Remember these? Yes, I still have them!
If you are a child of the 60’s through 80’s, you probably do! That is a Coleman Tent heater and the white fuel that goes with it. I think I bought it for about $30.00 back in the dark ages. Back in the dark ages is when Tammy and I would go tent camping. Tent camping was our main form of entertainment even when the kids came along.
When Tammy and I got married, and for the first ten years, we were tent campers. We spent many weekends each year camping by ourselves and with family. Even when our kids came along, they were quickly indoctrinated into our camping routine.
We would spend weekends at Devils Lake, in Wisconsin. This is a beautiful park and for a young family, an inexpensive way to enjoy the weekend. In the picture below you can see a crib in our cabin tent, just to the left of the door. Jeff would have been under a year old when we went camping with the crib.
All of our years of tent camping would come to a pretty abrupt end on a very cold June day in the upper peninsula of Michigan.
We had planned on spending a week camping at Straits State Park, across from Mackinac Island. We loaded our 1976 Chevy Chevette with the Cabin Tent, the Screen Room, coolers, food, cooking stove, crib, and headed north from Madison. To say the Chevette was full was an understatement. We were probably lucky we didn’t get pulled over, due to lack of rear window visibility.
Fortunately for us, our kids have always been great travelers. Seven hours of driving later we pulled into the campground and set up everything. Later that afternoon we heard that the nighttime temperatures would be getting down into the forties. Tammy looked at me and asked, “You brought the tent heater, right?”. Nope, I didn’t. It was June and I thought it would be warm enough to leave that piece of equipment behind. That my friends, was a huge mistake.
That night, the kids slept like rocks while Tammy and I worried about the temperature in the tent. It wasn’t terrible, but it was most definitely cold.
The next morning, I stood by the fire, warming myself while I was getting breakfast ready. Then I heard the weather report. That night it was expected to get below freezing. I turned to Tammy and the kids, and I said “Thats it, pack it up we are done. Let’s go find a motel”.
That is exactly what we did. We enjoyed the rest of our time commuting from the motel to Mackinac Island and other places we wanted to visit. Here’s just a few pictures from the island on that trip. I wish I could turn the clock back.
Well, the trip ended, and we had the drive back to Madison. Sometime during that ride home Tammy said “You know, maybe we should buy an old travel trailer as an experiment. I mean I know I would like to camp that way, but it would give you a chance along with the kids to see if you like it. It doesn’t need to be fancy, just something basic like the one my parents rent every year”.” Tammy had camped in a small travel trailer with her parents for years. So, she had a good idea of what it was all about.
After this camping trip, that idea sounded great. I was finally burned out on all the things that wear people out on tent camping. Packing and unpacking was tedious. Waking up with damp clothes from condensation in the tent was also a pain. I was certainly tired of the effect of the elements on camping. “Yes, let’s start looking”
Our first stop was at a large RV dealership very close to our home; Wisconsin RV World. It was located just a few miles north of Madison, Wisconsin. The Dealership still exists today, and it is still family owned – a rarity. I can probably recommend only a few RV Dealerships, but this would be one of the few where we have always had a positive experience.
I really had no idea of what kind of travel trailer we would be looking for, other than it had to be pretty inexpensive. The only thing I didn’t want was to be buried in debt.
In addition, since Tammy had more experience with travel trailers, she would be the one to say what could work for us, and what probably would not.
After looking at a number of older used travel trailers with the salesperson Debbie, we settled on a 1971 Jayco JayWren. This Jayco was sixteen feet long and weighed a little over 2000 pounds. The Jayco’s couch and table would fold down to form beds, and there was a fold down bunk bed over the rear couch. The trailer also had a small refrigerator, cooktop, sink, and furnace. The only thing it was missing was a bathroom.
Having always been tent campers, not having a bathroom would not be an issue; we were already used to that. After all, this was an experiment to see if we would enjoy camping in a travel trailer as much as camping in a tent. As long as it had the fundamentals like a furnace and refrigerator, we would be happy.
I knew nothing about travel trailers at the time so something this simple was probably the best decision we could have made. There were no holding tanks and the plumbing consisted of a water line that went directly to the sink. The sink drained into a bucket outside the trailer. The power was provided by an extension cord that plugged into an AC receptacle. It powered the refrigerator, furnace, and a few lights.
We put some money down to hold the trailer. My recollection is that the trailer cost us around $750.00 plus tax, title, and registration.
That trailer (which I wish I still had), started us on our journey of over 37 years with two children, five shepherds, and eight travel trailers. It has been an amazing journey. Regardless of the challenges that have happened while owning the travel trailers, it has never dampened our desire to keep camping this way. I owe it all to leaving a Coleman tent heater behind on a very cold June trip to Michigan.
How lucky was I to have made that mistake!
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