Camper Life

Winter is Coming

Winter is coming! In Colorado, that means ski season, making snow forts, going snowshoeing and sledding. Unfortunately, it gets crazy, cold here at night so it's good to take precautions ahead of time. What does that mean when you are trying to live in a camper trailer?

I'm talking about insulation — Greg's favorite dinnertime topic. In order to move in, we needed to insulate around the bed area and in the bathroom. Check out what it looked like a month ago.

As you can see, cleaning hasn't been high on the list of priorities.

Greg has been working almost 40 hours a week, cutting styrofoam insulation and radiant barrier into odd shapes to fit into the walls of the camper. Remember that guy I wrote about in the first blog post who lived in a van with Greg in New Zealand a few years back?

Okay, okay, I'll let it slide that you haven't read every post so far. But I did want to give a shoutout to Scott for helping out one of the days so far. Having a friend offer to help during a home improvement project is a wonderful thing.

We couldn't capture every moment, but we hope this video gives you an idea of what goes into insulating a bathroom in a camper.

Not too shabby, right? I'm probably the most excited about using a composting toilet for the first time. It's a weird thing to be excited about, but when you live in a camper trailer, you get excited about weird things.

And that's our bathroom there in the back! I bet the two pictures don't look much different, but it's a start!

Also, what a lazy dog we have! We swear she did move throughout this process.

Blaize is growing impatient with all the home improvement projects. What do you mean you can't play with me all the time? Another Home Depot run? Really, guys, REALLY?

Did I mention, we moved in! Finalllyyyyyyyy. It's been a long time coming. We took the last month to work on this insulation project and even though we're not done yet, we can still sleep there at night.

I think in order to do something like this, you have to work on handling your stress in times of frustration. The way you used to do things just isn't going to cut it anymore. You have to find a new normal in day-to-day tasks.

Whenever I'm feeling overwhelmed, fresh air and local hikes becomes my new best friend. Sorry, Blaize, you're cute too.

Happy Campers

License plate? Check!

We're the proud owners of a 1969 Terry travel trailer! Looks pretty vintage, right? It's about 14-feet long without the axle. Inside you'll find a bathroom (shower included), stove, mini fridge, oven, sitting area and table (that converts into a bed) and a bunk bed. There's a few small closets. I say small, but Greg says they're big. We know who has more stuff at this point. Overall, we hope we really struck trailer gold and got our money's worth. Time will tell.

On the downside, we had to delay moving in by a week or so. It's a drag. No one wants to move once, let alone twice. This is where patience is a virtue. From this situation I've learned that nothing happens as you first expect it.

The land we are placing the camper on needs to be excavated to be more level and less sloped. The turning radius on our new home isn't ideal, so we have to factor that in when the truck pulls into the spot. Also, it's probably a good idea for our home to go through a 40-point inspection so we are at less of a risk of leaks and things like that.

So we're living it up at a family member's place before the big adventure. I say, "living it up," because I know staying at someone's house is going to feel luxurious compared to our tiny living quarters. As much as all this space is enjoyable now, I am still craving our great backyard of open space that is waiting for us.