We sold our Airstream Trailer and it feels like we’ve lost a family friend. As the reality set in this weekend my emotions have been all over the place.
It’s so tough to describe what the trailer meant to me. It wasn’t just a “trailer”. It was the one we drove all across America for four months with our kids in. The one we rebuilt almost from scratch. The one we spent hours and hours painting.
The one we barely made it through the mountains in on the coast of California. The one we turned around on the road in, somewhere south of Los Angeles, because our youngest didn’t get to see the Hollywood sign and we just couldn’t leave until she did. The one we woke up in when we saw snow in San Antonio, Texas. The one we drove right into the middle of the White Sands National Monument sand dunes in.
The one we woke up in on Christmas morning in Mobile, Alabama.
The one we camped in the Everglades in with alligators right next to us!
Our first trailer.
The one that changed our minds as to how we want to retire.
I’ve shed a few tears this weekend and I’m tearing up just writing this now. It’s a shock to me. I’m the one who said I wanted to get rid of most of our stuff to make life more simple and appreciate the experiences in life, not the things.
Apparently I got attached to another THING!!
I remember one night when we all just wanted to watch a movie. So, we crammed in together on our double bed in front of the t.v. to watch The Shining. It was one of the best nights on our trip. I can name a few more evenings as well: the night my Aunt Joni and Uncle Laurens came over and we cooked them dinner at the trailer, our first night on the road when we had NEVER slept in it yet and had no idea what to expect, the night we were parked in Anaheim and could see the fireworks at Disneyland from our trailer, the nights we stayed in Key West and the roosters kept us up all night!
Yep. That’s the one. They’re everywhere in Key West and the locals LOVE them. lol
What about the mornings?!
The best morning was Christmas morning when we woke up, realized where we were and knew immediately that it didn’t matter how few gifts we had under our tiny tree because, we already had the best gift in the world. And that was being on this trip together, with loved ones for Christmas in Alabama and experiencing some amazing things together that we would never forget. Other mornings I remember the most are hiking up the Superstition Mountains in Arizona, hearing mountain lions calling through the trees in the park outside San Francisco, listening to the rain fall on the trailer in Pennsylvania and waking up to the sunrise at Galveston Beach State Park. We had so many relaxing mornings of having coffee and just soaking the location in before getting on the road to sightsee or move on to another spot.
We met so many friends along the way!
Some of favourite mornings were waking up in Fort Wilderness Campground at Walt Disney World in Florida. This is something I used had the privilege of experiencing as a child with my parents and brother in our motorhome and to do it again with my own children made me so happy.
So you might we wondering? Why did we sell if I’m so sad? Well….some things are only meant to be for a short time. We accomplished what we wanted to. That dream is over. Why not keep the trailer? Our kids are teenagers. They’re not going to want to camp with us every weekend and the trailer was really too big for just the two of us.
And are we done with trailers? No way, especially not with Airstreams. We loved renovating this antique and will definitely do it again. So if you have an Airstream for sale at a great price…let us know! In fact we would love to have our own campground some day or a local Airstream dealership. I’m just putting that out into the world. You never know what might happen some day.
For now, we get back to normal life, working, paying bills, being a family, planning for the future and hopefully not forgetting the past. Thank goodness for the photos we took on the road!
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