Introduction

For fifteen years my husband and I have been avid tent campers.  Living in the shadow of the Rocky Mountains, we are daily inspired to plan the next camping trip, to seek out places of solitude and enjoy the beauty of the outdoors.  We hike mountain trails, dabble in icy cold brooks and snuggle into our sleeping bags at the end of the day, happy in our little tent.

Our kids have been tent camping since our oldest was six months old. Tent camping is all they have known and we all love the privacy of the tent campgrounds and tent only sites that large trailers can't get to.  There is a solitude in tent camping that we have felt we could never reach in a camper of any sort.  In fact, we have probably been tent camping snobs for most of the past 15 years.  Tent camping seems like a much grander, freer way to get out into nature and up until this past fall, getting a camper wasn't even on our radar.

It's funny how life has a way of changing things up on a person, no matter how carefully you lay your plans.  After spending a year planning a two week tent camping trip to Glacier National Park, I sustained a severe burn to my left hand three days before we were scheduled to leave.  Note to all of you bacon lovers out there- spilled bacon grease can and will give you second/third degree burns.

While my burn doctor would have preferred we stay at home, as the risk of infection would be made higher by camping and the degree of care would be less available, I promised I could self care and would not get an infection on our trip.  I was desperate to go and determined that I would not use my left hand at all in an effort to keep it clean and on the path to healing.

What this meant was that my husband and children would be responsible for doing all of the camping packing, set up at campsites, cooking, clean up, etc.  and while I love the chores that come with tent camping, two weeks of car camping is a lot of work. On the way home from what was a beautiful trip to Glacier (and in which I did not get an infection and, in fact, healed beautifully), we began talking about getting a camper. We are getting older and the idea of camper, for the first time, seemed enticing.

First on our list, and what we fully intended to purchase, was the smallest Scamp Trailer available.  With a dinette that folds to a full sized bed and sofa that turned in to bunks, it would be the perfect size for our family of four.  Too small to want to spend much time in, we would still cook outdoors and be outside except to sleep.  We wanted something light enough to tow with our Toyota Highlander, easy to set up and mostly, inexpensive.

We began looking at Scamps on this site  and also on our local Craigslist.  We thought we found one that fit our needs in Delaware and were in discussions with my dad to see if he would like to accompany my husband on a road trip.  And then came that fateful Craigslist post that changed everything.  While double checking to make sure there weren't any Scamps closer to us, I stumbled across a small, 1969 North Star camper for $900 about six blocks from my husband's office.

This is the story of Hammie, the canned ham camper.