Who Are The Hippy Campers?

It used to be when the words “I have an idea” came out of my mouth, my friends and family would just listen. Now, the automatic response is “oh no, Jess, what now??”

Well, a few months ago, I had an idea. I had seen many RVs and never found them appealing. They were always dark and filled with awful fabrics and dinginess. Not exactly places of inspiration. Until I saw a renovated travel trailer done in a farmhouse style that could’ve been straight out of Magnolia Magazine. Cue heart eye emoji! And they were only asking $10,000 for it. Not exactly chunk change, but considering how beautiful as it was, I was expecting triple that. My mind went wild..

I started looking on Facebook Marketplace, Craigslist, and any other resale site I could find to get an idea of the possibilities. I found everything from $200 large paperweights in the shape of a travel trailer to $50k+ giant RVs with more space than many apartments. I was in awe and obsessed.

I showed my husband, Aaron, the inspiration camper and his response was basically “that looks nice”. (Uhh no, it’s perfect and we need it right now) I *mostly* jokingly told him we could sell our house and move into a camper. He rolled his eyes and nodded his head as usual with my random ideas. But the more I thought about it, the more I realized we could actually do it and it could be a huge step to our dream home.

We had always talked about building our perfect home on a chunk of land. Sometimes, in dream world, we had a farm or alpacas. Other times, a hippie commune where diverse people live in a self sustaining community where we all contribute and live happily ever after. But we always had space to adventure where the world slows down a bit.

I knew house prices were going up. We bought our house two and a half years ago, so knew we would make a little money off of it. I started doing a little math in my head and was a little shocked when it actually made sense.. I told Aaron and he wanted to see it on paper. (Because all of the math I was excitedly rambling wasn’t enough to just up and sell our house apparently) So I got out my trusty Excel document and did an entire spreadsheet of expenses. Low balling how much we would make on the house. Did research on the cost of land and cost to build our home (We had talked Barndominium for a while). Factored in money we would save on mortgage. And it still made sense. He was skeptical, but mostly sold.

I had shown our friends that lived across the highway the heart eyes camper and joked that we were going to move into their driveway. They said “yeah, sure!”, thinking it was just another one of my ideas. But when I came back a week or two later and asked if they really meant it, that’s when they knew not to trust my ideas anymore. (Oops!)

We talked through a lot of logistics over the next several weeks as Aaron and I looked for our future home. Where to put it, electric for the camper, how much we would be in their house, etc. One of our other friend’s dad is a realtor, so we had him come look at our house to see what we needed to do to sell. Things were moving along!

We ended up finding a 2007 Jayco Jayflight 29’ travel trailer. Listed for $6,500. We had given ourselves a $10,000 budget for the RV and remodel, so this could work. Found out it needed the fridge and AC repaired, so talked them down to $4,800 and we owned a camper!

After A LOT of work, we sold our house, moved the camper to our friends’ house, and have it *mostly* livable! We are still in the process of renovating and are looking for our land, but after so many people have said we should document our journey, I’m finally doing it. I ended up furloughed from my job in this process (thanks Rona!), so I have a little time on my hands!

My hope is that this adventure brings joy and inspiration to others to go for their dreams. Aside from the corny stuff, I plan to show our renovation process and things I learn along the way, talk about the mental and physical aspects of this change, and I can assure you there will be pup pictures of our two fur babies! Feel free to follow along and enjoy!