From "Beauty and the Beast" to "Pretty Charming"

 Ya'll remember this?

It was two years ago that RDB and I purchased the Wildcat, our first 5th wheel, and before even having one night's stay in it realized that it had significant mold issues, along with slide problems, which by a stroke of Providence introduced us to Chris and Camper Revampers.  What was supposed to be a replacement purchase of a new Palomino Compass a few months later while Chris worked to rehab the Wildcat, became Chapter Two in the Hassle for the Castle story.  

Two years, and all kinds of drama later, we can finally close this book: the Wildcat is SOLD! That mold-ridden, money-pit, mahem-maker of a camper is finally G O N E.  

Chris did an outstanding job of remediating the mold situation; since he's seen so many of them over his career rehabbing campers, it wasn't nearly the trauma inducing situation for him as it was for me. In fact, after the repair work was complete, they took it a step further and his wife, Stacey, created a new decor scheme and staged the camper to show beautifully for sale.

A one of a kind vessel sink in the bathroom with custom wood countertop, river stone hand-set backsplash behind the range in the kitchen, and Sante Fe style accents all through out.  We're so grateful that this beautifully restored Wildcat, with its WILD back story, now has a new owner and a new home.

Chris called to tell us it was sold while we were still on our (epic!) Disney Camping Vacation (on my birthday in fact!), and it was a fitting end to this Beauty to Beast to Pretty Charming camper's story!

Wow, What a Weekend!

With no client-facing work on Thursday or Friday, RDB and I took off for our first camping trip in Camper #3 to Cedar Hill State Park. Needless to say, I should've checked the weather!

A huge thanks to my RDB for always taking the long hauls when we travel and especially for this trip, since it poured buckets on us the whole way north!

We arrived at the park well after dark Wednesday night, and I didn't realize when we booked this site (#123) just how difficult it was going to be to get into: backing in uphill, and a significant tilt to the drivers side.  We were really impressed with the auto leveling on our new Palomino Columbus Compass Series.

Cedar Hill State Park made for a beautiful "office".....

View from my desk...

 

the break room....

my coworkers....

Even the time clock was reminding me how sweet it is to be here for work this week.

We reached out to Mom & G to see if they wanted to have dinner Thursday night - they came over afterwards to check out our new digs.  It's so nice to have a spot to be able to host other people and everyone is comfortable.  It was wonderful to share this space and a bottle of wine with them.... the label on the bottle says it all:

Friday was a bit of a blur - more work, including applying for a new role at my company (I've been waiting on that to post for _at least_ two months!), and trips to Ikea, Best Buy, Wal-Mart, Starbucks, and Target.  New campers require stuff, y'all!

Saturday was a blur of a different kind: we started the morning over at Randshe's new home in Castle Hills. R recently purchased an Audi R8 and was participating in an exotic car Make-a-Wish drive by. He invited RDB to ride along with him, so they took off (and I mean, the _took off!_ that car is a rocket!). S and I stayed back a the house to chat for a bit and then joined them for bunch later.

We're excited to come back up here in late October for Randshe's wedding - 10-30-20! (reminds me of RDB and my wedding date of 11-12-13). We already have a site booked for that one as well. It's awfully nice to be able to take our "rollin' home" with us to visit friends and family!  

Speaking of - it was so sweet to be able to snuggle on Kali and Ickis again - we sure miss those little cuties!

After lunch we came back to the site, packed up the camper, and hauled it over to Camper Revamper Chris Cox.  You'll remember we met him on a Facebook group as we were dealing with the beginnings of the camper crisis this year.  His prices are fair, his ideas are fabulous, and the quality of his work is second-to-none. We had a few items that we needed help with:

Camper mattresses are notorious for bad sleep, and RDB and I have been spoiled by a SleepNumber in the house, so we splurged for a SleepNumber (regular queen) for the camper. Chris helped out by reworking the wiring so that the plug for the base unit would be under the bed rather than plugged into the wall.  He put it like this: when he does improvements or modifications, he wants to make it look like it's always been there. (I'm telling you - Chris does quality work!)

Our unit came with the Wineguard wifi booster roof unit already wired in, you just need to add the router  to the ceiling inside and buy a data plan.  Big thanks to Camping World of Fort Worth for staying open for a few minutes extra on Saturday night - we came sliding into the parking lot literally at 6pm as they were closing, but they let us in to buy the router we needed for Chris to install it.

Again, Chris' mentality of "make it look like it belongs there" meant that instead of just installing the on/off switch on the ceiling (like he's seen some service shops do), he opened up the back of our "brain box" to put the switch in with all the other controls - like you would never have known it was installed post-production.  And watching him snake the wires thru the ceiling and walls with minimal space to spare? He's a master at it!

While he was working on those projects, I took a few quick minutes to use a wood stain touch up pen and finish off a few spots on the slides where you could see the backside of unfinished wood.  It's a little thing, and most people probably wouldn't even notice, but it made me glad to have it done so that when I'm laying in bed or sitting on the sofa, I won't be bugged by that "unfinished" bit of trim.

It was dark-thirty when we left Camper Revampers and headed back to our site at Cedar Hill State Park.  We had left behind our white water hose and stinky slinky, along with the leveling legos - trusting that they would be left alone (we had reserved the spot thru Sunday night, so no one would have been parking there.) Unfortunately, as we turned the corner into the camping loop we could see that our site had been completely cleared out.  BUT! The campers next door came running over to tell us that they had collected all our items, concerned that we had been gone for so long and afraid someone else might steal them. Faith in Humanity: restored.

We decided to extend our reservation thru till Monday, just to give us the ability to sleep in Sunday morning and not have to be packed up and out by noon.  Best. Decision. Ever!  I'm sitting here finishing up this blog post (sans pictures as the wifi (not our new set up yet) is s-l-o-w) and RDB is enjoying the beginning of football season lounging in the living room. 

We'll pack up and head home eventually, but for now? I'm loving the flexibility of working from the camper during the later part of the week, have an extended weekend and fun with friends and family, and truly making this place ours while enjoying all our camping adventures. 

We were at Cedar Hill State Park, Eagle Pass loop, Site #123.  It is an "advanced parking" kind of spot!  Backing in uphill, and not level at all from right to left.  If you can park in this spot, you'll be able to park _anywhere_!  (We're eyeing site #117 in this same loop for the next visit.)  This state park is HUGE!  We were wandering around the park Friday afternoon, trying to get back to our site, being followed by a park Ranger.... when we pulled into a parking spot to grab the map and figure out where we were, he tapped on the window: "Ya'll look like you might be lost?" Huh! Like I'm going to admit to that! Needless to say, I was grateful for his help to get us pointed back in the right direction. (But I think we could've figured it out; after all, not all who wander are lost.) 

We've been here once before, back in our pop-up camper days: Thanksgiving - Part 1, and Part 2

For more pictures, go here. 

__________________

(Post Script: the weekend was bookended with rain; it was storming again as we drove home. Just a note: when you're driving a rig that's nearly 13' tall, it's like driving a broadsided billboard - the wind, though it wasn't much, had us stopping over for a period of time to let the storm pass (just happened to be we were stopped at a Bucees again, go figure.)  Though it made for a longer trip home, I am once again, so grateful that RDB takes our safety seriously.  He's the best kinda camping partner you could ask for.)

Cut Bait

 The old and the new, side by side.

I'm kinda laughing at that statement: I wrote it thinking the old was the Rubicon and the new is the Wildcat, but really, the old is the new and the new is the old.  Whoever purchases our Rubicon is going to get one hell of a nice, clean, NOTHING'S WRONG WITH IT camper.

*sigh*

Our first trip out with the Beauty and we're not even going to get to stay in  it.  But, this is the next step - getting it up to Camper Revampers so that Chris can work his magic and make her like-new again. 

And, oh, what a list to make that happen:

• Mold remediation
• Repair walls
• Slides:
• Replace seals as needed
• Repair mechanics in the living room 
• Install slide covers on all three
• Reinforce slide floor in living room
• Replace carpet throughout
• Roof coating/repair
• Replace sky light
• Replace edging/trim in interior
• Ceilings
• Front door
• Paint interior
• Ceilings - white
• Walls - Sherwin Williams Agreeable Gray
• Dispose of old mattress
• Extend bad platform for new mattress
• Drill holes for SleepNumber bed tubing
• Replace battery
• Replace water heater anode rod
• Possibly replace water heater
• Replace broken handles on cabinets 
• Install MaxAir fan in bathroom
• maybe a second one in living room
• Replace fire extinguisher
• Install Wifi antenna - Wineguard Air 360
• Repair water damage in basement area

Diesel's tuckered out just _thinking_ about all the work that's going to be required to make it happen!  And you know, so were we.

So, we've decided to "cut bait." We're not going to move forward with the Wildcat camper that we bought back in February and ran up to Chris in May.  I don't think he was all that surprised that we were stepping away from what was  going to be a long and extensive project.  

It was 4th of July weekend, and we just. want. to. go. camping. 

In the space of about a weekend, we went down to Ron Hoover in Katy and purchased a NEW 2019 Palomino Columbus.

Not a Happy Camper

Ok, so, last we talked, I was right about here:

...having discovered a serious mold problem in our new-to-us Wildcat.  I followed the black, white, dark, and icky mold trail up the side and over the top of the kitchen slide.  And when I gave up, Rich kept working on pulling back more and more of the wall paper, revealing the true extent of the damage behind it.  Not only was it over the kitchen slide out, but we found more of the tell-tale bumpy wallpaper over the top of the living room slide out.  This was not good. (understatement)

I commiserated with one of the Facebook camping groups we had joined when we moved up to the 5th wheel.  LOTS of compassion and sympathy from the campers there - truth be told, NO ONE wants to deal with mold in their home on wheels; it's often a death sentence.  

There are a lot of things lately (too many too blog about) that remind me that Providence is real, and watching out for RDB and me.  It was another one of those moments when Chris, from Camper Revampers, reached out to me and offered help.  

We talked for maybe an hour that week - and I left thinking, "Ok, it's not a burn it to the ground situation; maybe we can do this."  And so I went to work, starting out by sanding the walls I knew we were planning to paint.  To be honest, I was a bit too chicken to tackle the mold just yet.

Wearing homemade masks before it was cool.

That was about the second week of March, 2020.  For future reference, that was also about the time that the world turned upside-down with the novel coronavirus, Covid-19.  Much of the work we had planned to do on the camper was put on hold - as travel was restricted and stores shut down.  To add to the frustration, many of the RV parks and all of the state parks closed to the public for a period of weeks.  As I type (third week of May) RDB and I are still practicing physical distancing, and only making trips away from the house for essentials.

A small dose of good luck in all this was that RDB and I were able to secure covered parking for our camper at the same lot RDB stores his kayak.  We couldn't help but laugh at the fact that we would be parking next to a nearly identical Forest River Wildcat! Haven't met the owners yet, but they have good taste in rigs!

We're the gray one on the right.

We had a laundry list of things that needed to be done - from repairs to upgrades, decor and "wants."  And when we discovered the mold, it really set us back on our heels. We knew how critical it would be to repair that and whatever hole was causing water to get in, and we knew as well, that some of the wood panelling in the camper would need to be replaced (it was rotted thru from the mold and wet).  It was just such a task, and we had zero experience in doing it right.

Looks like an angry dog.  

So we reached back out to Chris at Camper Revampers and made arrangements to haul the trailer up to the Dallas area to let him do the repairs.  It was raining the Saturday morning we had planned to drive up, so we coordinated to try again Sunday. The morning arrived, the weather was beautiful - this was it! Let's hook her up for the first time and drive her to Chris.

We arrived at the storage unit, our covered, gated lot, only to find that our camper was not in the same state when we last saw it.  The back windows had been opened and shoved out - and I knew that RDB wouldn't have left the camper that way when he parked it last.  Someone had broken into our camper. 

We called HCSO and it took about 30 minutes (yes, that's normal response time for a non-emergency) for a deputy to arrive.  

Deputy: How's your day, ma'am?   

Me: Well, I had to call you, so.... 

Deputy: Yeah, it sucks when idiots steal your stuff.

Ya damn right. 

We had waited till he arrived to go inside and see what had transpired: a TV stolen from the bed room, RDB's new Bose sound bar pulled form the living room (but not the TV - it was bolted onto the mount), and a bucket full of various tools...  thankfully, no vandalism, and the only damage was to the back window where they obviously slide the TV out and the window screen where they forced entry.

When I mentioned that one of the tools that was stolen was a folding razor-blade knife, the deputy decided he wanted to see if he could pull a few prints from the window that was used for entry.  It was when we pulled the camper forward that we noticed our "twin" neighbor also had the same back window jimmied open; they likely had ben burgled, too.  As a friend said: some people suck.

Well, here we were: a camper full of mold and other problems, and now a police report for stolen property and damaged windows.  What do you do?

Let Chris know there's going to be a few more repairs and make your way towards Dallas.

...to be continued....