We’ve done it – our first road trip longer than 30 minutes with the Camper! I’m affectionately calling it the Marshmallow – because it just… wobbles round…

Originally we bought this camper on a whim-ish… We decided back in September 2024 to just stop in to Camping World Statesville, NC to see what they had so we could get an idea of what we wanted. The minute we get out of the truck I look at my very determined husband and ask, “Are you ready to purchase today?” and the answer is a very strict “NO. We are JUST looking”. Guess how long THAT lasted….

So we sit with Gabriel, a new sales guy, and he shows us a few options. We know we definitely want a 5th wheel with a gooseneck hitch, and it needs to have space for us to actually live in, and work in for me. We saw a couple that had weird setups, like a half back room with bunk beds that would need us to build a desk, and another with bunk beds in a closed off room in the middle until we landed on the Montana 3761FL (front living).

We walked back inside to talk numbers… to get an idea of what kind of prices we’re looking at. We were given the specs sheet, and my husband the negotiator went back and forth on the price point we were looking for. “Let me go talk to my manager”, Gabriel comes back with another number.

Husband: “I gave you the number I’m comfortable with, we don’t need a camper right now so we’re in no rush to buy”.

G: “let me talk to my manager again”…

Sales Manager comes in…. more talk. Manager: “we have people coming in to look at this one tomorrow – a $500 deposit will hold it for you” (bullshit. I know your sales tactics… I’m IN sales too.)

Husband: no, I’ll call you when you open at 9am with our decision if you can meet our number.

Finance guy comes in… more talk. GM comes in, looks at us and goes “What’s it going to take to get you guys to sign paperwork today?” By this time it was closing time 6pm-ish. Husband reiterates the number for the umpteenth time – GM looks at his guys and says “do it”.

And that’s how we ended up buying a camper. Real pushover hubby is. But Rodney their finance guy is AMAZING. We really hit it off with him and he was incredibly helpful during the paperwork and additional meetings.

BUT that was just the start of the fun. We went home after depositing and going through all the finance paperwork with no camper (a Tacoma doesn’t pull 13,000 lbs). We left the camper to be serviced with the team and expected to come back in a week or so to pick it up with our 1999 Ford F-250 Super Duty. It also gave us some time to put airbags under the bed of the truck to help lift the weight of the camper so win-win.

We finally get back in to Camping World after our first return that showed they totally dropped the ball and didn’t even look at the thing to start any work… then we came back and did more investigating/ filled out a “we owe” so they would fix other cosmetic things… and we FINALLY hooked it up to tow it home. After figuring out the correct trailer brake settings…. yikes. Hubby pulled it into our driveway and wiggled it back and forth to fit on one side so we could still park the rest of our 900 vehicles at the house… Seriously though, at one point we had the 250, a Hyundai Elantra, an Audi A4, a 1970 C-10 Pickup, a Tacoma, a Mazda…. WE’RE ONLY TWO PEOPLE!!

We also found out the gross fact that Camping World never emptied the previous owner’s black water tank… so we’re litearally towing someone else’s shit around… blegh.

Now the idea was in motion… that meant it was time to start cleaning up/packing up the 4 bed/4 bath house we’d accumulated a ton of crap in over the last 6 years. It took FOR-EV-ER.

We started slowly trying to figure out what to do with all the furniture, luckily one of our friends was moving to military housing and was getting a bigger space than they had so we were able to donate a lot of pieces to their move. The rest was being carefully packed into Lowe’s totes and labeled to be taken to the storage unit down the road. We decided it was time for us to find our perfect land to build our dream home so a lot of the “moving” aspect is very up in the air.

After a few months of slowly moving, and my brain getting the best of me. SERIOUSLY how did we get this much stuff?! I just kept looking at it every day and it was making me anxious, annoyed, overwhelmed…. sometimes all at the same time. We also had quite a few projects to do around the house to get it to what we thought would be a “sellable” state. Don’t ask how much longer THAT took *insert eye roll* but thanks to my parents for coming in over Memorial Day Weekend to knock out the remaining projects so we could get carpets shampooed, house staged, and listed. 4 months… it took 4 MONTHS.

But back to the camper. I like my stuff. It brings me joy. My husband? He’s a minimalist (unless it comes to his tools). So It’s been very difficult for me to whittle down all 4 closets of clothes in the house to one tiny closet space, 4 drawers, and 2 cabinets in the camper. I left him some space too. But here’s the thing – he travels Monday-Friday for work, I’m going to be IN the camper the whole week if I’m not on the road… so I need more space for my stuff! I separated stuff into bins, so in the camper’s under-storage there’s Missy Swim, Missy Scuba, Missy Summer all labeled. AND we were able to fit Missy’s Kayak through the middle! Win!

The camper kept getting heavier and heavier and I was not allowed to bring as many mugs, tumblers, water bottles, etc. as I wanted. I love cups. Husband sees cups all the same – no matter what type it is. But who wants to drink water out of a coffee mug?! weirdo.

So we’re packing, and unpacking, and taking things to storage, and landscaping, and painting, and building stairs, and mopping floors, and resealing the driveway. And then the bright idea comes that we should just buy one of those 40 ft. shipping containers as hubby’s parents have graciously offered for us to park the camper on their land in Tennessee for a while until we find what we want. Great! So now the packing gets into full swing, rest of the furniture that was up on Marketplace gets loaded and stored 3.5 hours away.

After multiple trips with covered trailers, trucks, and emptying the storage unit. We were finally ready to LIST the house! I will say, the last 3 days at the house were balls to the wall crazy. We both took off the end of the week and I had just returned that Wednesday Morning from a work trip (at 1am mind you), slept till 10a and then we got up to finish house projects… Well that went until 1am Thursday morning. A quick nap… because the alarm went off at 5:30a, loaded us into the truck pulling a small trailer up to storage 3.5 hours, with a stop at hubby’s dad’s house, the grandparents house to drop the dog, and then to storage. So it was more like 5 hours. We unloaded and turned right back around to load up the remaining items from the shed and drove BACK to Asheville 2 hours to arrive at a hotel by 2am and shower/sleep. 5:30am alarm Friday we drove the remaining hour & 20 mins to storage, unloaded – wrapped up the car, and stopped back at Mamaw’s for breakfast before heading back to the house. We still had last minute projects and thankfully a friend showed up that evening to help. So another late night with last minute cleaning (fridge, freezer, vacuuming, final touches) meant bed around 1am.

We expected to get up early again Saturday morning, hook up the trailer and haul off by 6am but we didn’t quite get everything finished the night before so we were about 4 hours behind. We finally got on the road to VA where we would park the camper outside my parents house in their neighborhood for a week and finish our trek to NY for the summer. It’s important to note that the town code we read for VA states that campers can be parked in residential areas for a maximum 10 days. Remember that for later…..

A slight snafu in a gas station with a tight turn and only being able to go 65mph on the highway turned our 5 hour 40 minute drive into 7 hours. But we were SO glad to finally be in a comfortable place. Hubby pulls the camper while I follow behind with a rental U-Haul filled with leftover goodies to take to my sister, and a very anxious kitty traveler. It’s a family affair!

We finally arrive, park, setup, and unload the small U-Haul – returning it was a debacle when one place says 24 hour drop off but then has a “no drop-off after hours, you will be towed” so then having to search for another one 45 mins away… but all seems well.

Some neighbors just can’t mind their own business… We receive a knock at the door on Monday evening from a local police officer who asks if this is our camper… umm yeah, it’s parked in front of our house…. and says there’s been a complaint about it. He asks when it arrived, and we tell him it’ll be gone by Saturday (literally 1 week). He repeats 3 times that “it is parked legally, and can be there for up to 10 days.” He just asks that we pull the bump out that’s hanging over the sidewalk by 6 inches back in so there’s no overhang (mind you, this bump out is hosting the cat’s litterbox, water & food since momma is allergic to cats). We say no problem, and he’s on his way to explain to the complainers that the camper is allowed to be there.

Well that didn’t last long – Tuesday evening the same officer comes BACK to the house because the complainer has complained AGAIN – and now he says the town lawyer has interpreted the very vague code to include a tag-along camper in the “motorhome” category and we can only have it parked there for 24 hours. Cue the search for a place to park the Marshmallow for the next few days nearby, transferring fridge/freezer contents to mom’s garage fridge (because we were plugged in), hiding the cat in mom’s basement bathroom, and making sure everything inside was secure for a move… We were seriously contemplating pulling it to Walmart for 24 hours and bringing it back for 24 hours just to piss off the complainer. Every 24 hours it resets right?! I want to argue the “very vague code” and say if it’s open to interpretation, then why do I have to move it? But I was shot down and now it’s time for me to figure out how to hook up, and pull this behemoth for the first time ever. Hubby is already headed to Canada for work… First time for everything right?!

Tangent/side quest story – we ended up switching trucks to pull the camper. On March 23rd we had just completed another trip up to TN for storage unloading, and unhooked the small trailer from the Ford. We had some supper, and I suggested we take the truck to the shop for some small upgrades hubby wanted on it. For some odd reason we can’t figure out, the truck would not start… So we had the fun challenge of towing an F-250 Super Duty with a Toyota Tacoma a few miles down the road to the mechanic’s shop. It’s now June 18th… THEY STILL HAVE NOT LOOKED AT THE DANG TRUCK. So we went into crisis mode of “how the heck are we going to pull this camper?!” Thankfully, hubby’s dad offered us the use of his old F-350 Super Duty, and so here we are.

Since we’re at my parent’s home that they’ve lived in for the last 30 years, and they’re both retired, mom called around to some friends to find a parking spot, and dad helped me back up the truck/hook up the camper. Did I mention that this F-350 has no backup camera, and has a toolbox blocking the view of half of the bed? I’m reversing blind towards the camper’s gooseneck hitch and praying I’m sort-of close. To dad’s and my surprise, I only had to try it twice! I was about an inch off the first time so that brought some confidence! I had also mentioned to hubby that there was no way I was ever going to pull the camper by myself, I’ve driven the Redskins RV way back when we started Training Camp in Richmond… but that was 10+ years ago, I’ve never pulled anything that was 40+ ft. attached to a truck!

No time like the present to get over your nerves and pull a 13,000+ lb trailer for the first time… Nobody else was going to do it. I will say, I was pretty proud of myself to get it hooked up, and SLOOOOOOOWLY down the road. I only clipped 2 curbs (barely) on right turns. Not bad for a city girl!

So here we are… half way through the first week of pulling our camper and it’s parked at a local church (with a sign of approval for parking in the window). We have a call in to Camping World in Cicero, NY for a few diagnostic checks before we end our first journey in Alexandria Bay for the summer. The awning motor went out, so hubby will have to work on that before we take off as it’s the only thing actually holding the awning closed to to the camper. We’d like to check out why one of the back wheels is tilted in at the top, there’s a little dent/scrape in the aluminum by the wheel well due to our gas station snafu, and the original cracking we saw in the entertainment center wood has gotten worse with this pull (which could be a frame issue).

Because hubby was not allowed into Canada for work (somebody from his company didn’t put in the work permit….. again), he drove to Indiana instead. Which coincidentally meant he was 8 minutes away from the Keystone Corporate office (the manufacturer of our camper)! So he stopped in to ask some questions and show some photos – we’ll see what comes of that on Saturday when we get to Cicero.

One more thing to add – since leaving NC on Saturday with our house staged and the for sale sign in the yard…. Somebody hit our mailbox AND trash cans and continued driving… Great. Our neighbors called to tell us what happened and they thankfully picked up the trash for us as we were scheduled to have a showing on Wednesday the 18th and wouldn’t be able to get back down before then. Add it to the list of things to finalize on hubby’s trip next week back to Charlotte… I’d love to catch a break soon!