Mission Impossible

Part 2: The Search

We moved into moms house with very little income. Kurt had just started a new job as a part time cook while he continued to search for electrical work, and with no house to sell we had no real money to purchase our new rig right off the bat. So, we did what anyone would do, we waited until we got our income tax refund. In the meantime, I keep Sage in school, more or less to keep her out of the way during the day while I got things around. We did Dr.s appointments, got copy of shot records, changed all our addresses to moms, I tried to get everything covered. I was under the grand idea that once we left for our adventure, we wouldn't be back soon, who knew where we would be, but it wasn't going to be Tampa.

Then, by the end of January I really began the search. At first I stayed local, searching Craigslist and local dealers. We knew we wanted a bunkhouse with a slide, that was the search criteria, then to narrow it down, we ruled out RVs, because we wouldn't know how to work on one if it broke down. Looking back, we could of gone with an RV, an engine is a engine, but we didn't think like that at the time, we thought it would be a lot different and we didn't want to get into something we wouldn't be able to fix....properly. So that left us with either a travel trailer or 5th. We had a 99 Dodge Ram 1500, and was pretty sure that it could handle a small 5th, but I didn't want to spend the extra 500-700 installing a 5th hitch, so by process of elimination, I started looking for a travel trailer, with bunks, and a slide.

I searched locally, figured how hard is it going to be? Well, turns out, it was really hard to find one with both a bunk and slide, and one where the bunk wasn't just a double with a twin over it and a curtain to separate it from the rest of the house. When I did find what we were looking for, it was way out of our price range. I eventually expanded my search to the entire state of Florida, looking for the mysterious trailer under 10,000. I found a few, in places like Daytona, Miami, and Sarasota, but, once we got out to look at them, turns out the pictures gave them way too much credit. Visible water damage, bad smells, and just plain unlivable interiors made us turn away and head home, a little more discouraged each time. I was so tired of looking, we were starting to consider ones without the bunks as a "temporary" house, but just could see spending the money on something we really didn't want just to have it, only to turn around and sell it and start over, so, I continued the search. I began calling dealers, trying to see if we could work out some in house financing deal, we didn't have the credit to buy with a loan, so we had to find something in cash. I tried every angle with the dealers, such as, " You keep the trailer, and I'll pay you and have it paid off in 3 months"...... Never worked. So back to Craigslist. This continued until the end of February, when I started looking in Georgia and Alabama, didn't want to travel too far, but the more desperate I became the farther my search went. Still nothing, so, I finally decided to just start taking random shots in the dark. I created another email account specifically for this and began sending any trailer I liked, bogus offers, by bogus I mean say they we asking 10,000 for a trailer, I emailed them an offer of 5,000. It worked! I now had two trailers to choose from, a newer smaller bunk house  or an older bigger bunkhouse. After considering space and storage vs. age, we went with the larger older one, more bang for your buck. Two days later we got our refund, and that Monday, we headed out to Vidalia, Ga 7 hours north and 400 miles, to walk through, buy, and bring back our new home, no problem right? Wrong.