Other times I can barely see
Lately it occurs to me
What a long, strange trip it's been..."
Grateful Dead, Truckin'
And just like that, our travel trailer was gone. Not stolen or in an accident. Simply sold to a wonderful retired couple with grandchildren, four years after we had bought it.
We didn't sell it because we had to. We just weren't using it as much as we thought we would. It was a pandemic buy and it opened up a lot of travel options we had during the summer of 2020 and beyond. And we had no friggin' idea what we were doing. My parents had a truck camper, then a boat, then a motorhome, but I never had to take care of them and/or tow and/or drive them.
In July of 2020, we wrapped up the paperwork at the dealer, hooked up the rig, and towed our new travel trailer for the first time. Again, no friggin' idea what we were doing. I was scared to death. My wife Amy was nervous, too, but as always, assured me we could do it.
And we did. I could also back that thing up like a champ, too. It wasn't without a big learning curve and almost breaking lots of things, though. Thankfully we never really broke anything exactly, only slightly damaged some things. I backed our SUV into the trailer hitch that left a dent, one that remains today. Early on with the travel trailer we used it as a safe haven at a campground out of town when the CZU August Lightning Complex fires came within three miles of where we live and the smoke and ash were horrible. We then had to deal with our home security alarm going off when we were gone with me thinking that we were being looted (which we weren't after I drove all the way back to our house in the early morning to check).
We connected the batteries incorrectly on one trip and nearly fried them. We woke up on another trip with a flat tire on the travel trailer that turned into a bit of a fiasco, although we got home okay. And on that same trip, my kids and I dealt with bullies in a McDonald's. On another trip, we thought our SUV was on fire that began a cascading stress-mess with an anti-climatic ending.
Even with all of that, in a short period of time we had many great adventures, including an amazing two-week Southwest road trip, a couple of trips Oregon where one of Amy's uncles lives (and who helped us a lot with our travel trailer learning curve!), a trip to Joshua Tree, trips to the Columbia in Sonora, trips down the central coast to Paso Robles and Avila Beach, trips to see my family in the Central Valley (KOA campgrounds are great especially when there's a pool!), and a few others. And through it all I took care of my family's poop.
Our kids are now teens, and the last few times we went on a trip in the trailer camper, they didn't like it. Hated it, actually. Not the parts we did outside of the travel trailer, just the staying in the camper and the sleeping parts. Our dog Jenny always disliked going with us in the travel trailer, too. It always stressed her out and we had to crate her in the camper when we went places that didn't allow dogs.
Amy and I had aspirational ideas about what we'd do with our travel trailer in the years after we bought it. When we first got it, we were ready to go, and we had plans to travel in it together when the kids were old enough to stay by themselves, and eventually when they were out of the house. I think that, like in the beginning as a pandemic buy, we romanticized what it would be like to travel in our camper.
But in the past year it's not how we've traveled, and won't be in the foreseeable future. We hated the camper sitting in storage and not being used. Because what happens when things sit and aren't being used? They breakdown and fall apart. And we didn't want that to happen, so we sold it to some very nice people who will take good care of it.
We did have amazing adventures, though, and we made miles of special memories. We saw so many beautiful landscapes and met some wonderful people. We also learned a lot about travel trailers, towing, how your mileage sucks when you're towing, and how easy it is to almost break stuff. However, the biggest lesson of all was also the greatest return on our investment. The ROI of family bonding and love.
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