Our First Camper
When you want to take photos of the night sky and the Milky Way and epic landscapes—and find some peace and quiet away from people—you have to travel to the middle of nowhere. Our problem with traveling to the middle of nowhere was that there was never any place to stay. So our solution? Buy a camper!
Our first problem—I had a Nissan Rogue and Tony had a Hyundai Elantra. Max towing of 1,500 lbs, which limited us to options that were mostly bathroom-less, kitchen-less, and extremely cramped.
We considered a van, even thought of converting one ourselves (hashtag vanlife :), but the cost was so high and we live in a condo so parking is an issue, and since we’d have to give up one of our cars to get a van, commuting to our jobs in downtown Austin in a large van just did not seem like fun. The van will have to wait.
So the first step was finding a vehicle that could tow that we also wanted to commute in. Right about that time, Subaru was coming out with their first three row SUV that could tow up to 5,000 lbs. I’d had a Subaru in 2001 before it was cool and really liked the brand and having AWD, so we went to check out the new Subaru Ascent in January 2019. We loved the options on the Limited model so traded in the Rogue for an Ascent. It gave us the interior room for loading up our photography gear, camping gear, telescope, or nieces and nephews :), but also the towing capacity we wanted.
We’d never camped together, not even for a night. But it sounded like something we’d have fun doing! So we dove right in.
The 2018 NuCamp T@b 400, an 18’ trailer with a dinette, kitchen, bathroom, and bedroom
Now that we had a tow vehicle, our search for a camper renewed.
We had a few items on our camper Must-Have list:
1 - Lightweight so we weren’t at the limit of the Ascent’s towing capacity
2 - Bathroom. And not a toilet that lives in a cupboard next to the kitchen sink, or a bathroom that you can’t sit down in, but a regular room.
3 - Tall ceiling.
4 - Lots of windows to see the outside world.
5 - A distinct dining room and bedroom space. Tony works later into the night than I do, so we need separate spaces.
6 - Quality construction. No peeling laminate, please!
7 - Affordable.
Some Nice-to-Haves:
1 - A closet and lots of storage.
2 - Solar. We wanted to be able to boondock in the camper so this was really borderline “must-have”.
3 - Microwave and large refrigerator.
4 - Modern interior.
The Must-Haves and Nice-to-Haves
The search for the perfect camper began
We began looking at campers online, on YouTube, at all of the central Texas RV stores, at RV shows. We found a few travel trailers that almost met our requirements but there was always something that wasn’t right. Then we found the NuCamp T@b 400, an 18’ 3,000 lb camper that checked all the boxes and was so cute! But a quality camper comes at a price! Over $30,000 for a new camper. We just couldn’t justify paying that for a new one. However, it is also very difficult to find a used version because they have a fairly limited production and they are in pretty high demand.
So we waited. And kept looking.
And waiting and looking.
I checked RV Trader periodically to see if there was a good used T@b 400 for sale, but there rarely was.
More waiting, more looking, and we began to feel like a camper was not in the cards.
Lavender in the forests of Montana and a view through the camper’s window
A sudden family emergency reminded us that life is fragile
Memorial Day weekend, 2020, on a sleepy Sunday afternoon, we received an unexpected phone call that Tony’s dad was dying. We rushed to the hospital, where we found they had resuscitated him but he was unconscious, and they let the family in to say their final goodbye. We thought he would not survive the night. Somehow, he did. And then survived the next day and the next—they diagnosed a lung clot, which they were able to break up and slowly nurse him back to healthy enough to return home a few months later.
It was a sharp reminder however that life is fragile, each day is not promised to us.
So when I logged into RV Trader that week on a whim to see if there were any used T@b 400s for sale, and saw that there was indeed a 2018 T@b 400 and it was for sale at Camper Clinic II, right down the highway from us in Buda, Texas, and that it had solar and it was clean and well kept and within our price range, we gathered our stimulus check to use for a downpayment, drove to the RV dealer, went through a credit check, and were soon the proud owners of our first camper.
And so the camping journey begins…
