Time flies when you are having fun. The old saying we have
heard for years on end has proven itself again. It has been years since I last
put an entry on this blog. I am at a new place in life and we (not I) are
starting another adventure. The urge to write bug has bitten again due to more
than one reason. Let me briefly fill you in on my whirlwind life the last four
years and catch you up.
The last you knew my camper had been damaged in a hailstorm,
repaired and returned to service. In the fall of 2011 I began dating a young
lady who caught my eye and we hit it off. Debbie is a teacher and in the summer
of 2012 we had the opportunity to take a six-week vacation, meeting up with
family in Orlando for a week of fun. We had half heartedly looked at 5th
wheel campers a while and one day we stumbled upon an immaculate 2006 Keystone Laredo.
We traded the 1998 Lance truck camper for the Laredo and took to traveling. We went
straight to the east coast, spent some time on the Space Coast and St.
Augustine, Orlando, eventually making our way to Pensacola for a week of fun.
In August of 2012 I started college at Kansas State University in Salina,
Kansas. I lived at the KOA in the Laredo and was quite content. I commuted home
every other weekend, Debbie commuted from Kansas City. We traded weekends
making the 400 mile round trip. In June of 2013 we were married. I took the
camper and went to Lincoln, Nebraska for 10 weeks for an internship over the
summer. Debbie came with me. In May of 2014 we bought a home, I finished my program at K-State
and came home to Kansas City and went to work. We decided to sell the Laredo in
June of 2014 rather than let it sit and rot as we paid storage on it. Extended
travels were not in our near future.
We never wanted to sell the
Laredo but logistically and economically it made no sense to keep it. Debbie
often perused the Craigslist ads and began hinting that maybe a truck camper
was what we needed. It could stay on the truck all the times in the driveway.
We could use it for quick getaways on the weekends. We could also slip down to
a nearby lake and campground where we have a pontoon boat in a marina slip and
spend the day and night when the fish were biting. She was planting seeds; I
was skeptical. One day she found one she seriously wanted to look at. We drove
40 miles to look at a Lance on an RV lot after the dealer told us it was still
there. As we drove in a couple was digging around in it, they were the new owners. A little more searching craigslist ads turned up this unit in Valley Falls, Kansas. We made the two hour journey to see it and negotiated what we feel was an excellent deal.
This 2002 Lance 1030 is sweet, clean little unit with a two
panel solar set up and electric jacks. Those two things I did not have on my
older Lance. It is no longer I, but we and we are Happy Kansas Campers again.
