We have a travel trailer so in no way are we living like we're "homeless". We have a propane stove, microwave, washroom......but depending on where you stay it can get expensive. Even if you have a tent you still have a roof over your head. Anyhow, we really enjoy camping as a family. Our very first camping experience was in a beautiful large tent:
Obviously we had a fantastic time or we wouldn't have continued to invest more money into the activity. I was new to camping, this was my first camping trip EVER and even though you KNOW you should not dump food near your campsite, I did. We had soup for lunch, I rinsed the pot and dumped it in the wooded area. Well, I'm not positive if that's why we had the night time visitors, perhaps they would have came anyway but we had a family of raccoons outside our tent all night. They were fighting and made their presence known. We had 3 air mattresses at home.....I only brought one and it ended up being a double. Thank goodness our Son was small at the time and there was room for the 3 of us but by morning the mattress was losing its air. After that trip, and the fact we enjoyed everything about it except for our living arrangements, we started looking at alternatives to a tent. Right off the bat hubby wanted to go with a travel trailer. I am more conservative financially and wanted to stick with something much lower priced. So, we purchased a Pop Up Tent Trailer:
This gave us more of the comforts of home, we were up off the ground, the roof over our heads was a bit more solid, we had a stove that you could use inside or outside, a fridge, it was great. The downside to the pop up was when I wanted to get inside and it was not popped up. If I wanted to change the bed sheets, do some cleaning, stock something up we had to pop it up. If it was calling for rain, we had to put it down. Not because it leaked, it was dry, very solid but because we didn't want to put it down wet and have the moisture trapped. So we went on the search for a travel trailer we COULD AFFORD.....
It turned into quite the search as our budget was quite low. We were told by a local salesman, who is very trustworthy so it wasn't a forceful tactic to get us to purchase, if we found something in our price range we should grab it as they don't last long. We witnessed that personally very shortly after, we were searching online night and day, looking for great deals. We found one at that local dealer, the next morning I stopped by to have a look at it. The one we found was a "lemon", it had water damage and our salesman didn't recommend it for us. He showed me another, it was nice but not exactly what I was looking for. It was in our price range but the bed was right in the main living area, right beside the sink basically. We made arrangements to view it the next day anyway. That afternoon the salesman phoned me, it was sold. Then and there I knew IF I found something I liked in our price range we had to take it on the spot. After weeks of searching online day and night, seriously we were up until the wee hours of the morning quite often looking at trailers and discussing our options,we found the one for us. Our adventure that day started out to look at another trailer at a different dealership that was supposed to be a gem and was a great price. When we viewed it, it was nice but you could see they had done repair work to it. The condition of the interior wasn't bad, we had seen much worse like the one my husband tapped on the wall and poked a hole with his finger accidentally as it was very rotten. The whole time this salesman tried to tell us it wasn't rotten and had no issues, the floor was buckled....anyway, back to finding our new home away from home....we went to several lots that day and our last stop was a friends house in Truro. Our friend gave us directions to another dealer in the area. I was tired, discouraged from what we'd seen, disappointed the one we went for wasn't what it was supposed to be but my husband insisted we take a look.
We found the dealer no problem. We explained what we were looking for and saw some beauties in the $14,000 to $18,000 dollar range. Very nice and all well and good BUT way to expensive for our modest budget. We still had our pop up at home, we weren't without a home away from home.....I was willing to wait. This last stop was looking like a waste of time until my husband spotted a trailer along another line up that apparently just arrived and the salesman didn't know anything about it. He took us on a tour and I fell in love. While we were looking at it he called his manager to see what the price was. It was very close to our price range but a tiny bit over. Hubby said "we'll keep it in mind". I asked him to come around the trailer with me, he probably thought I found something wrong but I wanted to get him out of hearing range of the salesman. I said "I'm making him an offer of what we can afford, if he takes it we're buying it". To shorten a very long story I made him the offer, they accepted it and a week or so later we had our new to us "home away from home".
All that winter I waited for Spring to arrive and bring with it the camping season.
Our first trip was to Kejimakujik National Park. http://www.pc.gc.ca/eng/pn-np/ns/kejimkujik/index.aspx
We love Keji. Our first camping adventure tenting was at Keji. So much to do and see there, so peaceful and very clean. Our first trips for this season will be there, we look forward to it. We love to go hiking, the fishing is great and you can also rent recreational equipment like canoes and kayaks.
There are many many adventures to be had at Keji. And of course a highlight is always the campfire. I love to set back with a magazine or word search book and just relax by the fire.
In Slapfoot there seems to be a playground around every corner, which is awesome!
There's lots of swimming areas....
Though we have the fridge, stove and washroom we do not have a TV in our trailer. There are two hook ups ready to go but I have no desire to take a TV camping with us. I love leaving the technology behind, if we have it we will use it and it will ruin our experience. I'm concerned and quite sure if we were to take a TV we would watch it instead of going outside for a hike even though it's drizzling a bit....it would be an excuse not to keep our plans. Or instead of reading books before bed we'd be watching TV which I have actually been changing the course of at home. Now, the TV goes off before bedtime and we spend some time looking at books and reading instead of watching TV right up until it's time to fall asleep. The only technology we have with us is my smartphone. We have a radio which is nice to hear the news and listen to some music. One adventure to Truro last Fall hubby and I enjoyed listening to an old Rock station and reminiscing about the songs, trying to figure out who sang them. It was nice, good music too. :)
Because I have a full kitchen our meals do not consist of campfire roasted weiners and canned beans though those both things are tasty camping foods. We have everything from campfire hotdogs, bbq steak, pulled pork in the slow cooker to chicken and stir fry veggies.....
With our day to day lives so busy camping is a nice getaway for us to spend time focusing on each other as a family. It's good for our mental and physical health. Our dog has certainly put on some pounds since the weather has changed and camping season ended. Her and I put on a lot of miles at the campgrounds. We got "lost" at Keji one morning. There's tons of signs so you're never really lost but we did go in a few circles before we found our way back "home". Needless to say I'm looking forward to getting back to the woods.
'til next time.... have some fun and play as life's too short to work it away.....
No comments:
Post a Comment