Camping Washington in the Flamingo Flyer

It all started on one rainy afternoon in April - Cal's back was finally feeling better and he had been researching travel trailers. I knew he really liked this one when he tore an ad out and called Cheney RV to see if they had some.

When we walked into the showroom I could tell he was in love - and it is very cute. I could tell he was all excited about it - as a conservative, quiet guy he never goes overboard, but he liked this trailer! He said "We haven't done anything crazy since I retired, and Presto! We have the FF parked between the garages in our back yard!


Well, here we are on the day of our first camping trip in our new teardrop travel trailer, the Flamingo Flyer. My husband and I are both in our early 60's and have always loved getting into the outdoors, first with our children and then later on our own, which we found was not nearly as much fun as with our kids!
He is retired and I am the owner of a small business, so our getaways will be weekends and holidays for now.

As I packed the old faithful campstove coffeepot, I recalled the many times we had used it, from the King Tut exhibit in Seattle when we had nothing but trouble with our old green International TravelAll (a misnomer if there ever was one - it refused to go up hills due to a cranky carburator) to wonderful camping trips to small lakes and streams.

The "FF" as I will refer to it, is a retro teardrop design with a Jolt Grey hull, made by Thor, the maker of Airstream trailers. It is amazingly cute, with a neat interior done in Chiclet Blue and a great galley under the hatch in the back.

Our new instructions say not to load it with more than 500 lbs. I told Cal we have 500 lbs. in Tupperware alone!

So....I pulled out my old camping list on yellow paper, which if I do say so myself is legendary in our family for it's completeness. It has been added to over the years with things we forgot to put on the list which would make us more comfortable - as if the "C" in camping stands for comfort! I think we can skip the Snicker bars, or maybe not. They have been used to bet in card games!

Already my SUV is packed with things for every scenario, I think we should be comfortable, if not the laughing-stock of the entire campground! Usually I use it to work in and make my deliveries, but it looks a little overloaded this AM so I'm taking the smaller car to work.

We have so much food for the two of us I'm afraid all we will be able to do is lie on our groovy new foldout bed and belch!

RECALLING the fateful Leavenworth trip where I was so cold I cried, we tried to get the furnace going last night to test it but Cal thought the battery was too low. I think it has an electric ignitor.