Like many people, my family and I have enjoyed camping over the years. We recently sold the fifth wheel camper that we’ve had for the last 12 years. The camper was beginning to show some signs of age, had a little bit of water damage due to a leak, and we no longer needed one quite that big. So, we decided it was time to sell it and look for a new, smaller one. It didn’t take long to find a buyer—we were fair about the price, and it was still a pretty nice camper, despite its age. As I watched the new buyer pull it out of my yard, I couldn’t help but feel a little sad. It was the third camper that we’ve owned, and we had owned it longer than any other. I basically watched my children grow up in this camper, so it was a little more special to me than the others. We have so many good memories of times spent in the camper. It’s what we lived in every year at the county fair when our kids showed their animals, and where I hugged my daughter as she cried the night her market hog was sold at auction. It’s where my son got in trouble for sneaking beer when he was a teenager (I guess that doesn’t count as a “good” memory). It was our home at Jamboree in the Hills, several Nascar races, and it even made a couple of trips to the beach. We also took many, many camping trips in it, and it provided my husband with shelter and a place to stay when he was working out of town.
Maybe what they say is true — “home is where the heart is”, and it doesn’t really matter if it’s your permanent home, or a home on wheels. We thought we didn’t want another camper, but then we started reminiscing about all of the good times we’ve had in years past and decided we couldn’t give up camping completely just yet. After all, we have five grandsons to make new camping memories with.
;)
