Kylee DeBock / DeBock Harvesting
It has been awhile since I have done a post and so this one could be a little long but try and stick with me!
When we returned home in October, we decided we were going to sell our campers.
Our camper was a 2011 and we’ve owned it 10 years. Our hired hand camper was a 1998 which we purchased from fellow harvesters. It had been on the harvest trail its whole life! Now using your camper every other weekend for nearly 25 years is one thing but staying in your camper for 6-8 months a year (every single year), things start to wear even when taken care of well like we do! With that being said, it was time to upgrade.
I cleaned out my camper and put her on the market! Holy cow, I can’t believe how much stuff we had in there! It only took about three weeks to sell mine and the hired hand camper went fairly quickly too!
SO LET THE FUN BEGIN!
I really enjoyed looking at all the campers online finding out which floorplans we liked and picking out features we had to have like a washer/dryer, big fridge, two bedrooms and so on and so forth. Picking out a camper is a big decision, much like buying a house. Let’s face it, my camper is my house for at least 6 months.
Fast forward a few months. We went and looked at a camper in Alva. The floorplan looked great and Alva’s only an hour and a half away, so off we went. There were only a few pictures posted with the ad and when we got there I understand why, it was filthy! I opened one drawer and there were Mud Dobber nests inside and the carpet was beyond cleaning!
Fast forward again a few more weeks and we drove to Nowata. This was a bit further being five hours away but we went anyway. This was a really nice camper! It even had two full bathrooms, which would be really nice! But after measuring the bunk beds, they were smaller than what were in my old camper. So we decided we better not get this one since the kids are still growing!
Fast forward a few more weeks and we went to Oklahoma City, so only a few hour’s drive. We purchased the camper and headed home. Usually after a big purchase you are all giddy! Well, all the way home I was sick to my stomach. I just wasn’t sure we’d made the right decision.
I didn’t want to move anything into it so I just let it sit there for about a month. I posted it on some Facebook “for sale” pages but didn’t get any hits so I decided I would take it to a consignment lot in Ft. Worth.
I purchased the camper on November 20th and I took it to the dealership on December 28th. It sat on the lot until February. I started receiving calls on it so I’d just refer them to the consignment dealership but they were all from my area, not Ft. Worth.
So, Dillon decided we needed to go pick it up and sell it ourselves. So, back to Texas we went. On the way down, we stopped in Oklahoma City to look at another camper. It was a toy hauler, but we were just going to make the “garage” the second bedroom. Let’s just say it was “very lived in”! So we passed and headed on to Texas to pick up my camper.
We liked the floor plan of the toy hauler so, on our long journey, I googled the model and low and behold I found one in Crowley, Texas, which was 30 minutes from were I had to go to pick up my camper. I called and set up a time to look that day.
This camper is showroom floor clean. This man was a neat freak! He even followed us around with a dust cloth and cleaned everything we touched! It was perfect! We told him we’d take it but obviously we couldn’t take it home right then because we were already pulling my other camper home from the dealership. We told him we would leave him a check but he didn’t want to do a personal check, which is understandable these days! But we left there thinking we had a new “home”. But, within three hours, the man called me back and said the people that looked at it after we did ended up purchasing it. So let the hunt continue!
I looked some more and found a few more that I liked but Dillon was stuck on the Momentum floorplan so I continued to look! I can find them but they are super far away and some were just priced too high. So, let the search continue some more!
One afternoon, I am eating lunch and decide to google the model number again and wouldn’t you know just that morning one was posted in OKLAHOMA CITY!! I called and told them we’d be there to look tomorrow!
We got to the dealership early that morning to look and, like always, Dillon looks at the tires first because normally they need replaced. But this camper has new Hercules tires, which isn’t a popular brand, but a brand Dillon uses. It also has the custom-made winter skirting that goes on the entire camper. This will come in handy for the fall/winter months in North Dakota! It also has a Sleep Number mattress in it which I thought was pretty cool because we had just purchased one for the house the beginning of February!
Finally one thing off the to-do list!! I was so excited to start moving things into our new “home!”
Thankfully, just a week after we got the first camper I brought home, we were able to sell it to a young couple, They will be living in it with their small children while their home is being built!
I thought the hired hand camper search would go much smoother! But man was I WRONG! It proved to be quite challenging. I looked online again to find floorplans we liked and were in a reasonable distance.
We went one afternoon to Jet which is about an hour from our house in hopes of this being the one. But, you could tell the camper slide was leaking and starting to sag so we passed on that one. I found a few more but we didn’t act fast enough. I’d find them and make arrangements to go look but before our appointment time came up they would be sold.
I found a camper in Mansfield, Texas one night so we decided we’d get up the next morning and drive the 5 1/2 hours so we didn’t lose this one too. Oh my goodness, when we got there the man said, “It DOESN’T have a power cord!!” Umm, really? You don’t think you should have mentioned that when I asked if the camper had any issues?
Then, he proceeds to take us inside where he shows us a HOLE in the ceiling! Really!!???!! The cabinets were coming unhooked from the ceiling and only a handful of the doors actually closed. The electric jacks would have been nice if they hadn’t been ripped off! So, needless to say, we passed on that one too. We drove home with our tail between our legs and continued the search AGAIN!
I kept looking online and found a few more but we were kind of out of the mood. So we had several weeks go by and I decided we better get back on the hunt as Dillon will be leaving to go plant in North Dakota in a month.
I found two more and, dang it, if they weren’t in Texas too! So we loaded up and headed 6 hours this time just to look at the first one for 5 minutes and know we weren’t buying this one either!
I opened the door and put one foot on the step and it gave way. The welds are broken. I get inside and realize there are no couch cushions, there were cushions in the pictures! In the middle of the kitchen there is a very noticeable discrepancy between the flooring!
The whole camper has a dark colored tile print linoleum, but in the middle of the kitchen they have cut out a 3×3 square and fixed a soft spot but replaced the flooring with light colored WOOD pattered linoleum!! Picture didn’t show that! They didn’t even take the time to sweep up all the wood shavings from their work. Then we go outside to discover there are no propane bottles. So strike one on the day!!
We drive another hour to get to the second one. It’s parked at a nice covered storage unit so we our hopeful. We thought, if they care enough about it to pay for storage, then it’s going to be well-taken care of. We pull up to it and it looks good, so we are a little excited!
We get inside and Dillon goes to look into the bathroom and noticed a soft spot. He moves the rug and finds a small hole. He gets out his flash light and noticed the floor is dry rotting. Looks like maybe the hot water heater leaked or possibly the waterline to the bathroom sink. We think that is okay we can probably fix that and it will be fine. We continue to look it over and I see a little water damage on the ceiling cabinets. Okay, we can fix that one cabinet – no big deal.
At this point, we are really trying hard to WANT this camper because we were both over the search. But, Dillon gets on the roof and noticed that it’s been resealed. We think, “Okay, if it’s resealed the roof doesn’t leak anymore.” Then he makes it all the way to the back of the camper and tells me to come up. I get up there and it is DUCT TAPED! Really people? We drove 6 hours to look at a camper with duct tape on the roof? So, again, we leave very disappointed.
This day happened to be my birthday (March 14th), so we decided to go eat a steak dinner and spend the night! We were determined to leave with a camper in the morning.
Throughout the whole dinner, we are looking at campers on our phones saying, “Check this one out!” Or, “How far away is such and such town from where we are now?” “We could make this one work, right?”
We finish our steak dinner at Love and War Steakhouse (which I thought seemed pretty fitting for the saga we had been going though on these campers) and headed to our hotel where we continued to camper shop. We finally gave up about midnight, but I couldn’t sleep so I continued shopping until around 3:00 am!!
But it ended up being worth it! We purchased one today and I am writing this saga as we drive home pulling our new-to-us camper!
It is a 1983 Avion that was remodeled in 2018 and it is SO adorable!! Most importantly, even though it is older, it is made much better than campers are today. All the wood is REAL. It is already set up with two rooms, so no need to redo the “garage” of the toy hauler. And, there is a big enough closet to put our washer/dryer in without tearing out cabinets.
I think through this camper shopping craziness, God was teaching us patience and perseverance! Maybe that seems silly but I think we learned a few things from the process.
Hopefully you made it all the way through this post and can find a little humor in our pain!
God Bless,
Kylee DeBock
“Whoever is patient has great understanding, but one who is quick-tempered displays folly.”
Proverbs 14:29 NIV
