Fifty minutes. That's how long it took the four of us to set up the camper the first time, at Long Pine Key on Saturday afternoon, with the setup card on the picnic table and a family two sites down watching from their camp chairs like it was a ball game. For comparison, our dome tent takes us about 15.
It was worth every minute. Here's how our camper's first trip went over Presidents' Day weekend, and the list of everything we forgot.
The drive and the setup
On Valentine's Day morning we hitched up in the side yard, stopped at Robert Is Here in Homestead for milkshakes ($30, a tradition the camper is not allowed to change) and towed the 45 or so flat miles to Long Pine Key. On flat ground the Pilot barely seemed to notice the camper, though the gas gauge did. Gas for the whole trip came to $26.
Long Pine Key has no hookups, which is how we wanted our first trip: no AC to lean on and no power cord to figure out. Just the camper's new battery for the lights and the Jackery for phones and the fan.
Setup went roughly like this, with Maya reading each step aloud from the laminated card the sellers gave her:
- Back in, chock the wheels, unhitch. (Ten minutes, mostly because I backed in twice.)
- Level front to back with the tongue jack. Dana held the level and called out bubbles.
- Lower the four corner stabilizers.
- Crank the roof up. Forty-some turns, with a squeak around turn 30 that we've decided is normal.
- Pull out both bed ends and set the support poles.
- Set the door, pull the canvas into place and snap and Velcro everything down.
- Carry in the bins.
Nico, our kindling manager, spent the entire 50 minutes gathering pine twigs and lining them up by the fire ring in order of size.
The first night
The low was 57. The frogs started up in the pines right after sunset, the same chorus we've heard here since our first trip in 2023, and for the first time it came to us through canvas instead of tent nylon. It sounds closer, somehow.
Dinner was simple: Cuban sandwiches in the pie irons, a bag of chips and, because it was Valentine's Day, a small heart-shaped box of Publix chocolates that Dana and I split after the kids went to bed. We sat at the dinette with the battery lantern between us and talked in low voices while two kids rustled behind a curtain at the other end. That's new. In the tent, bedtime meant all four of us lying down at 9 whether we were tired or not.
Everyone slept up on real mattresses with nothing slowly leaking under them. Dana woke up warm, which in February counts as a small miracle. Around 2 a.m. something scratched at the cooler outside, almost certainly a raccoon, and Maya whispered from behind her curtain, "Is it the bread raccoon?" It was not. That raccoon would be retired by now.
Sunday, and everything we forgot
The new griddle's first big job was Sunday breakfast, 14 pancakes at once plus a strip of bacon Nico insisted on parking in the corner. Café con leche from Marisol's cafetera came off the camper's own stove, which felt fancy. Then we drove over to the Anhinga Trail, gave the boardwalk talk in the car and counted nine alligators and more anhingas drying their wings than Maya could keep track of, though she tried.
Here's what we forgot, now taped inside a cabinet door:
- A small broom. Pine needles and sand go everywhere on a camper floor.
- A long lighter. The stove inside the camper wants one.
- The kids' pillows. They used rolled-up sweatshirts and complained about it all weekend.
- Filling the fresh water tank at home. We had jugs, so it didn't matter, but it's on the list.
- A fly swatter. Nobody tells you how many flies come in through an open camper door.
- Dish towels, and a mat for the door step.
The trip came to $192 in the trip log: $50 for the site, $26 for gas, $48 in groceries, $30 at Robert Is Here, $8 in ice and $30 for Pickles' sitter.
Takedown on Monday took 35 minutes, and the canvas was bone dry when we folded it in, which matters more to me than any setup time. Maya added a line to the bottom of the laminated card in dry-erase marker: "Goal: 40 minutes." I think we'll beat it.
