One fateful night in the spring of 2022, Rob picked me up from work one night and said, “Guess what? I’ve found it!” “Found what?” I asked. “Our Airstream!” One of the dreams we had dreamed up along the way was to buy a vintage Airstream and fix it up and live in it. You know, when we’re running our campground. And now, he’d found it on RV Trader: a 1975 Airstream Overlander in near-perfect condition! We put in our bid and, amazingly, it was accepted! And before we knew it, Rob was driving down to Alabama in a friend’s pick-up truck to check out our new Airstream and tow it back home. “Great!” I thought, and began planning all the things we would need to stock it for camping.
But not so fast! Rob had other plans for our new camper. Plans that involved completely tearing out the rear bathroom and relocating it to the side of the trailer, replacing it with a real bed with a real mattress that we wouldn’t have to fold up every night. Changes that, as you can see, were really for the better.
Not only that, but things immediately started to go wrong with the Airstream on her maiden voyage. High winds ripped the cover of the a/c unit clear off, which was never to be found even after a diligent 3-mile search of the highway. Next, the main awning suddenly unfurled while on the road, requiring Rob to completely cut it off the trailer roadside with a box-cutter and stuff the whole mechanism through the front window in order to get it home. And why did the electricity suddenly stop working the minute we got home and plugged her in? Feeling fully baptized, we began our nearly three-year project of Fixing Up the Airstream.
