Part 1 – Let’s start at the very beginning…

We actually purchased our first tent in 2015, so not that long ago. We did some trips, but it was always a pain to set it up and we lost interest a few years later. I personally grew up camping. I remember our old huge canvas tent, you know the ones that everyone had back 30 years ago. Two large rooms, we all slept in one room and the other room was for eating etc. etc. I fondly remember many of our camping trips as a kid. I am the youngest of 4, so unfortunately I don’t remember as many of the trips as my older siblings, I have seen the photos though and they always looked like amazing adventures.

Last year when the pandemic hit, we have just had our car die. One thing to understand about me is I haven’t had much luck with cars. Mind you, we have bought some cheapies over the last few years and that never helps. Anyway, we didn’t have a car when the pandemic hit, however a good friend of ours, who is American living in Australia had returned home and got stuck there. So his car was sitting at someone’s house. He let us use it till we could get our own. It was a Ford Ranger 4WD and while I had thought about getting a 4WD, they where out of our price range at the time. Driving his got us interested in owning one again.

When the pandemic hit, our government went into overdrive to keep the economy going, especially for all the business’ affected by COVID, mine included. Thankfully it didn’t send me under. The good thing about my business is I have low overheads, so was able to stay afloat with the assistance from the government.

During this time we actually had to option to get a new car (new to us) and we finally had enough money to get a decent one and we decided it was time to get a 4WD, so we hunted around and found our pride and joy, a 2009 Mitsubishi Pajero VRX. I love this car, it handles like a smaller car, but is a warrior off-road as well. The Pajero’s don’t get the respect they deserve, everyone goes on about their Landcruisers and Prado’s. I’ve driven them, but they don’t hold a candle to the Pajero IMO. The Prado’s handle like a big truck, the Pajero handles like a car and both will go anywhere off-road. Plus the Pajero’s just look better and are better equiped.

I’ve added some kit to it, roof racks, awning, better stereo, UHF. But nothing too fancy, no lift or anything like that. Still want to keep it in the garage.

Anyway, this is not about 4WDs, this is about camping. Just before we got our Paj, we also decided to get a camper trailer. We wanted to get back into camping, but didn’t want a tent and wanted a comfortable bed to sleep on. So a camper trailer was the way to go.

We decided to buy second hand to keep the costs down in case we found we didn’t like it. We picked up an ok one for $2k. It had an OzTrail tent on the top and it was was easy to setup as it wasn’t too large. This appealed to us.

Since we got it last May, we have done a few mods to it. Including getting a custom kitchen built for it, I’ve added gas struts to the lid as it was ridiculously heavy after we put in an inner-spring mattress. Added a water tank and some other electrical work. We love our trailer, but it has one inherent problem. It’s too small (as you can see by our photos). Once you open it, you are cramped in there, especially when we have our doggo with us. While we can do it, it just makes it a tiny less enjoyable.

We have done a few trips in it already and like I said, we do love it. But have decided that it’s just too small.

We played around with a few ideas. Replacing the tent for a bigger one was one we looked at for awhile. But in the end, it came down to one thing. Easy of setup. We really want to do longer trips with our camper and a soft floor camper is a pain to setup if we are staying for one night. Plus, our trailer is old and I just don’t think it would handle a long trip. It’s not an off-road camper. It’s just not built for what we want to do.

So, the next thing to do. lookout our options for what to do next.

That will be the next topic of my next blog post.

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