- in which Michael Jarmer begins a new blog series;
- in which Michael Jarmer provides a brief history of his life as a camper;
- in which his somewhat checkered RV history is revealed;
- in which an experience camping solo at Champoeg State Park is described;
- in which funny and archaic subtitles are used to arouse reader interest in the following blog post.
Here’s an idea, I said to myself: I’ll write a series of travel logs as I journey out into the world with my new travel trailer, a T@B, made by the folks at Little Guy, recently purchased and out just this last week on its maiden voyage to Champoeg State Park (pronounced Champooey) in the lovely Willamette Valley right here in Oregon.
Here’s a picture of my new baby right before it left the showroom.
This could be interesting, or not. Time will tell. It’s worth a try. First, a bit of background.
I grew up camping with my parents and extended family mostly all around the state of Oregon with a few excursions into Washington and California. My folks were trailer campers and as I recall, all through my childhood and into my early adult years, it was my family’s tradition to make several camping trips a year beginning late spring and into September. These trips as a family and with friends stand out as being some of the most cherished experiences of my young life. I loved the adventure of it, the way it exposed me to the natural world beyond suburbia, the various abundances of camp experience: riding in my uncle’s boat, fishing, crabbing, hiking, biking, beaching, site-seeing, the community of the camp-fire, and the coziness of the trailer or the tent, or, as I became a teenager and always had a friend along, the back cabin of my Dad’s truck. Camping was huge. And as a newlywed, in my early twenties, camping was almost killed for me forever after I took my wife and my dog on a tent-camping trip beset with nightmare: bad weather, sick spouse, spastic dog, tiny tent, our first serious marital dispute–resulting in a silent and angry two and half hour car ride home at 3 o’clock in the morning. This was the key factor, but other things as well kept me from camping: mostly, a commitment to finishing college, finding a job, finding some kind of economic security, and then the demands of working and keeping up with the needs of a house, our first foray into homeownership–not to mention the still serious effort to play music as much as we possibly could, searching for that illusive and perhaps illusory big break all through the end of the eighties and the nineties. We were too busy to even think about camping.
Fast forward to 2001. It took 15 years to convince my wife to camp with me again–and the inspiration came with our first RV, a Coleman tent trailer. It kept us busy and happily camping for four or five years, but with the arrival of our son in 2005 and a new, very serious commitment and demand on our attention, some early and unhappy camping trips with an infant, and the need to make some money to make up the short-fall of the extra income lost to full-time parenting, we sold that little trailer to a Canadian and watched it ride off into the sunset. It turned out to be the first of two very similar experiences over the next five years. I was unhappy selling the trailer, but in my heart of hearts I had a very selfish reason for wanting it to go away: I had my eyes and my heart set on bigger and better fish–an Airstream 16 foot Bambi International. It would take three more years of embarrassingly obsessive plots and maneuvers before that little dream would come true. And it did. And we had two and a half years of joy in an Airstream before, again, a shift in the financial winds on several simultaneous fronts forced our hand: the Airstream had to go! I really mourned that loss. I went on and on about it for years. And perhaps, when I was finally ready to do the whole RV dance once again, I would have happily gone back to the Airstream if I could find one that I could afford, but we sold the tow vehicle that pulled the 16 footer and ended up about a year later with a mini-van with a significantly lower tow capacity. All of this is just to say that if we were to purchase a new trailer, it would have to be light weight; it would have to be tiny.
Here my son and I are after the “red carpet” walk-through before towing home the T@B, a truly light weight trailer, clocking in at about 1900 pounds:
So, within a week of bringing the trailer home, and anticipating two weeks off for the holiday vacation, I booked myself a two night stay at a local and nearby favorite camping destination, Champoeg State Park. I chose on this first expedition to go it alone. The weather would not likely be good; my son, without lots of outdoor activity, would be bored; and my dear wife had working responsibilities at home. And I may as well come clean about this now: as excited as I am about camping with my little family, I will likely, as I did with the Airstream and the Coleman before, use the trailer as a writing retreat on wheels and will often be alone.
I used this little excursion to get to know my trailer, most of all. I did do a little writing and some reading of things I have written with an eye to finishing a draft of a novella and starting the revision process. I listened to a lot of music (not, however, in continuation of the A-Z listening blog project). I got a visit from my brother for a few hours (Champoeg State Park is close to where we both live). And in between downpours, sometimes torrential downpours, I walked. I took pictures in the day of soggy fields and raging muddy streams on the verge of flooding. I took pictures of myself and my hat. And I looked at the moon peaking through clouds. It was a lovely and successful first trip. I leave you with some photographic evidence of this first trip and hope to write another installment in a month’s time.
michael jarmer 