When the Tiny Home financing began taking much longer than we initially expected, we began searching for our 'Plan B'. It was originally Justice's idea to consider a truck camper. I instantly rejected it. I remember telling him that less than 100 square feet was IMPOSSIBLE and too drastic... Literally not even two weeks after, we drove to Texas to buy this babe. *insert hand to forehead & sigh*
During those two weeks, we drove all over Florida to at least float the idea of an RV. Justice somehow got me to walk into a few truck campers. They happened to be all Lances that included every bell and whistle. Even though the slide outs were impressive, I absolutely hated the fact that they all required us to remove the tailgate of our brand new truck. So Justice did some digging around to find a few custom truck camper builders. Apparently slide in truck campers are pretty big in the overlanding scene, but the builders were either only focused on building for smaller trucks or were unaesthetically designed. I was actually the one who stumbled onto Livin' Lite's Camplite truck camper. Then we quickly learned they were a discontinued RV. *insert hand to forehead & sigh AGAIN*
At this point, it was beginning to feel like nothing was going to workout. I was ready to throw in the towel, but then, Justice found one even with the right color scheme! *happy dance* The only catch, it was in Texas and the shipping costs would be crazy. Justice was currently working on a project that only allowed him time home on the weekends. This meant packing up the truck alone, grabbing Justice from the airport Friday night, and making the 30 hour around trip drive with one of the three dogs and Odin(our two year old son). We had to be back Sunday night so Justice could catch his 3am flight on Monday.
Through being exhausted from flying/driving and crazy fog, we somehow arrived before our 1pm appointment. We grabbed some lunch and headed back to Amazing RV's. They installed the hardware while Odin napped and Justice signed all the paperwork. The guys at Amazing RVs, were truly... well, amazing! This family owned and operated dealer worked around our crazy time constraint and really did take care of us. Thank you!
Once the camper was loaded in we shut our tailgate and shagged ass back to Florida. We drove until it got dark. Since we were already sleep deprived we decided to stop at a Walmart in Baton Rouge, LA and break in the camper. Odin's portable crib fit perfectly on top of the flip up bed bench. The bench even had enough room for our Malamute mix, Oso to curl up next to the crib. It was a bit chilly outside, but we all slept surprisingly fine.
The next morning we woke up, changed our clothes, freshened up, walked the dog, grabbed some lattes from CC's Coffee House, and ate our breakfast on the road. The drive was long, but tolerable. We had to make a few extra stops than we originally anticipated since we ran through our DEF tank. Long story short, we pulled into our driveway around 9pm. It wasn't ideal to unload the camper in the dark and we definitely do not recommend it, but since Justice was leaving in a few hours it had to be done. The next morning I was informed of all the learning curves Justice had gone through, but that's for another post and not my story to tell.
"She wasn't bored just restless between adventures" - Atticus