In 1986 my wife (Christine) and I decided to enhance our camping pleasures by updating to a “popup” camper. We had been camping with our sleeping bag and tent tied to our motorcycle. We saw some folks with a popup, and that seemed to be the way to go. We bought a used 1982 Jayco popup and thought we were in hog heaven. We couldn’t wait to take it out the next weekend. We headed towards the Blue Ridge Parkway and found a real nice campground with a beautiful rushing creek. We selected a real nice site with the creek in the background. That’s when the fun begin! Keep in mind that neither one of us had ever had any popup experience.
I backed our precious popup into a site, unhooked our truck, and everything seemed to be going great. We cranked up the top just like we knew what we were doing. I told Christine to go in and push the ends out. When she pushed out the back end, it tipped down and started to roll. Unfortuntately, it was rolling down the bank towards the creek. This was about a six to eight feet embankment, and the situation did not look good. Christine was screaming and I was just trying to stop it from rolling. I finally did manage to get it turned just enough to stop it from rolling into the creek. What a nightmare!
After that, we realized that we were suppose to have set the four corner jacks up, to keep it from moving. Also, I should not have unhooked it from the truck until we did this. After this first experience, we did enjoy several more weekend camping trips until we finally moved up to a 24 foot travel trailer. I’m not sure this should be classified as our “favorite” RV memory, but it surely was one of our most memorable.
Submitted by Jerry Vite of Blue Ridge Parkway, NC as a part of the RV Centennial Celebration “Share Your Favorite RV Memory” contest.
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