4 The Little Old Camper by Wheeler Jones

In 2021, I moved to Montpelier, Idaho, to be closer to my family. My mother and my sister both live there with their husbands and my niece and nephew.

At the time, my sister had just bought a 1976, 16-foot pull-behind camper, thinking that her husband and kids would enjoy using it on the weekend. After the first trip, she quickly realized that a 16-foot camper and four people do not mix well, especially when two of those people are 10 and 4 years old. One Sunday afternoon, she dropped the camper off at my house and said good riddance to it.

Let me start by saying that this is not a modern-day fanciful, fully loaded camper with television and couches and all the trimmings. Instead, it was single axle, single door camper whose lower half was painted red and upper half white. It had triple pane tip-out windows on the outside and a single bed and table inside with what one could call a closet in between. Nothing fancy, but it was functionable.

Though an older model, this camper was still in great shape for its age, and at the time it was built, it was top of the line. Still, there were some changes I had in mind to make it the ultimate bachelor pad on wheels.

With a cold beer in my hand and a sketch pad in my mind, I went wild with ideas on how to transform this pumpkin into the belle of the ball. My mind was racing, “If I tear out the table and counter, I could fit a huge stereo right there. No! A foosball table! A mini fridge! A KEG-O-RATOR!!”.

My mind swirled with endless possibilities and the crazed excitement of a child on Christmas morning. I was drunk with power, or maybe it was the Coors, and realized it was too much for my mind to handle alone. I decided two heads were better than one and called my brother-in-law Mason to help get his thoughts on the matter.

After a couple hours of throwing ideas against the wall to see what would stick and a couple of six packs later, we came up with a plan. We decided that a single man could make do with spartan furnishings, such as a couple of folding chairs and a hammock, as long as there was music and room for a couple coolers.

So in our final plan, we decided that we would remove the bed, counter, stove, table, cupboards, and flooring, spray a layer of insulating foam throughout, lay in some half inch plywood that we would prime with Flex Seal, install built in surround sound speakers in every corner, wall mount the control unit, run a very basic electric system–a six plug screwed to the wall with the tail running outside the camper–and call it a day.

It was getting late into the evening, so we decided that we would start work on our project that coming weekend as we both had to work during the week. Five long days later, we finally had the time and freedom to get started on retrofitting the camper.

Things initially went smooth as butter, the table, cabinets and counter came out just as we had hoped. The bed gave us no trouble either, but what we did not expect was that at some point in the camper’s history, someone had tried to install a portable toilet under the bed. There was a large hole cut in the floor that had been covered with a piece of sheet metal. Under it we found some really bad framing work had been done to the floor joists and no primer coating on the exposed wood had caused rot issues. This discovery brought the structural strength of the rear end into question.

After a little bit of head scratching and a few beers in, we devised an updated plan. We would Flex Seal the entire bottom of the camper and weld a metal cross brace to the frame for added strength in the rear end. My brother-in-law and I both work in the heavy equipment industry, so we had scrap metal and welders on hand, making the repairs a fairly simple matter. By the end of our first day, we had made some good progress and were starting to see our vision take shape.

On day two on the job, we were able to get the interior stripped and primed, insulation sprayed, and trimmed as well as the speakers and the wiring set and ready to be covered. While we let things set up and dry out, we realized we had not picked out a color to paint the inside once we were done. Me being the cheapskate that I am, I wanted to go with all black, but Mason thought we should do a two-tone paint job to match the outside. The outside I realized could use some sprucing up, too, so to save money, we went with matching the inside colors to the outside’s red and white.

By the end of the first weekend, we made a fair amount of progress and were confident that we would get the job finished up with one more weekend of work and maybe a few less beers. Maybe.

So, when the following Saturday morning rolled around, we were back to work on the camper, this time laying in the plywood and sealing the seams. Once we had finished those jobs, we moved on to the tapping and painting. I’ll be the first to admit that I hate painting, and I may have taken a few extra refreshment breaks while Mason finished up the more detailed work along the edges.

By the end of the day, we were able to step back and take a look at our finished creation. It was beautiful. The sun shining down on the freshly painted exterior gave it a heavenly glow. Stepping inside, the smell of fresh cut wood and Flex Seal filled your nostrils, giving off a feeling of strength and renewed spirit. We set up the stereo and plugged it in. With fingers crossed that we had not damaged any of the wires behind the walls when installing the plywood, we powered it up, put in Creedence Clearwater Revival and cranked up the volume.

As the song “I Put a Spell on You” screamed to life through the stereo speakers, rattling my brain inside my head, chills ran up my spine. We had done it. Everything worked perfectly and looked perfect as well. The colors inside and out were crisp and clean, the walls and floor were strong and sturdy feeling, the stereo was mind numbingly loud.

I was blown away at just how much of an improvement we had made on the little old camper. I was so proud of the remodel that I hooked up the camper and took it to work with me, showing it to all my coworkers and my friends.

I spent every weekend that summer in the woods in that camper and most nights after work hanging out in there, too. To this day, I still have that camper and can’t help but smile when I think about it.