Sitting around outside and drinking beer

My wife and I were sitting around outside on our deck drinking beer and listening to music when the idea for getting a pop-up was born. This activity is actually our hobby and we are quite good at it. In fact, we bought the house we are now living in primarily because it had a large covered back deck. When the weather is bearable, which here TN is 9-10 months out of the year, you can usually find us sitting on our back deck most Saturday and Sunday afternoons.

In the course of years of engaging in our hobby, we started to realize that, while quite relaxing, sitting around, smoking cigars, and drinking beer *might* not be the most healthy activity. Additionally, our daughter, already 8, has not yet realized the symbiotic harmony that sitting around outside and drinking beer can offer. We agreed, after several beers, that getting off our fat butts and taking some weekend camping trips would be a wonderful idea! Our daughter would hopefully have lasting memories and we, as a family, would be forced to spend more time together.

We excitedly talked about all the places within a short 2 hr drive from our house that were interesting but we had never been to. There was Shiloh, the civil war battlefield, Natchez Trace State Park, the original site of our tent camping hell, Montgomery Bell State Park, and a many others within 100 mile radius.

But what TYPE of camper should we get?

Well, I pretty much ruled out drivable RV's since I didn't want another vehicle to repair, pay insurance on, pay to have the oil changed, new tires, etc. We have a Sature Vue, a 6 cylinder, surely it could pull something? It just needs one of those balls at the back. Surely someone can put one of those on it? No problem. With that issue essentially solved, we pressed on.

What FEATURES do we need in this camper?

Number 1, at the top of the list, the most important and sacred of features for ANY vehicle is Air Conditioning. Man, it's gotta have air! I could sleep on a bed of nails, live on spam for two weeks, watch an entire season of soap operas, or even get a root canal as long as I was in an air conditioned room. This one was a hands down, no ifs, ands, or butts, MUST HAVE!

Don't get me wrong, we love to sit outside and do so nearly year round. Only the winter months drive us inside. Remember though, that we don't live on our deck, we don't sleep there, we generally don't sit down and eat there. All of these *other* things, that don't involve drinking beer, smoking cigars, and listening to music should be done under the cool breeze of an air conditioner. It is man's greatest invention.

A bathroom would be nice, though. We briefly entertained small travel trailers but always ran into one of the following problems:

* Those with a bathroom/shower typically only sleep 2
* New ones are too expensive. We tried though and our credit check apparantly reports us back as at "Overextended Deadbeat" status
* Used ones are still expensive
* The cheap ones for sale are either condemned shacks on wheels or get purchased within seconds of the seller pressing the enter key to post the listing online.

The discussion came back around to pop-ups. Some pop-ups have bathrooms. I've read about them. I've even seen pictures. I knew they existed! A pop-up was our first thought when all this came up originally on our deck sitting around and drinking beer. It seemed like there was plenty of pop-ups available for a decent (read: cheap) price that was in our price range (read: very low).

Problem solved!

We'll get lawn chairs, an awning, coolers, an outside speaker for MP3 players, a portable johnny-on-the-spot sitting within a short walk. The idea was starting to gel into perfection!

The discussion progressed and we got more and more excited about the idea and more committed to seeing it through. As we were smugly congratulating ourselves for taking such a decisive step towards strengthening our family and embarking on a healthier lifestyle, the fact that we were basically setting things up so that we can spend time sitting around outside AT A CAMPSITE, smoking cigars, listening to music, and drinking beer didn't really seem all that relavant.

Coming up:

Purchasing Frostbite

It doesn't have a bathroom . . . no AC, either

Camping?!?!?

My wife and I have been thinking about getting back into camping after 13 or so years. When we were fist married, we did do a bit of tent camping. A little background on that, when my wife and I first started dating, we lived about 4hrs apart. I was in Memphis, she was in middle Tennessee in a town called McMinnville (don't worry, I had never heard of it either and I live in this state.)

At the time, it seemed like a good idea to meet halfway on the weekends and spend the weekend together camping. That way we both would have a shorter drive home on Sunday. Natchez Trace state park was about halfway, fortunately, so we gave that a shot. I bought a little dome tent and we bought sleeping bags and various other camping stuff so we considered ourselves prepared.

I remember tent camping as a kid with my family and campgrounds in those days typically had a special, level, square of soft, small, gravel intended for one to set up a tent.

I quickly learned that those days are, apparently, over. The only level spot in any campsite was the asphalt driveway meant to park an rv. Every other spot in the campsite was not only "not flat" but typically covered with roots, large rocks, concrete or some combination of the three. Nevertheless, we were committed to the idea and managed to make do and set up a tent.

Our first night was miserable, I learned that a sleeping bag, while very soft, is not soft enough to make up for sleeping on what felt like a bed of glass and nails.

We spent night #2 in a local hotel and slept very, very good.

The next trip we were smarter and bought one of those blow up mattresses to put in the tent and sleep on. Man, it was a great improvement and we congratulated ourselves on our cleverness. Unfortunately, our mattress apparently had sprung a leak during the night and we woke up laying flat on the hard, cold ground. The glass and nails were all still there.

We spent night #2 in a local hotel and slept very, very good.

The next trip we got even smarter. I patched up our blow up mattress and added a layer of foam on the floor of the tent. No leaks this time, boy! However, Spring was getting fairly long in the tooth and Summer was coming full steam (no pun intended) into Tennessee. It didn't take us long to realize that our little dome tent even with all the little zip-up windows open was the equivalent to sleeping in a sauna somewhere just south of the 9th circle of hell.

We spent night #2 in a local hotel, turned the air conditioner up high enough to cause frostbite to exposed appendages, and slept very, very good.

We managed to spend an equal number of nights "camping," for lack of a better term and staying in a hotel which, I shouldn't need to mention, was getting a bit expensive. I had a 1-room studio apartment in Memphis that I could barely afford the rent on.

This was the extent of our camping experiences. We have a daughter now and she is eight. My wife and I want to her to experience camping but not especially share our own experiences camping. Tent camping is off the table now (actually it has been off the table for 13 years now) so we had to come up with another idea.

RV?!

We researched a new one and quickly learned that we can't afford one. That's ok, I thought, we can just get a used one. Used ones, it turns out can be pretty pricey as well. That's ok, I thought, I'll just get one that "needs a little work." Which is an odd thing coming from me since, when it comes to working with my hands, I actually try to do as little work as possible. I hate working in my yard. I don't change my own oil. I can't fix my car unless it is broken in one of two ways:

1. Fixing a flat tire. I'm not talking about actually patching the hole in the tire here. Just taking the flat tire off and putting the temp spare on.

2. Battery needs replaced. I've actually done this a couple of times and managed not to electrocute myself. However, I will confess that two weeks ago the battery in my wife's car was bad and I took it to AutoZone and let them test it, tell me it was bad, take my money for the new one, and, yes, installed it for me in the parking lot. Man, that's a pretty neat service!

If a car needs any other type of repair, I am forced into one of two decisions:

1. Ignore the problem and hope it goes away or at least waits until later before breaking for good (sometimes this one is tough but I've been pretty lucky so far. There was the one time that I didn't put antifreeze in my car one winter . . .but that's another story).

2. Pay someone to fix it for me (assuming I have the money.)

Nevertheless, we were committed to the idea and set out with great eagerness to find a cheap camper that "needs a little work."

Secretly, though, I was hoping that the "little work" part primarily involved paper towels and a bottle of Windex.

Coming up next:

We buy "Frostbite" or, for those of you who don't name your vehicles, a pop-up camper.

It needs a little work.

K