Camper Life at the Ranch
When Julie and I got married, we didn’t really have plans for what kind of house we were going to live in.
We just went with it and rolled with things, and when we moved to the ranch in Spray, there was no house.
There was a developed lot, and that was it.
It had a well, and it had septic, but the septic was put in 25 years ago and turned out being garbage from gophers.
Did you know that gophers can fill up a drain field with dirt?
Yeah, anyways, they do that, and it sucks.
So, words to the wise, if you’re buying developed land and it has a developed septic, then have a camera run down it and find out if it is filled up with dirt by gophers or not.
We moved down in a 20-foot camper and it was fine until we tried to live in it with two young girls.
Millie had just turned two and loved the camper.
Olivia just turned five, and she’s pretty indifferent. She was just happy to be with us and loved that we had a swing set outside.
Millie would climb around and roll around the camper all over the place, rolling to our bed, knocks on the head while trying to sleep, and just having a ball, you know, a little two-year-old loving life.
For quite a while, after we moved out of the campers into the house, she just craved camper life.
It wouldn’t surprise me if, as an adult, she did it as a road trip in a camper.
But Julie and I, we didn’t go camping for quite some time after living in a camper. It certainly wasn’t horrible, but no matter how nice the camper it’s still not a house.
We lived in campers from June to November of 2015, and we had two different campers.
In that first small camper, we were in that for less than a month before Olivia got pneumonia, in part because we moved it under the hay shed, full of dust and dirt, to get out of the 100-plus degree weather and get a little bit of shade.
But, unfortunately, the dust really got to her and knocked her down with pneumonia, and that’s when we decided to reset, sell that camper, and look for something bigger.
Fortunately, Julie’s cousin had a giant 40-foot, what was it, fifth-wheel camper. That camper had one of the most important things that you can imagine in a camper a bedroom door.
And then it had bunks in the back for the girls. The kids loved that, and they had their own room with bunk beds, it was great.
Julie had enough room to do some of her workouts too.
Olivia also like to join in once in a while.
The period of time that we were in the camper was mostly summer, so we didn’t really spend a lot of time in it, other than sleeping.
You know, most of the days we were out either working on the ranch or moving sprinklers, working cows or we were down fishing.
We did a lot of fishing.
Every evening we’d go down and catch bass after bass after bass. The kids got actually really good at catching them too. We also caught several catfish.
If we had moved somewhere that didn’t have a river and great fishing, I don’t think we would have stayed. It was also our yellow lab Kenworth’s favorite place.
We had no septic to hook it up to, so every three to five days, we’d have to hook the camper up and drag it into Spray, which luckily had an RV dump there.
We’d go and dump the RV and fill it up with water and it got pretty good at being able to do that. $5 well spent every time.
Then bring it back and get it leveled and hooked up. That was about a two hours process each time. I did get really good at backing up campers.
Then the days started getting shorter and that is when camper life became a struggle for us.
In the summertime, the kids, they’re young, so they want to go to bed reasonably early.
We brought cattle to the ranch while we lived in the camper and celebrated Olivia’s first day of school in the camper.
But as the days got shorter, it was dark at five and there weren’t too many things we could do to entertain our kids for four more hours. There’s only so many movies, you know, you can watch.
We didn’t have satellite or internet TV, just, DVDs.
So once those days started getting short, holy cow, you get through one movie and the kids are just rolling around and running all over the place and wanting to go play in the bathtub or in the shower.
Yahtzee was a winner for sure.
We also went on a lot of drives, which was cool, because the elk would be in the fields and we could turn into the fields and see them with our headlights.
The kids loved those drives.
One of those nights in early October, we celebrated her 31st in the camper.
Then another night in the camper we celebrated Halloween.
Eastern Oregon is a great area for elk. Every time we drove out, we’d see them.
The other thing we’d look for on these drives was rattlesnakes.
We’d go driving along the roads and the rattlesnakes would be laying on the pavement at night warming up.
And so they’re just right there in the highway.
So I’d jump out and kill them and cut off their rattles. The best tool for the trade is an ice chipper, it’s a long flat blade that is on the end of a shovel handle. We just called it the snake killer.
The kids always got a kick out of that.
November started getting cold and we were really close at that point in time to getting our manufactured home.
It was actually finished getting built, but was just delayed because of weather.
So we decided to take the camper back to Julie’s cousin Elizabeth and Boise and then spend time with family and we got lodging at the Rived Bend Motel in Spray.
I’ll save the story of our manufactured home for another day.
Actually it was perfect timing because we were able to enjoy our first winter on the ranch. We didn’t have to struggle through a winter in the camper, which I could not imagine.
But the funny thing is, we’ve talked to so many people who have spent months or years in campers, and it’s a cool common bond to have with folks.
Everyone we’ve met has agreed that with kids that bedroom door is solid gold.
Laundry is also another fun topic of conversation. The nearest laundromat was an hour away…
I think everybody should, at one point in their life, live in a camper for a few months. Just to experience it for themselves.
But yeah, thanks a bunch for checking in and reading our blog and checking out The Ranching Life.
If you know of anyone who has started a ranch or is interested in ranching, please tell them to reach out or just put a post in the comments below.
Till next time.
Nate Campbell ~ Founder of The Ranching Life
PS You can check us out at thereanchinglife.com or you send me an email at nate@theranchinglife.com.
