The Pickup

They say waiting is the hardest part.

After about 3 weeks of phone calls, emails, and patiently waiting I have finally taken delivery of my 2018 Runaway Camper RangeRunner travel trailer. Simplicity at it's best! No toilet. No running water. 

Honestly, what more can a man ask for? It's a bed in a box with air-con but more importantly it's an upgrade from sleeping in a tent on the ground. And at 44 years old that gets more difficult with every passing birthday. At under six thousand dollars this is about as cheap and as good as it gets.

After twenty hours of driving from North Texas to Florida we arrived at my grandmother's place. The trailer was waiting patiently for my arrival, safe and secure with a hitch lock supplied by my father.

Pine Log State Park. Ebro, Florida

Pine Log State Park is a state forest. The array of neatly lined trees create a shady retreat from the Florida sun. These Pinus elliiottii are as ubiquitous as the drunken college students found on the beach during spring break in Panama City Beach.

Among the pine trees can be found two ponds that are calm and quite ready to be paddled. So, off with the kayak I ventured. I had the whole place to myself.

Dividing the ponds is the gravel road into the camp. The first pond (the one the camp sites surround) is round, possibly due to being an ancient sinkhole, and adorned with St Augustine grass and Nymphaeceae water lilies. A wooden pier with a gazebo at the end creates a stunning visual at sunset and is a great place to listen to the chorus of tree frogs looking for a mate.

The second pond is more stark in appearance with dormant cypress trees surrounding still, dark waters. Navigating among the cypress trees is possible, but the knees of the trees bump and rub the underside of my kayak as I paddle through them making it precariously close to tipping. But, venturing into the trees reveals shallower water and eventually an elevate boardwalk can be found on the south side of the pond. The boardwalk is part of a nature trail system that meanders throughout the park.

So, my first camping trip with my Runaway Camper was uneventful, other than a minor rewiring job that needed to be done on my Nissan Frontier in order to get the marker and tail lamps to work properly. While under the rear bumper I snapped this photo of my dog supervising my work while enjoying the sounds and sights of the park from the tailgate of my truck.

Ahoy to all who stumbled upon this small, unassuming corner of the world wide web!

I'm sure some may wonder upon what they've stumbled. Well, I'll enlighten you those who seek that answer. My name is Joey. I'm a middle age nobody in the middle of nowhere Texas and I've just bought my first caravan (or RV or travel trailer....whatever you want to call it).

So, this is my trailer being delivered by my loving father in the winter of 2018. I say winter, however this is turning out to be the mildest one in this part of the country in a very long time. It's more like a late summer that got kind of cool for a few months. They stopped somewhere more beautiful than where I live to snap this photo.

These caravans can be found at runawaycampers.com. they start at roughly 2500 US dollars and are a small, family owned business near Ocala, Florida. This particular model is a RangeRunner model, which is slightly bigger at 6 feet wide by 8 feet long (  182cm x 243cm long for those outside of the US and UK) With all of the additions, this model cost me 5,450 USD, a modest sum compared to those who spend several thousands on models with more bathrooms than my modest apartment. And yes, I paid extra for the chrome and black wheels. Don't judge me.

My goals with this blog are to document my upgrades, improvements, experiments, and failures with my attempts to upgrade my new travel trailer. As of this writing it is sitting in my father's back yard in Dothan, Alabama and awaiting my arrival.  Stay Tuned kids! More to come soon! In about a week and a half I and my significant other are taking a trip during spring break, along with our two mongrel dogs, to Alabama to pick up my new caravan!