OUR VINTAGE CAMPER

MARCH 2012 —-Became a member of THE SISTERS ON THE FLY CLUB   (member # 3513)

This is a group of ladies that travel all over the Country in a caravan so to speak in vintage trailers. No Men, No Kids, No pets.  Just woman having fun. It looked like a fun NEW thing to try. So I became a member of THE SISTERS ON THE FLY.

MARCH 2013

We bought a vintage camper  ( 1967 De Camp)  from a young man who received it from his grandparents and had been living in it -in their backyard. I looked it over, paid the young man and we pulled it home. To say it needed some help was a total understatement, but it was what I could afford …so THE DREAM BEGAN.

MARCH 2015

We pulled it out of the fence row where it has set for two years and pulled it into one of the garage stalls attached to our home.  There my “great” friend Cheryl and I began to gut the old camper. It was a fun day  as we ripped and tore and entertained the idea of a girls weekend when the restoration was complete.                        

                 

TODAY–FEBRUARY 2017

You cannot move a mountain in a day, or maybe a year, or two. That’s a given.  My original concept was great, but implementing the time and attention it would take to make this restoration happen is something I sorely underestimated.

Life can be crazy busy. Mother Teresa said once “we all have that same amount of hours in a day, its what we choose to do IN THOSE HOURS that matter”.  Between Three grown children with spouses and 12 BEAUTIFUL GRANDBABIES……(and i do mean beautiful, there isnt a throw away in the bunch…. lol) time for working on this ” trailer dream” is slim to none .

AS YOU WILL NOTICE IN THE PHOTOS BELOW, THIS TRAILER HAD FAR MORE EXTENSIVE DAMAGE THAT WE ORIGNALLY ESTIMATED.  ONCE WE BEGAN TEARING DOWN TO REPAIR…..WELL THE “TEAR DOWN” KEPT GOING DEEPER AND DEEPER.

This January (2017)   We began yet again.  We tore it all apart….literally down to the frame. up to a point, all systems were a go, then while i was attempting to cut  the side walls separate from the roof with a reciprocating saw… and smash and cut  my index finger between the neck of the saws hammer head  and the trailer.  Pinched the finger and then blew the whole under side of it out and open. I saw the blood and about one inch of the bone and felt pretty sick.  Quite painful, throbbed for days   and took 3 weeks to heal.

As you can see, it’s almost not worth re-modeling. And I admit that while I can have the tenacity of a wolverine once I sink my teeth into something, I have contemplated several times of just throwing in the wrecking hammer, chopping up the frame for scrap and just “buying” someone else’s dream.

However, at this point it is our goal to have this back together and in useable shape by Memorial Day 2017.  We will make repairs to the walls, and once we sand the frame, spray it, lay it, insulate it….set the new walls and run new metal on the exterior then the interior will begin.

These are a few of the reasons we wanted to go with a vintage camper ,

This vintage girl came from the Masonic Temple (Masons) in my township. When I helped moved the old lodge to the new one almost 18 years ago this gem was headed for the scrap yard. It is my intent to use it in my camper. We come from 6 generations of biscuit makers so its important to me to be able to cook biscuit in this stove for those two reasons.

                            

I began a quilt almost 30 years ago of a Dresden pattern …made with the clothing from our three babies. I have made many quilts through the years, but this one has lingered in a tote far too long. I was waiting for the right purpose.  Over 22 years ago, ” a friend”  at the time told me these little “material wheels” were ugly, didn’t match, and she wouldn’t make anything out of them.

My Lemonade today to her lemons is….I am going to sew them strategically together on pieces of distressed muslin and then when I have large enough  pieces of them all sewed together, I will cut our curtains and they are going to be the curtains in my camper. I know every piece of clothing in these wheels. I know which was our first daughters dress, or jammies, our sons shirt, and our second daughters little dress, skirt etc.   I hope to  surround myself, and fill my camper  with the BEAUTIFUL THINGS I CAN FROM MY LIFES JOURNEY.

I will leave this writing for now….  with God’s Blessing and a lot of family labor, I hope to update it soon with more photos and share the continued progress of our vintage camper restoration.

UPDATE: In 2025, the camper was scrapped only after it was deemed beyond repair by several people, but not before I nearly cut off my first two fingers with a reciprocating saw while trying to separate the roof from the side wall. To this day, I still dream of a small vintage camper but I have decided that I am too old now for buying one to repair, rebuild and make mine. One day, I will buy a small trailer for myself. Maybe.