With a lot of expenses lately in our family, replacing cars, working on the house, needing more "stuff" for our daughter, and wanting to refinish our basement for more livable space, we thought hard about purchasing a pop-up camper. We decided it was a good investment in our family's future, both for fun, and saving money on vacations. I started gathering information on the newsgroup alt.rv.pop-up-trailers. The people there have been great at answering my questions.
First, we quickly discovered that our new 1999 Pontiac Grand Prix, although it had enough horsepower, it lacked the frame and design to tow anything more than the smallest in pop-up campers. I went to a car auction and picked up a 1995 Ford Windstar with 135k for half of NADA value. Good thing because afterwards I heard of the plague of problems this year had on blowing head gaskets. Even though Ford has just recently extended the warranty to 100k miles, we are well beyond that! I hope to replace this vehicle when we can afford it, but at least the towing won't ruin our "good" car.
So now for the pop-up shopping. Others comments on what to look for and options they liked helped us decide on getting a 10-12 foot "box" size (when closed, they typically come in 8', 10', 12' and 14'). We hunted and hunted at several local dealers... most prices being a bit high for our budget, or the ones we could afford were too basic. Looking in the paper didn't fair well since there weren't many available in our county and most of those were either to old or too small. I noticed that about 1-1/2 hours away there were a dozen listed in their paper, and we took the drive and arranged to look at 6 in one day. We finalized on a 1996 Jayco Eagle 12 UDK, with a king bed, queen bed, and two smaller seating areas/kids beds, 3 way fridge, furnace, in/out stove, awning, screen room, bike rack, even a power lift, etc... just right for our budget.
Now it's home, and I scoured the web for camping checklists (see links below), and took a bit from each one to create a master checklist for our uses (file link below).
Our first trip of 3 nights went pretty well... after trying things
out in our driveway, making sure we knew how to set everything up, mechanicals
working, enough propane, and merging other's lists into a fairly complete
checklist, we had most of what we needed and did well. I'm looking
forward to future trips that will be less work since a lot is packed in
the camper already.
Our Trips & Pictures:
Maiden voyage to Allegany
State Park in Western NY - May 2000
Tip of the trip: Don't leave garbage unattended or the animals will make a mess of it.
Green Lakes State Park, NY - (June 16-18, 2000) (NO Pictures)
Tip of the trip: Even though way in the back looks like the perfect spot, check first, you may get stuck in the mud half way back!
Green Lakes State Park, NY - (Mothers Day, 2001) (no pics)
Tip of the trip: thanks for the heater... rainy and 42deg at nite
1000 Islands (Wesley Island SP) - (June 16-18th) (no pics)
Tip of the trip: Be very careful strapping a kids wagon to trailer bike rack... let loose on highway at 65mph!
Week long vacation - Lancaster Co, PA & Baltimore, MD - (July 4-9th, 2001) (no pictures YET)
Tip of the trip: Better planning for sightseeing would make it easier
Favorite Camping links:
PopUpTrailerCamping
MSN Community
PopUpCamping.Com
Family
Camping in New England
Family Camping
Resource
ReserveAmerica (everything
you need to find, pick, and reserve a site)
Pop Up Times Magazine
Over
100 Camping Links
Pete's Family
Camping Page
Parts and wiring information
Camping checklists:
Christopher
Behrens links of several checklists
Pop-Up
Trailer Camping Community Checklists (see left frame)
Family
Camping lists (well described)
"New
England Camper" Checklist
Campers-Village
camping checklists
"That's
Camping" Pack list (basic)
Orkney Springs
Campground Camping Checklist (basic)
Our pop-up camping checklist: kirkpatrick-checklists.doc
It's a living document, so email me if you'd like to check if I've
updated it.
Many thanks to other's lists that helped me in the process.
I hope they dont mind a little plagurism.
 |
All
sites in
The Folding Trailer/PopUp Camper Webring |
Previous | Next |
| Back Two | Skip Next | ||
| Random | Next Five | ||
| Home | |||
Hits since May 20, 2000:
Thanks to Geocities for their free web page service.
This page created 01 Jun 2000 by Daniel C. Kirkpatrick (kirkpatrick@oocities.com)
©1997 Daniel C. Kirkpatrick
Copying is permitted for noncommercial, educational,
and genealogical research use by individuals. This message must appear
on all copied material. All commercial or use for profit requires permission.