The caravan we love to hate - disaster, redemption and a bit of poo

Let’s renovate a caravan we said, it’ll be fun we said.

Buying and renovating an older caravan was on the top of our ‘adventures to conquer on our two year away from home travel bucket list’. We’d already ticked snowboarding and working through a winter season, driving the US for $1 a day, cruising across the Atlantic and travelling to Spain and speaking (un pocco) Spanish.

Next we aspire to work in Spain and return to Canada to volunteer at a summer camp. But before then we have three months to kill before visiting home in October. Perfect caravan renovating time!

Our dream is only just on its way after more than a month of break downs and mishaps but we’ve made it and we’re finally on the road.

In the beginning our affection for the 92’ Wilderness 19” caravan, or ‘travel trailer’ as they call it in North America, was high and we thought of naming her. That name soon became anything but affectionate and often started with “c”.

But before we get to the reasons for our name calling I'll share a sneak peak of the reno, we're not finished yet but they'll be another post on the whole reno later.

The reason we’re now so attached to our caravan is because we literally lived inside our tormentor. We lived and breathed paint fumes, our own waste (yes that story is

coming), lived out of an esky day-to-day and used torch light when the battery wouldn’t charge properly. I’ve stood in Home Depot (as well as Walmart, Canadian Tire and Princess Auto) easily more than a dozen times, we’ve parked at McDonald’s and Subway for the WIFI and toilets more times than I can count.

But, like childbirth (no offence to three of my friends who recently went through the trauma of childbirth), even though there seems no end in sight to the pain and tears, in the end you forget it all because what you’re left with is something beautiful you’ve created together, something that looks on you with loving eyes and relies on you for life. That’s a powerful thing. Yeah ok I’m bullshitting here but after you read what we’ve been through to get where we are you’ll understand my desire to dramatise.

The first mistake we made was becoming too trusting of the couple we bought the caravan off and not being thorough in our inspection of the vehicle. Truly I don’t think they intentionally lied to us but I think they had no bloody clue about their own van and had done some of their own shoddy work and thought it up to scratch.

There were a few red lights that should have blinked in our vision. The husband knocked $700 off the price straight up as they were moving to Mexico to run a restaurant (I’ll reserve my judgements about Mexico) and, in his words, “just want it gone”. They started throwing in stuff for free, a generator (didn’t work), battery charger (HELLO WHY DOES HE NEED A BATTERY CHARGER DUH), outdoor chairs, bathroom mats and towels, pots, pans and kitchen ware.

In truth we were happy with what we were getting for $3300. We could have bought a camper for $4750 that needed no work but we wanted our old run down camper that needed work. In truth we should have seen it coming! Beeeee careful what ya wish for ;-)

So questions we did ask started with the refrigerator as they can be $2000 to replace and a 24-year-old camper fridge should be nearing the end of its life. Does it work?

“Yes! It’s so cold,” he said.

“I have to keep it at setting one to stop food freezing.”

He was so adamant on the fact the fridge was in good working order that we felt rude to ask to test it. Well surprise surprise, the fridge did NOT work. We found out a week later when we messaged him that the last time they tried it was September LAST FRIKING YEAR. How rude and misleading to tell someone something works when you haven’t used it in ten months! It’s even worst in Canada because over that time it snows and everything freezes. When things aren’t stored correctly and they freeze, they break.

RV fridges are different from the home refrigerator. Basically without getting technical the fridge has no working parts and uses gravity to transport ammonia. To do this is has to be level, otherwise the gases simply get stuck in the coils and won’t move anyway. So if the RV was stored unlevelled for the winter then there could be blockages come summer.

[Since I wrote this we have got it working on electric but not on gas]

Second major question was about leaks. Once a caravan or RV has leaked and rain gets in and causes damage that’s pretty much end game. No leaks he said. Which luckily for us there were no leaks in the roof, but the sink and outdoor shower leak like a sieve. I noticed the paper towel under the sink before we bought it, not sure why I didn’t ask about it!

The worst leak however – and here comes the poo story – came on about day three or four. We had taken the caravan to a friend and diesel mechanic who offered to check our breaks were in working order. He didn’t even get to glance at the break as we scraped the underside of the trailer on the driveway and dislodged the poorly duct taped together sewer pipe, leading to our morning toilet stop(s) leaking all over the driveway.

Panic followed. Mark got very messy desperately winding more tape around the leak. We hightailed it out of there headed for the nearest sani-dump, not even saying goodbye to our friends who ten minutes earlier had been serving us cake and tea. As we drove to a campsite I remembered, horrified, that I had left the bucket of our waste on the driveway. Unless you’re a nurse, you should never have to clean up someone else’s shit right?!

Well we finally got a site and hooked up our sewer connection and flushed our filth away proceeding to run more water down the pipes to clean them out. I went to run the water from inside the van but there was no power to run the water pump.

That’s odd… we go to check the battery and find that the car to trailer connection cable had dragged on the ground, split and frayed the wires specifically on a spot that had already been taped by a previous owner. The brake meant that the car battery had not been charging the caravan battery while we drove thus the battery had died.

We also tried the brakes and found the caravan brake lights would not work therefore making it unsafe to drive.

Our excitement was now waning at this point and reality set in. Little did we know these were only minor fixes compared to what was to come in our near future.

So we’ll flash forward a bit or you really will get bored. We bought a new pipe connection from Home Depot and some wire strippers and crimping tools and Mark set to work cutting and splicing our cable, fixing the grey water pipe and using the battery charger to juice our battery.

We were set again and headed to a provincial campground out of Calgary to wait for our appointment at Fountain Tire to get a new tire put on the van and one fixed (we had the spare on as one tire had a puncture) and to have the brakes checked. Here we spent some time painting all the cabinet doors.

A few days later we’re sitting in fountain tire expecting that everything with the brakes is okay because to us they were working fine. Mechanic says… “your brakes are in perfect condition… but you’ve got no brake controller in your car… so there’s nothing telling the caravan brakes to work when the car brakes work”.

Ahhhhhhh great… we really suck at this don’t we… Also only two of the five connection points in the car to caravan connector were working and something about the caravan not receiving power from the battery was why the battery wouldn’t charge when we were hooked up at a powered campsite.

He also strongly suggested we have the bearings repacked on all four wheels of the caravan as they were worn and could become a serious safety issue.

But now we had to wait it out another FIVE days to have the brake controller installed and the bearings done. We set up shop in the Grey Eagle Casino carpark (yes it sounds an extremely dodge thing to do in Aussie land but over here in the Great North it’s very normal and we felt safe there because there were many like-minded caravaners and RV-ers like us there) where we got to painting more of the van, getting the generator to work properly and having the car’s windshield replaced.

Repair day arrived and four hours in the shop and almost $1000 later (cost for new tire change, fix to car connection cable, electrics, buying and installation of brake controller and bearings repacked) we were so so eager to hit the road. OFF WE GO.

We wanted to head straight down to the Montana border but were extremely keen to be in Canada for Canada Day so we spent one night at a provincial campground south of Calgary and then headed through Lethbridge and into Magrath.

Of course, because all our travel luck is out, we blew a tire on the way there! Oh yes we did! Couldn’t believe it after having a new one put on and another repaired we busted a third! However we trudged on, after knocking on an elderly gentleman’s door to borrow his tire iron (ours bent), and changed the tire.

We set up the Caravan at a cute Caravan Park called Covered Wagon in a little town called Magrath and drove into Raymond to watch a Canada Day Parade and Stampede.

Literally on the outskirts of Raymond we start hearing this ticking sound. tick tick tick tick that kept getting louder as we accelerated. As soon as we were able we pull off to a grassed area and without a second to spare as the car lost all power and we coasted into a safe spot.

Now the tears flowed! We lifted the bonnet and found the engine steaming, the thermostat had shot right up. Being a Friday/Canada Day public holiday nothing was open. Everyone was in their backyards enjoying family celebrations and cooking snags on the barbie.

So there was nothing we could do. We went and enjoyed the Canada Day Stampede.

We got a lift home to the trailer in Magrath from some awesome Canadian ladies and there we waited until Monday for a mechanic to look at the car. A new radiator and water pump and we were back on the road.

We've spent about a week now looking at bigger vehicles to tow the Caravan, but in the end it was selling our Jeep in a short amount of time that was the problem.

So here we go. Now the road trip finally begins. Starting in Glacier National Park from today!

#blog #travel #caravan #roadtrip