Snowbird diaries, Chapter 2

I feel like a bit of a fraud.  For months now I have been talking about setting out in my comfy trailer with a couch and a Murphy bed, and being a Snowbird.  I planned to ‘decorate’ it.  Maybe not over-the-top ‘glamping’, a la Pinterest, but make it mine.  Until my fellow campers online insisted that I couldn’t pull that trailer with my van, which had shown up on Facebook one day as rated excellent for towing.  Just saying.  So the dealer took responsibility and were going to switch me to a smaller trailer, but when I went to the dealership to see it in person it wasn’t there yet.  But on the showroom floor was this pop up camper that I fell in love with.  On sale.  Sold.

Now this I could handle, I thought.  It’ll be easier, not so much technology to figure out and to go wrong.  But that was theory, the reality came when I went back on the 30th for my walk through, and I drove it away.  Not to the campground, that will be today, but to my friend’s house where I would have to pull up the driveway and then turn myself around.  I put some thought into this ahead of time and had a plan, but, as my uncle had already warned me, the smaller the trailer the harder it is to back up because it responds more quickly.  I found out what he meant as soon as I got there, when every time I turned the wheel the camper looked like a virtual jack knife maneuver.  I eventually gave up and thought I was going to have to get someone to do it for me, which was disappointing.  S I unhitched the camper and parked the van beside it for the night.

By yesterday I had a new plan, so I re-hitched the camper…Yes, I backed up the van and got things hitched up by myself, grateful all the while for no witnesses.  It still took a few tries to get myself positioned to head back down that driveway and drive to the campground and begin this new adventure.  But now I know I can do it, it’s not just theory.  And that couch that I was so happy to find in the original camper?  It’s in this one!  Seriously!  And so it begins…