It's All Marie's Fault

10 years ago my co-worker, Marie, told me that she and her husband were going to sell their 1970 Pop-up camper.

My husband and I decided to buy it, thinking that we'd had enough city and needed a bit of country.  We could take our kindergartner and our dog camping and get some fresh air on the weekends.  Some true, quality family time.

Don't you just love the decor?

Little did we know that campgrounds have become kind of like frat parties, what with all the people, the sites crammed together so tight you can see each others' butt crack, the party lights strung up between the palm trees, the alcohol, radios, TV sets, and guitar circles.

And I can't forget to mention the raccoons.  

As we pulled up to our first campground spot with the Retro Camper, a racoon jumped into the truck bed, flipped open our cooler, stole a loaf of bread, dashed into the trees, and began fighting with a posse of other raccoons.

Well, you catch my drift.  Maybe it's just campgrounds in Florida, I don't know.  It seemed like we were the only ones looking for peace, quiet and solitude.

So after numerous camping trips, we decided that we should look for some of our own property to camp on.  It took us 10 years to find it, and it wasn't cheap.

As soon as we bought our piece of paradise, we realized we needed other things.  Expensive things.  Like another truck to pull the camper, since we sold the first truck during the 10 years we never went camping.

After going to the property a number of times, we also realized we would need something that could get me around the property that was smaller than the truck, since I can't walk very well.  We started out thinking a golf cart would be a great idea, but one day in August, I found a used 2004 Polaris ranger 2x4 with 240 hours at a dealer on the internet.   Of course it was at a price we couldn't refuse.  We didn't have a trailer, so the dealer let us borrow one to get it to our house in the city.

We figured it wouldn't take us long to find a trailer, but low and behold we'd run out of money having bought all sorts of "things" we "needed" now that we had a "Property".

And there it's been sitting while we've been saving.  And saving.  And saving....

Isn't it cute?  It even came with horse-chewed cup holders.

I'm thinking someone spilled some Coke in those cup holders.

Yesterday my husband went to give it an oil change, since we've just about saved enough money to buy a trailer, and we'll finally be able to use it soon.

But it wouldn't start.  He was totally bumbed out thinking he would have to give it a carb clean.

Fortunately, it was just a stuck selanoid.

So in the next month or so, we hope to buy the trailer, to haul the Polaris, with the new-to-us truck, so I can go explore our new Tree Farm that we had to buy because we bought a Pop-up.


Thanks Marie.  If you didn't sell us that Pop-up, we wouldn't know how much fun we were missing.