead sliders… one of the originals was missing a know and they were both… well, wicked old. So for the time being, until I can find something that fits a little better, we went with just a clear white board to replace them. They work great and look decent.

Here are a couple more of the interior (from when we left over two months ago):

This has been our home for last two months. Well, it’s mostly Murphy’s. We originally bought the camper so that while we were on the road, if Tara and I wanted to head out for a couple hours, Murphy would need a place to relax… somewhere bigger than the backseat of a truck. Plus these days people are smashing out windows left and right when they see an animal inside. We love tent camping, but to be able to camp for a few months in a tent alone, with a dog, would have been unrealistic.

We’ve had some great times in this camper already. We’ve sat through 20 straight hours of rain. Which, yes, the camper has kept us dry, but you would not imagine how loud it can be with rain coming down nonstop (compliments of the Hoh Rainforest in Olympic). It’s also probably a large reason that I made it thought the month or so that we spent in “Bear Country” and “Mountain Lion Country”…

It’s also taught Tara and I how to live together in a small space… a space even smaller than our old apartment. In Tara’s words:

Living in a small space together has been an easy part of our road trip. Derek and I have lived in two pretty small apartments together prior to this, the last place was a 700 sqft, one bathroom, one closet, small kitchen kind-of place, and we couldn’t have been happier with it. We found that we actually preferred having less room, because you acquire less junk. Actually that’s coming from me, Derek loves stuff. So maybe we found that we just didn’t need all the space, and more importantly, that we could happily live together in a small space. The Shasta is compact. Our closet for clothes has two hanging shoe racks that we’ve stuffed with clothes. Under our bed we have all our camping gear, fishing poles and a couple small grills. We use the remaining cabinets in the “kitchen” for food, water, a couple dishes and pots, and some cleaning products. Murphy’s food and bowls are under the dining table, and there are two storage spots above the table which we use for other stuff – the key here was to keep everything organized into sections, so we have a bin with electronics, one with toiletries, one with games, cards, etc. So everything having it’s place is key. I also try  to make our bed every day, and of course, made sure we have a couple throw pillows so it feels like home. We have to be crafty about using dishes, and re-use them as much as we can since washing dishes means filling a small tub with water by a water spigot at a campground (doing the dishes is somewhat of a production and doesn’t happen regularly, so we joke now that we’re “washing the dishes” when we are wiping down our plates with a paper towel before putting them back in the kitchen cabinet…maybe gross to most people but it’s become normal to us). But as far as how we handle being in this small space together…there is a lot of bumping into each other..if one of us is trying to get dressed in the “bedroom”, and the other one is trying to do anything else in the “kitchen”, there is usually a bit of pushing and shoving involved, but it’s all in good fun…I think? And I have banged my head on open cabinet doors on more than one occasion. Aside from that, we love our little space and half-jokingly talk about living in it indefinitely. But in terms of being literally on top of each other, and spending 24/7 together, I don’t think either of us seem to have an issue with it. We don’t really have any boundaries as it is, not sure if that’s a good thing but oh well, so there’s nothing we can’t say or do in front of the other that would really throw us off.

So, the only other thing to mention about the camper is that having an indoor place to cook dinner has been dy-no-mite. (Especially during that Hoh Rainforest episode) It’s nice to have a little kitchen when it’s cold, or raining, so that we can still enjoy our evenings. While I cook, Tara is usually sitting at the dining room table figuring out our next plan, route, stop, or Walmart parking lot.

We looked for about 2 years on line for this camper, and really couldn’t be happier with what we have. And as for Murph, well he’s pretty much having the time of his life..he spends his days outside, all day, and then curls up in bed in the camper, like clock work at the same time every night. He couldn’t be more at home on the road and in the Shasta.