Greetings from Boise, ID

L

Les Izmore

Junior Ranger
Hi All!

We just heard last night that Poplar RV has received our payment for our new 550 Ultra, which should be completed in a week or so. We're still trying to coordinate the time off to drive to Wisconsin to pick it up, which will be no sooner than mid August. Meanwhile we're getting organized for our maiden voyage. I've grown quite bleary-eyed from reading the forum's posts for weeks now, and it's been great to benefit from everyone's experiences. Thus, the champagne and the corkscrew were the very first things that we have packed for our trip!

We are Miata owners - another group with a very loyal following due to the quality of the design (the 900,000th Miata rolled off the assembly line in early 2011). Yesterday we sold our very first Miata, a 2001 Crystal Blue, to make room in our garage for our new Camp-Inn (we still have our 2006 Copper Red).

We're avid cyclists, in fact I met my wife, Alea, in 1985 while on a 17,000 mile cycling trip across the US, Canada & Europe in 1985 & 1986. My current passion is hill climbing. Our plan is to use our new CI to find campsites near some of the great climbing hills in the region.

We lived in Shoreline, WA (immediately north of Seattle) for many years and miss kayaking in Puget Sound, which is something we hope to get back into once we get our CI and have a better option for camping in the always-iffy Seattle weather.

For about a year and half now I've been obsessed with my family's history. I'm nearing completion of a book that I'm writing about my Malone line, who were pioneers in Gibson County while it was still part of Indiana Territory. From there parts of the family settled in other parts of the Wabash River Valley, particulary in Crawford, Lawrence and White Counties in Illinois. We're trying to figure out if I can squeeze in a day or so of research in Illinois on our return from Necedah.

We've always been dog owners, and our current child's name is Lana (the Wonder Dog). She's a rare Bostralian Sherrier (Boston Terrier/Australian Shepard). She's deaf in one ear, which means that she has no clue where sound is coming from, and she has one eye that is half blue and half brown. Any human that knows how to play ball is her friend for life.

We're looking forward to picking up our new home-away-from-home and getting to know some of you over the coming years!
 
Congrats Steve and Alea, and welcome to the forum! I'm sure you'll find the people here to be friendly and helpful, so if you've got questions, ask away. Do you have a camping background, or is the CampInn going to be your introduction to it?

And, one more question, which I'm guessing you may have heard before - are you going to be towing your new trailer with your Miata?
 
Aha! Another member of the family. Great to have you here with the rest of us. You're going to find that this purchase is one of the best moves you ever made. Kudos, kid-o!

Sue
 
Jenn said:
Welcome Steve and Alea,
Sounds like your interests and background cross paths with many folks on this forum. As Ken said, ask questions. We have lots of answer and if we dont know, we make it up! Not really!! But we try!!
Cheers,
Click to expand...

Ah Jenn, are you sure? Pretty sure we are just making most of this up as we go. Luckily we share the learnings with each other so someone else doesn't make the same mistake...or perhaps does, because it is great!

Gotta love life that way! :)

Welcome again Steve and Alea!
 
We've recently rediscovered car camping, which we are definitely enjoying (heading out again tomorrow), but we are sooo ready to take possession of our CI. It's going to open up so many new possibilities for us. We are really stoked!

I've camped a fair amount before, mainly during several summers of bicycle touring on tours lasting from two weeks to six months. But it was easier sleeping on a 1/4" pad 25+ years ago, though generally, even then, only after averaging 60 miles per day on a very overloaded touring bike.

We sold the Miata that had any capability of towing a trailer, though I doubt it would be good towing the CI anywhere but the flats. The 2006, while it has more horsepower, is not set up (and likely not geared) to be hitched.
 
Hi All!

Thanks to everyone for the warm welcome! It is greatly appreciated. We're anxious to start meeting some of you as our path's cross!

We just got back from a couple of days car camping near the Sawtooths. The whole time we kept saying things like: "We'll never forget X once we get our Camp-Inn," "This will be sooo much simpler in our new trailer," "Can you believe it will take even less time to set up/take down camp in the trailer?," and "Won't it be nice to always know where things are?

We're very anxious to learn when Alea will be given time off to allow us to go to WI to pick up our new CI. The road trip will be the longest vacation we've had together for quite some time, and we can't wait to start counting down the days until we can pick it up!

And to give the other half of our camping experience:
Alea's family towed a travel trailer from Virginia to Anchorage, AK circa 1963, so that was back when the Al-Can was still fairly primitive (yes, she was there for the Alaskan Earthquake in 1964 - and it was very handy to have the trailer for backup heating and cooking). Once her father retired from the military he managed a campground in Florida. She and all her siblings worked there, so she is very familiar with all aspects of camping and campgrounds - both posh and primitive (thanks to me and our bicycle camping experiences for the latter). And she's towed lots of boats and the occassional travel trailer, so she's definitely the towing veteran between us (I once towed a post-hole digger about a 1/2 mile round trip, which is the sum total of my trailering experience).

When seeking a way to making camping easier and more fun, we both decided that the two of us and our dog, Lana, needed a queen size bed. And we didn't want to have to set it up/take it down every night. So when we started looking for travel trailers that was our minimum criteria. We quickly discovered that a 22 footer was pretty much the minimum configuration to achieve that in a standard trailer. Then we thought about perhaps a simple van conversion and both cost and lack of flexibility dropped that option from our radar screen.

When we saw our first teardrop we started to think there might be a way that this would be the solution, but everything we found early on had some sort of major shortcoming: Non-insulated cabin, only one door, a real funky A/C solution, no sink, no ability to have water onboard for camping at primitive sites, etc.

Then we found Camp-Inn and it answered as many needs as were realistically answerable. So after the initial sticker shock, it was clear that it was what we were looking for. And with Alea's towing experience, we know that smaller and simpler is always much better, as there are fewer ways we can get ourselves in trouble!
 
Oh, we beg to differ. We took possession of our tear in early October and we still manage to get ourselves into ALL kinds of trouble.

Being able to unhitch and turn that puppy around on a dime has helped us get out of trouble fast! And the low profile is handy for hiding behind hedge rows...but that's not what you're talking about, is it?

My bad.

Camp On,

Sue
 
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