Redneck Camping

This weekend was spent at home. L wanted to start readying the truck camper for his and our oldest son J's upcoming hunting trip. As I looked at the truck camper, it got me thinking of the last trip that involved me actually inside that camper. A few years ago L decided that rather than pull our 5th wheel down to Texas to visit his father for a vacation, we would simply take his truck camper to allow for more people to be able to help drive. Not only did the 5 of us make the trip (me and L and our 3 sons) but L's sister came along as well. We have a single cab truck so at any given time there were 4 people in the truck camper.

We were heading down to spend Christmas with my father in law and happened to pick the evening of my company Christmas party to leave. We came up with the plan that L and I would attend my party and his sister S would meet us outside of the entertainment complex at a pre determined time with the truck and camper and we would leave from there. My Christmas party is always held at a very swanky venue which causes us to have to dress up for the event. As the time drew near for us to leave, many of the people that work with me started looking out the windows, watching for the Clampett mobile to pull up and for us to make our exit. L's sister called us on our cell phone to tell us that she was getting close, we made our get away just as she was pulling into a no parking spot. We both quickly jumped into the truck, sister in law jumped in the back with the boys (in the camper)and took off. Because of how I was dressed I was forced to change out of my Holiday outfit into my sweats in the cab of the truck. This led to a few truckers having a show they didn't bargain for as I wrestled out of a cocktail dress and nylons and into my sweat suit but I decided to make myself feel better by reminding myself that I would never see them again (that is until we stopped for gas and one of the trucks pulled into the same station).

Over the course of the next 26 hours we all took turns driving or riding in the front or sleeping/watching movies in the camper. It was during my last turn to be up in the bed above the cab of the truck that trouble struck. As I was drifting off to sleep, I suddenly started hearing the distinct sound of metal pinging against metal. I asked the boys who all happened to be in the back with me if they heard the noise and they all said no. After many sessions of "shushing" to get them to really listen they all agreed that something sounded kind of strange. We had two way radios both in the cab of the truck and in the camper so I two wayed L to let him know of my growing concern for the funny "pinging" noise that I was hearing. By this time it was raining quite hard outside and he convinced me that what I was hearing was hail hitting the camper roof. I wasn't completely convinced and jokingly told the boys that if the front of the camper came off to make sure they grabbed their Momma by the foot before she rolled onto the hood of the truck. We all laughed and shortly after that arrived at my father in laws home. It was nearly midnight so we just grabbed our gear and headed into his home to sleep for the night.

In the morning we got up to go to breakfast and planned on taking our truck so that we could all ride together. When we approached the truck we quickly realized that the ping, ping, ping I had heard for the last 4 hours of our trip was actually the rivets popping out of the metal in the top of the camper!

At this point I was fairly convinced that the boys and I would be making our way home on an airplane while L and his sister would drive the truck home since there was no way we could ride back there. Well, my Mr. McGyver had a different idea. McGyver and McGyver Senior (his dad) put their heads together, shoo'ed us all away for a few hours and "fixed" the camper. We returned to find a 2x4 drilled into the bottom of the camper that rests on the truck cab, metal strips climbing up each side of the front of the camper that were riveted into the sides of the camper to hold it and another 2x4 on the top of the camper that had the ends of the metal riveted into it for support. If I ever get my pictures to upload onto this site I will post a pic for your viewing pleasure.

Imagine traveling half way across the country to get back home in this contraption. It stayed together-although I refused to allow anyone to ride up in the top bed of the camper all the way home. We received many honks, witnessed carloads of people in hysterical laughing fits as they drove by us and watched one car almost get into an accident as the driver craned his neck too far trying to watch us instead of the road.

That was my one and only time of Redneck camping, next time we want to make that trip-I think I'll fly.