And just like *that* . . . Bobbie is gone.

Suggested Prereading: Bobbie the Travel Trailer: An Adoption Story

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I admit it. I’m one of those people who tends to anthropomorphize inanimate objects. Not toothbrushes or toasters or garage door openers, but the big things—houses, cars, and certainly Bobbie. 

I feel a sense of guilt and loss whenever I sell one of these big ticket items. Even trading in my old Ford Fiesta (which elicited frequent declarations of “I am never buying another Ford!” the whole time I owned it) brought a teacup of sorrow. Heck, just sending Bobbie to winter camp each year tugs at my heartstrings a bit.

So imagine how I felt signing over the title, officially making Bobbie someone else’s adopted son. Even depositing the cashiers check—an experience that would normally thrill my Inner Saver—brought me no joy. We always knew Bobbie was our “starter camper,” and as soon as we put money down on Bobbie 2.0, that sense of finality intensified. But now that we’ve emptied him of all our worldly camping goods, given him a good clean, and shaken hands with the buyer, I find I’m feeling rather sad.

Will Bobbie miss me, too?

Although our first trip with Bobbie was a “practice trip” to a campground in southern Minnesota, and our final trip—fittingly— was also in our home state, Bobbie’s main function was to help us escape the Midwest.

California’s Lassen Volcanic National Park

Our first “real trip” with the travel trailer brought us to Colorado—the first of many “Bobbie trips” to the Rocky Mountain State—and it was this travel adventure that would cement my love for both our little home on wheels and the town of Leadville.

He accompanied us to both of the husband’s Ironman races, helped us decide against the Oregon coast as a retirement location, and reinforced the idea that we never want to be “cabin people.” He taught us that the US Southwest in summer is no place to camp if you don’t have air conditioning (advice we’ve ignored more than once) and gave us the means to make quick overnight sleeping stops free of charge in Walmart parking lots across the western US (classy!).

So happy, not because he’s almost finished with his 140.6-mile race, but because his aching body won’t have to sleep in a tent.

He gave us a comfortable spot to lay our heads at night or collapse after a strenuous hike, offered a cozy refuge from rain and mosquitoes, and kept us warm and snug on cold nights in the mountains. He provided a place for the husband to cook up comfort food and helped us avoid midnight runs in our jammies to campground toilets, which often have a multi-digit entry code that’s nearly impossible to recall when you’re half asleep and your bladder’s about to burst.

Inspiration

Salvation

Equally important as all that, Bobbie enabled us to wake up in some pretty spectacular locations, and we don’t even boondock (yet).

So here we are . . . Bobbieless for the first time in 12 years, the hole in my heart matched in size only by the empty spot in the driveway where our little guy should be. We’ll remain in this sorry state for over two more years until Bobbie’s successor is finally ready for adoption. In the meantime, we’ve got some international travel planned for all the summers between now and then when we could’ve road tripped with Bobbie, and the buyers only live 11 miles away. We hit it off with them instantly and they’ve already extracted a promise from the husband that he’ll help with winterization and be available for questions as needed. In fact, I predict we’ll become friends with these people, which means maybe this isn’t goodbye after all. And even if it is, I feel happy knowing Bobbie’s gone to a good home.

Thanks for the memories, Bobbie.❤️

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Sad postscript:

We sold Bobbie a week before our trip to Europe was to begin and I wrote this post shortly before we left. However, in the midst of our travels, we got word from Bobbie’s new parents that a horrible storm had ravaged their city, felling a giant oak in their yard that crashed onto their home and into Bobbie, totalling him. Intuiting that we had an emotional bond with our camper, the buyers thoughtfully spared us the grisly photos they’d taken for the insurance claim, and revealed the news to us as delicately as possible. We are very sad about this turn of events, and also sympathize with them as they had been searching for just the right camper for over a year and were unabashedly thrilled to find Bobbie.

They suggested that maybe Bobbie was not meant to be with anyone else but us, and I must admit, we kind of like to think that, too.

Whatever the meaning behind the terrible and undeserved destruction of our little friend, he’s now in camper heaven and we are left behind, shedding a few tears, but also remembering the good times.

Rest in peace, Bobbie. ❤️