bama_ed
It's kind of fun to do the impossible-Walt Disney
- Joined
- Sep 23, 2004
Today has been a busy day!
I travelled to Atlanta early in the AM and tonight I brought home my new camper.
In the open Trip Report which is just concluding, I had alluded to the fact that I was exploring options. Poster conner2002 picked up on that. Our Jayco popup had been wonderful for us for 10 years (175 nights of camping) but our needs were changing.
1. It's too dang heavy. It was a 12 foot box with a slide out dinette and a weight of over 3300 pounds. Since I store it in my unfinished basement through the garage door, I needed my two boys to help me roll it out (not hard) and then to roll it back in after a trip (that was the hard part). The driveway near the house has a very slight incline and those of you who remember your Law of Sine from high screwel (Scupper probably has it and Cosine and Tangents nailed) know that when you have that much weight going up hill working against gravity, it's a workout.
But my boys are in college now and will soon fly the coop (or get booted off the Bama Ed payroll
) so we were using it less and less each year.
2. It was basically a 3-season camper. We used our popup for spring-summer-fall trips but the winter saw it in the garage resting comfortably never having needed to be winterized. I know that there are things you can do with the propane heater, heated blankets, heated mattress coveres, Reflectix, Popup Gizmos, etc. but it was a lot of work. Oddly though, late December through New Years Week is when I can take a week or two of vacation and it would have been nice to use the camper. I'd like to take it to the beach (avg highs in the 60s, lows about 40) during the last week of December to watch some bowl games on tv, eat some seafood, and walk on the beach with DW. So I needed something with better insulation value and cold weather characteristics.
3. I want to do more grab-and-go with one night stayovers. DW and I would like to travel a bit more and when pulling the popup we either did a hotel stay ($$$ if we wanted to drive longer) or a KOA/state park for overnights because we needed to unhook from the car to slide out the bunks losing travel time. DW would like to take a trip up to New England and I want to go out West and the option of a Flying J or a WalMart or a Highway Rest Area would be a nice option to use sometime. But you can't do it realistically in a popup.
Plus we know how we want to travel after 10 years. We are state park/Fort campers. We don't want to haul a trailer to a rural piece of property beside a lake to dry camp. But we do want to grab-and-go.
We have a good Suburban to pull with and a garage for storage. My yard is not level and I didn't want to pay for storage. We will be empty nesters in two years
.
Okay, enough already.
I bought a 2014 Aliner Expedition. And I got a hell of a deal on it. More on that later.
Here are the going home pix from today.
I hope you don't mind me sharing my excitement. It weighs over 1,000 pounds less than my popup and me and DW pushed it into the garage tonight. Once I put my Trailer Valet on it I can crank it in and DW can simply spot me. The hard foam walls provide better insulation for cold weather camping. I got the Kool Kat Heat Pump for AC and heat (11,000 BTU) which is better here down south than the little 5k AC unit that is the other option. I need no furnace since I have the Heat Pump and a little ceramic heater will do well inside. Plus when overnighting it's literally a 30 second setup so I see more one night stays at WalMart, Flying J, etc in my future.
We got the option with the sofa that converts to a bed because me and DW NEED two sitting places. Our popup had only a dinette to sit at, no couch or gaucho. DW tends to spread out her newspaper when reading it
leaving little room for me and my Sudoku books. So here are the inside pix (it's a 14 foot box) plus some at-home pix.
The bike receiver is no longer standard but I had them weld one on and they did a hell of a beefy job. Nice heavy fillets all around.
I'm going to call/write and ask/buy a door to cover the toilet.
LATE EDIT: Here is the picture of the cassette toilet/microwave above but I installed a free door the factory sent me upon request so I didn't have to look at the toilet all the time.
There's a flip-up extension on the toilet/cabinet side as well.
The Kool Kat ate up some storage under the sofa/bed but I'd rather have an AC that will work at the beach in August. So this camper fits our needs but everybody's needs are different.
About my deal. I got a great rate which was 21% under what Danny's Campers would price it at and 35% under the MSRP (Aliners typically don't get discounted much and hold their residual value well). Why was it a deal? The manufacturer made a mistake and left off the hot water heater. That's all. When I walked through the unit last month I laughed at the sales guy and said, "In 10 years I've never lit my hot water heater in my popup". We always camp at state parks/Fort where they have shower houses. We wash our dishes in cold water with soap suds. So the loss of a hot water heater was no biggie to me. But due to the screw up the manufacturer was eating part of the discount offered by the dealer to move it off the lot. If I want hot water, I'll buy a tea kettle.
So I'm excited. Guess I better book a stay for next year at the Fort, huh?
Bama Ed
I travelled to Atlanta early in the AM and tonight I brought home my new camper.
In the open Trip Report which is just concluding, I had alluded to the fact that I was exploring options. Poster conner2002 picked up on that. Our Jayco popup had been wonderful for us for 10 years (175 nights of camping) but our needs were changing.
1. It's too dang heavy. It was a 12 foot box with a slide out dinette and a weight of over 3300 pounds. Since I store it in my unfinished basement through the garage door, I needed my two boys to help me roll it out (not hard) and then to roll it back in after a trip (that was the hard part). The driveway near the house has a very slight incline and those of you who remember your Law of Sine from high screwel (Scupper probably has it and Cosine and Tangents nailed) know that when you have that much weight going up hill working against gravity, it's a workout.
But my boys are in college now and will soon fly the coop (or get booted off the Bama Ed payroll
) so we were using it less and less each year.2. It was basically a 3-season camper. We used our popup for spring-summer-fall trips but the winter saw it in the garage resting comfortably never having needed to be winterized. I know that there are things you can do with the propane heater, heated blankets, heated mattress coveres, Reflectix, Popup Gizmos, etc. but it was a lot of work. Oddly though, late December through New Years Week is when I can take a week or two of vacation and it would have been nice to use the camper. I'd like to take it to the beach (avg highs in the 60s, lows about 40) during the last week of December to watch some bowl games on tv, eat some seafood, and walk on the beach with DW. So I needed something with better insulation value and cold weather characteristics.
3. I want to do more grab-and-go with one night stayovers. DW and I would like to travel a bit more and when pulling the popup we either did a hotel stay ($$$ if we wanted to drive longer) or a KOA/state park for overnights because we needed to unhook from the car to slide out the bunks losing travel time. DW would like to take a trip up to New England and I want to go out West and the option of a Flying J or a WalMart or a Highway Rest Area would be a nice option to use sometime. But you can't do it realistically in a popup.
Plus we know how we want to travel after 10 years. We are state park/Fort campers. We don't want to haul a trailer to a rural piece of property beside a lake to dry camp. But we do want to grab-and-go.
We have a good Suburban to pull with and a garage for storage. My yard is not level and I didn't want to pay for storage. We will be empty nesters in two years
.Okay, enough already.
I bought a 2014 Aliner Expedition. And I got a hell of a deal on it. More on that later.
Here are the going home pix from today.
I hope you don't mind me sharing my excitement. It weighs over 1,000 pounds less than my popup and me and DW pushed it into the garage tonight. Once I put my Trailer Valet on it I can crank it in and DW can simply spot me. The hard foam walls provide better insulation for cold weather camping. I got the Kool Kat Heat Pump for AC and heat (11,000 BTU) which is better here down south than the little 5k AC unit that is the other option. I need no furnace since I have the Heat Pump and a little ceramic heater will do well inside. Plus when overnighting it's literally a 30 second setup so I see more one night stays at WalMart, Flying J, etc in my future.
We got the option with the sofa that converts to a bed because me and DW NEED two sitting places. Our popup had only a dinette to sit at, no couch or gaucho. DW tends to spread out her newspaper when reading it
leaving little room for me and my Sudoku books. So here are the inside pix (it's a 14 foot box) plus some at-home pix.
The bike receiver is no longer standard but I had them weld one on and they did a hell of a beefy job. Nice heavy fillets all around.
I'm going to call/write and ask/buy a door to cover the toilet.
LATE EDIT: Here is the picture of the cassette toilet/microwave above but I installed a free door the factory sent me upon request so I didn't have to look at the toilet all the time.
There's a flip-up extension on the toilet/cabinet side as well.
The Kool Kat ate up some storage under the sofa/bed but I'd rather have an AC that will work at the beach in August. So this camper fits our needs but everybody's needs are different.
About my deal. I got a great rate which was 21% under what Danny's Campers would price it at and 35% under the MSRP (Aliners typically don't get discounted much and hold their residual value well). Why was it a deal? The manufacturer made a mistake and left off the hot water heater. That's all. When I walked through the unit last month I laughed at the sales guy and said, "In 10 years I've never lit my hot water heater in my popup". We always camp at state parks/Fort where they have shower houses. We wash our dishes in cold water with soap suds. So the loss of a hot water heater was no biggie to me. But due to the screw up the manufacturer was eating part of the discount offered by the dealer to move it off the lot. If I want hot water, I'll buy a tea kettle.
So I'm excited. Guess I better book a stay for next year at the Fort, huh?
Bama Ed
)
