Adventures with Annie!

This is Annie.  

We bought a pop-up camper! We may be crazy or brilliant and I haven't quite decided yet but so far its been an adventure, which is exactly what we wanted.  I'm not really sure when or why we started looking for a pop-up, but suddenly we had all these reasons it made sense to do it and a crazy desire to make it happen.  One of my resolutions was for us to spend more time outside together as a family,  and on a camping trip there is an abundance of both of those things.  With our transition back to civilian life, this is the perfect way to travel back home! And also, with a young child and parents that are transitioning between school and careers, this is the perfect easy (and cheap) way to go on family vacations for years to come.  Mark's family had a pop-up when he was young and some of his favorite childhood memories are of camping trips.  How cool would it be to be able to give some of those amazing memories to our son?  To instill a love of the outdoors, a sense of adventure, and a solid foundation of a strong family.  So we started to look at some campers, and as soon as we saw this one, it felt right!  She's a 2007 Coleman Santa Fe, and is in pretty great condition, we got her from a super nice guy in Anaheim, hence the name Annie ;)  There will definitely be projects in the future, the floors, counters, painting the cabinets, replacing the cushions, so that we can really make it ours.  But I love that its still ready to go right now and we are squeezing in as many trips as possible! Heres a little tour of the inside when we first got it and on our first trip.

Its the perfect size for us and it was so much easier to camp with a toddler then I ever thought it would be. The quiet, technology-free weekend was just what we needed, (Mark's smart watch told him he slept better that weekend then he had in months).   We've got two more trips planned for May and June and tentative plans for two more this summer! Then Mark and his dad will road trip her back to the east coast and i'm already making lists of places to visit next year.  

If you had asked me 5 years ago what sort of adventures I hoped to be going on at this point in my life, I probably would have told you somewhere in Europe or the Mediterranean or fancy resorts in the Caribbean, and maybe someday those things will happen.  But I honestly could not be happier to get to explore a little closer to home with my boys in our sweet little pop-up.