How it all started

We met as camp counselors at a YMCA camp in Connecticut and tent camped for years before having children.  Children added another dimension, not so compatible with tent camping so we “moved up” to a pop-up camper for many years and trips, including a 73 day trek with two pre-adolescent children to ‘do’ the national park circuit.  What a great summer that was!  And, it felt like an hors d’oeuvre to our future.

The children grew up, flew the coop, and we ‘lost’ camping for other vacation opportunities.  But there always lingered a desire to go back to the roots of where it all began.

About 4 years ago, we went to the Hershey RV show to look at truck campers.  We thought that’s what we would want for our eventual return to traveling the outdoors.  Our goal was to be ‘nimble’ on the road using a basic unit with few unnecessary frills.   We wanted to go out all day to play, hike, explore, experience, then return to a safe simple home to crash.  It would be more about the traveling, and less about the staying.   As it turned out, our old bones didn’t like crawling up into a platform bed, and the lack of space for golf clubs and other gear trashed the truck camper idea.  So we wandered aimlessly around the show, searching for a more perfect vehicle.

We stumbled into the Leisure Travel Vans display and fell in love with the Unity twin bed unit.  We loved the creative floor plan which would have worked very well for two people.  The unit was petite at 24’6” – really no bigger than a truck camper.  Fortunately we weren't ready to buy.  We still had several years between us and retirement … time to learn what we needed to know in order to make the right decision for us.

Let the research begin!  We poured over floor plans, specs, blogs, brochures, web-postings and we learned so much.  The next year at the RV show, we had an Excel spreadsheet and many questions for each manufacturer.   Our friends laughed at the visual; “Oh No!”- Here come the folks with the spreadsheet!!”
We persisted until we understood all we thought we needed to know in order to make our buying decision.  The two driving factors in the end were; 1) ease of servicing the unit anywhere USA/Canada, and 2) great cargo carrying capacity.  The choices fell into two chassis categories – Sprinter or not Sprinter (mostly Ford).  Sprinter based RV’s didn't meet the two requirements and smaller Fords came the closest.

We studied every single manufacturer and finally selected a Lazy Daze 27 foot mid-bath with twin beds in the rear.  The unit is exceptionally well made, has magnificent windows to see what we’re out there to see,  is not loaded up with unnecessary bells and whistles (which are subject to malfunction), and has a sensible floor plan.  The twin beds in the back can easily be configured into a king, and with the forward dining area, the relatively short unit offers two separate ‘places to be’.  Perfect for us, who have different sleep schedules and often enjoy different forms of entertainment.

Funny how things work out.  Lazy Daze did not have a unit or a representative at the Hershey show.  We had to do our own research, set our own priorities and find Lazy Daze on our own.  We pick up our unit in May.  Can't wait !