Glamping, according to the Oxford English Dictionary (it was added in 2016) is: "A form of camping involving accommodation and facilities more luxurious than those associated with traditional camping."
If Camping is, as one unknown author once said, "the art of getting closer to nature while getting farther away from the nearest cold beverage, hot shower, and flush toilet, then having a camper (travel trailer in our case) is awfully close to glamping! We have hot water, a flush toilet in a full bathroom, albeit small, and a refrigerator for cold beverages! And we can take it all with us whenever and wherever we want. Oh, and it has a few other amenities like a T.V., air conditioning, heating, a full kitchen, room to sleep 9 people comfortably and room for everyone's stuff!
Below is our 2022 Jayco Jay Flight 32BHDS. It is 36 feet long with roughly 32 feet inside with 2 slide rooms that has the couch and a U-shaped dining table; a queen bed in the front; twin size bunk beds and a twin size be in the back bunk room; and access from inside AND outside to the bathroom. It also has an outside kitchen. We traded in the Avenger for this. The Avenger had a lot of issues and we were outgrowing the floorplan. We needed a bunk-house for the kids who were almost all grown up!
To pull our home-away-from-home and be able to fit 2 adults, 5 grown kids and 3 dogs, we still have our Nissan NV3500 Passenger Van as noted below!
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Our first camper/travel trailer, a 2015 Avenger 28DBS
Below is our 2015 Prime Time Manufacturing Avenger 28DBS. It is 33 feet long with roughly 28 feet inside with 1 slide room that has the couch and a U-shaped dining table; a queen bed in the front; double bunk beds in the back; and access from inside AND outside to the bathroom.
To pull our home-away-from-home and be able to fit 2 adults, 5 kids and 3 dogs, we have our Nissan NV3500 Passenger Van which has an incredible towing capacity and can hold 12 adults comfortably! And more importantly, we can rearrange all of the seats to fit our needs and our stuff. We love it! Don't let the image fool you! The van is actually very large. The camper just makes it look small!
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Where we keep the camper year-round
When we aren't on the road with the camper to our next adventure, we have it parked at a
campground where we spend the season enjoying the camper and everything the campground has to offer. This photo shows the original camper. We still have this site at the campground, we just have our new camper parked there now!
Our site is heavily wooded so we are in shade nearly all day. It's great as it helps keep the camper cooler on
those hot summer days. The problem is, our roof needs to be cleaned fairly often!
The deck was a family project one summer. Everyone helped build it. It is ideal for entertaining and hanging out with our camper neighbors and friends! We put dimmable LED light strings around the entire deck to give it ambiance!
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We originally bought the camper because it was getting way too expensive to take long family vacations. The cost
to get multiple hotel rooms plus food for our big family and the cost to kennel the dogs . . . we couldn't
travel.
The camper was the perfect solution. It was our home-away-from-home and we could even bring the dogs! We already
had the van to tow it so it was just a matter of finding a floorplan in our price range that we liked. This was true the first and second time buying a camper.
Since bringing the camper home, we have taken one long trip each year. The trips have all averaged a little over 3,000 miles roundtrip. We have come to rely on the book, The Next Exit to find RV friendly gas stations and everything else at every exit on the major highways in the U.S., and our Good Sam's camping guide. We also really appreciate the outside entrance on the camper to the bathroom. At gas stops, we rotate everyone through the camper bathroom while the tank is filling. Having a clean, easily accessible bathroom at any time during a long road-trip is amazing! Plus, it's great for those emergency potty stops in the middle of nowhere!
We were fortunate enough to have a 4th grader twice so we got to take advantage of the Every Kid Outdoors program. Participating agencies are: National Park Service, U.S. Forest Service, U.S. Bureau of Land Management, U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. For the most part, the whole family can get into these places for free if they normally charge entrance fees for 1 year.
Like most people that take road trips, we have a favorite road-trip game. For us, it's counting campers and other Nissan NV passenger vans. On our August 2017 trip (approximately 3,200 miles), we counted 1,239 campers/RVs. That number is correct, 1,239!!!! We also counted 11 Nissan NVs. And one of those Nissan NV's was pulling a travel trailer. That was very exciting for us!
Our first trip with the camper, and the first time ever pulling a trailer of any type, came 2 months after
buying it. We traveled out to New York City with stops at Niagara Falls, where our campsite was about
100 feet from the shore of Lake Ontario; Connecticut to visit friends; the Statue of Liberty,
where we camped in a parking lot (best way to describe it!) where we could see the Statue; and Lancaster County, PA.
Probably the most 'exciting' part of this trip was getting to the campground in Jersey City, NJ. We were driving on narrow 2-lane city streets, and twice, had to detour off at the last minute before going through one of the tunnels into New York City. But we managed. And for the first time towing a camper, we really didn't have any issues navigating those streets!
The following year we left the cold and snow during the kids' spring break to head to Florida where we stayed near Orlando. We swam in the Gulf of Mexico AND the Atlantic Ocean; visited the Kennedy Space Center and just enjoyed the warm weather!
A day later and it looked like this! Much better!
Trips we've taken in our campers (does not include other trips pre-camper):
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Fun with the original camper, the Avenger 28DBS
The first 2 years we didn't have any issues with traveling. However, year 3, when we went to Yellowstone,
our luck turned. We always thought the worst thing that could happen on the road would be to get a flat tire on
the trailer. We were prepared if we had to change a tire, but the thought of having to do it was not pleasant.
After what happened to us, a flat tire would have been a piece of cake!
We were on Hwy 15 in Idaho heading towards Salt Lake City. The speed limit on that road is 75 or 80mph. We weren't
going that fast of course! The first thing that happened was a rock hit the windshield and put
a huge crack in it. It instantly spider-webbed out several inches in many directions so we knew the window would
have to be replaced.
Not even an hour later, someone drove by us, slowed down and started waving and pointing frantically at the
camper. We pulled over to see what was wrong and found that almost the entire underbelly had peeled off the bottom of
the camper and was hanging on by only a few bolts as it was being dragged behind the camper.
Unfortunately, we couldn't just peel it off because all of the plumping, wiring and holding tanks were exposed.
We didn't want to risk damage to any of that so we did what we could to reattach it. Lying on the side of the
road, with traffic flying by at 80mph, holding the underbelly up to put tons of duct tape on was an experience
we all wish we could forget.
Naturally the tape didn't hold long so we stopped at gas stations along the way to re-tape the bottom.
After we had limped into Salt Lake City and got settled into our campsite, we got rope and tied the bottom in
place and put on more tape. I had started the trip with a new roll of Duck brand duct tape and by the time we got home, it was almost completely gone!
We thought we had seen the worst of what the road could throw at us on this trip. But we were wrong! After stopping in Nebraska to see the total solar eclipse of 2017, we got into a huge traffic jam after a rain storm. It turned out the highway was completely closed due to a major accident. We had to get off the highway and find our way several miles to the next available highway entrance. This took us off-road on very wet gravel roads. The van and the camper made it through without any issues. Nothing was damaged or broken and surprisingly, nothing inside the camper shifted or opened or got damaged! But what a mess! When we got home, it looked like we drove through cement and wow, was it hard to clean off!
We were having issues with one of the tires on the trailer on the passenger side so when we were in Yosemite, we put the spare on and kept the other tire for a spare. That as the first time changing a tire on the camper but we did it at the campground so it wasn't bad. On the way from Yosemite to Padre Island, 90 miles west of Phoenix on a major highway in 113 degree (F) heat in the early afternoon on the driver side of the camper, we had a blow-out and the tire shredded. That was exciting changing that tire on the side of the highway! We were lucky enough to get to a tire store in Phoenix to get a new tire put on.
A few days later, on the passenger side of the camper, the entire wheel came off and disappeard somewhere. We were at a gas station and our son got out and told us the tire was gone. I thought it was another flat, but no, the lug nuts were sheared off and the wheel was gone. This was a Saturday night. We found a campground not far away and stayed there. We got lucky that a truck parts store owner came in on a Sunday to get us new parts to replace everything. We got the spare tire on and made it home.
Six months later we traded this camper in for the Jayco!
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What we have learned, added and changed / upgraded ... so far
Some key learnings from spending a lot of time in both campers and traveling the country with them:
Some things we have added to both campers:
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Contact me at: sv_design@frontier.com