Gotta love the Canadian 🍁 camper van builders!

I mentioned in my first blog post that I’m approaching six decades of earthly living & over 50 years of accumulative, camping experiences. My parents bought our first Banner travel trailer in 1970 when my baby sister was two years old. I remember her soft skin getting attacked by mosquitoes. Her yelling: “Daddy…skitters bite me!”. Poor kid swelled up like a red balloon. Years later, I discovered female mosquitoes (the biters) love O positive blood🩸My entire birth family (all 6 of us) have this blood type. Research has found that people with Type O blood are almost twice as attractive to mosquitoes than those with Type A blood; Type B people were in the middle. Source: https://www.verywellhealth.com/reason-mosquitoes-bite-some-people-more-others-4858811

Growing up in Ohio, my parents often traveled to pristine, well-stocked, Canadian lakes to camp & fish. Canadians also maintained a great reputation for RV, travel trailer, & van conversions. The states of Michigan, Illinois, Indiana, and Ohio love selling campers with interiors manufactured or built in Canada 🇨🇦. Customer satisfaction is important to them.

Let me introduce you to a Canadian company (in Quebec) called Freeway Camper Kit. They sell pre-made, camper conversion kits for many types of vehicles. The one I particularly like is a Weekender kit called Nanaimo, especially designed for Dodge Caravans & Chrysler Town & Country vans.

https://www.freewaycamperkit.com/en/nanaimo/

Call it karma or bad luck, but I have spent the past 5 days suffering from relentless mosquito bites. They seem particularly bad this year from all the rain. Ohio corn crops were head tall…beyond the “Knee high by Fourth of July” seasonal expectations. Central Ohio resembles wet Hawaii, with cooler temperatures. It rains so often here, most people don’t need lawn sprinklers. But I digress. I keep an older 2010 Chrysler Town & Country passenger van inside my Ohio condo garage. It pulls a family boat with its 3.8 liter, V6 engine. Used vehicles with over 100K miles, (especially passenger & cargo vans) have skyrocketed in price due to current vehicle part shortages & higher demands for used vehicles. Source: https://www.cnn.com/2021/07/16/success/prices-for-used-cars-with-over-100000-miles-feseries/index.html

Family members have nicknamed my Chrysler van with 125K miles “Bubba”. They like to borrow “Bubba” to haul items, move furniture, go to nearby lakes & garage sales. No one wants me to sell “Bubba” in 2021.

I almost purchased a Freeway raw wood conversion kit for $1200 USD, not including the $150 shipping fee to Ohio. Of course, it’s currently on back order and not available until September 2021. The Nanaimo kit looks the easiest to install as a Weekender package: https://youtu.be/Bfd4uNVAYtE

Initially, I thought I’d love to drive the 1200 mile round-trip in my Ram Promaster City camper van from North Carolina to Ohio when visiting family 3-4 times per year. However, the 1200 mile round trip is already getting old & tiresome. So I’ve decided to keep “Bubba” and covert it to a part-time camper van to use at Ohio state parks, local campsites, on ski trips, and Amish shopping adventures.

If you have an older Dodge Caravan, Chrysler Town & Country, Honda Element, Toyota Sienna, Ford Transit Connect, etc. you might want to consider the Canadian Freeway kits which look better than most DIY builds on a budget! Freeway uses raw or stained birch wood for their kits. They are reasonable priced, modular, and can be easily installed & disassembled when not camping or living in your vehicle.

https://m.youtube.com/c/FreewayCamperKitYourRoadtripexpert/videos