by Roberta Velyn

Created on: April 21, 2008   Last Updated: August 26, 2008

Of my own sanity there is no question (except perhaps in regard to staying married). My husband's sanity, however, (let's call him John) seems to be diminishing in inverse proportion to the number of gray hairs on his head.

John has decided that when he retires we will travel. In order to make our travels economical and convenient, we must have the ideal combination of RV and toys for each sort of trip that we might undertake. In preparation for this, he has been buying campers, trucks and trailers for a number of years and is now looking at scooters.

When we met fifteen years ago, John owned a small tow trailer as well as a camper van with a comfortable fold-out couch and an overhead bunk. I have three children and his youngest holidayed with us, so the combination was sufficient for our needs, but John didn't like the fact that we both had to drive to our camping destinations. So he went shopping for a bigger trailer and decided to buy a fifth-wheel, for ease of hook-up. This served us well in combination with a good-sized tent, but John soon decided that he could do better, so we started shopping for a different trailer and agreed on the features that would be necessary to improve on our current holiday accommodation.

One spring day John had a meeting in a neighboring city and arrived home with a new trailer in tow. He was as eager as a child with a new toy, so I obligingly went out for a tour of the new acquisition. John was quite upset when I pointed out that the new trailer had none of the features we were looking for, and was, in fact, significantly inferior in amenities to the one he had sold.

We didn't camp much for the next few years, so John decided to start looking for a better trailer. He bought a new RV Trader magazine every week, and we drove far and wide to examine trailers, 5th wheels, and camper vans, both new and used. We found a camper van, somewhat larger than the one he'd owned when we first met, and he had to have it, so we brought it home. Several years later we sold it, having never spent a night in it.

Shortly thereafter, John located a used truck camper that he was sure was exactly what we needed. He bought it and we made a couple of trips in it, discovering that the mattress was definitely not up to snuff. If we lay very still we could count the number of springs poking through the scanty padding at various points on our bodies. In addition, an awkward storage compartment encroached on the sleeping area, making the bed too short for us.

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