Choosing a Camper
One of our goals in retirement was to travel more. When the kids were young, we would take the family camping in our Jayco Pop-up camper for 2-3 weeks every summer. Now that we are older, we were looking for a more comfortable way of camping.
We did not want a large camper, just something small that we would tow with an fuel efficient car. (A 15-18 foot trailer) My wife has thee requirements:
1. It has to have a bathroom
2. It has to have a shower
3. It has to have a large bed (bigger than a double).
After many trips to RV shows and some online research, we narrowed our search to the Scamp and Casita camper trailers, The Casita was our leading camper, (even with the carpeted walls and ceilings) - Then we found the Cortez!
The Cortez Camper had everything and it was ultra light weight. At 1850 lbs, it was the lightest camper we had seen and had some unique construction. Manufactured by a company that makes boats, it was all fiberglass construction with a double hull. All the wiring is marine grade so it would weather well. Many camper blogs complained about bad wiring in other campers and rotted wood. This is 100% fiberglass.
We had just purchased a Toyota Highlander Hybrid that had a towing capacity of 3600 lbs. The casita model we liked weighed 2480. That did not give us much wiggle room for loading the camper. The Cortez was the clear winner.
There were no RV dealers in the Chicago area that carried the Cortez campers, so we decided to drive to Cleveland OH to visit the factory where’s they are made. We scheduled an appointment and took a weekend drive. When we got there, we were surprised that there was no showroom. The person we scheduled the tour with was out of town when we arrived, but one of the engineers that worked on the campers was there. He let us in and showed us the campers that they were putting together for other orders. One model was BK (Big Kitchen) and had a nice layout with a big stove and big refrigerator. However the bed was small (only a double) and my head and feet would touch the sides when I layed down. They had a finished BB (Big Bed) model camper that was ordered by a dealer. He allowed us to check it out. It was fantastic. It had a King Sized bed! The kitchen was smaller with only a two burner stove and a small refrigerator, but that did not bother me as we usually cook outside and have no problem using coolers.
We had found our camper. We figured we would place an order and hopefully have it by mid summer. To our surprise, they offered to sell us the camper we had just toured. Apparently the dealer had been jerking them around on the price and he wanted to sell it to us instead. We could not say no, so we went home with a camper in tow.
Our new camper!
Two months earlier, my wife’s mother had passed and left us with a small inheritance. She must have been watching over us. The price of the camper was the same amount as the inheritance. Her French Canadian uncle would call her his little Bijoux, which meant “Little Jewel”. That became her nickname in life. It is now the name of our camper.
