Surprise! Let’s go to Idaho

Last year, we went camping for the first time since off-roading, and we quickly remembered why we love camping! We also remembered why tent camping can be a pain. So, we looked at getting a trailer last year, and it didn’t really work out.

Fast forward to this year, and we are feeling cooped up again and want to get outside!!

While you can camp here during the summer, the fire restrictions suck. Don’t get me wrong, they are 1000% justified, but camping without a fire just doesn’t do it. That means, best case, you are camping during the winter, but it does get a little cold, so having a heater would be a big help.

We are also exploring reverse snow-birding (more to come on that soon!), so we could camp wherever we travel to during the summer.

All of this means we randomly decided to check out what used trailers were available near us and in Idaho, knowing that we would be driving through in a few weeks.

During our research last year, we knew that we needed a pop-up to fit the weight limit of our beloved BMW X5. In addition, we knew that we wanted a high-wall pop-up so there would be a black tank for the bathroom and a little more storage space instead.

So, of course, we found exactly what we were looking for, at a great price… in Utah.

To be clear, this random search occurred on Thursday, 5/28. Because the price was really good and we were heading into Memorial weekend, we were nervous that it wouldn’t last a month for us to drive through in July.

Friday, we called the dealer to make sure everything checked out, and it did. So we prepped all the documents and information we could over the phone, and we hit the road!

Since we had to go to Draper, UT, to finish the purchase and pick up the trailer, we figured we would take advantage of the long weekend and visit Idaho Falls for Memorial.

Naturally, we didn’t tell anyone we were coming. 🤣

Saturday, we hit the dealer as early as we could. We got everything signed and checked out a trailer (I mean, I guess… if we have to… but we were buying this one way or another!)

So we are now the happy owners of this 2019 Forest River HW277! We learned that they have stopped making the high-walls, and this is the second largest pop-up there is.

Once we were loaded up, we hit the road to surprise our parents!

We got into Idaho Falls around 5 or 6, and a quick Google check confirmed they were at home. Then a subtle call made sure they were at home playing Guild Wars before we knocked on their door. Dang video doorbell ruined it a bit, but the surprise was still worth it.

Next, we surprised Nathan’s parents, which was somewhat funnier as his mom thought we started our summer vacation early. We had to sadly say no, this was just a bonus trip.

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Once the boring parts of buying something and the fun of the surprise were past, we ended up having an amazing weekend in Idaho Falls!

We are already excited to spend the month of July there, and Memorial Weekend turned out to be a beautiful weekend that just made us want to stay all the more.

Saturday night, we had dinner with both parents at Red Robin and had fun catching up. Then we spent the evening chatting over the fire pit. Don’t look too close! This was unplanned and my mom and I were already ready for bed 😄.

The next morning, we had breakfast at O’Brady’s. Which was delicious as always. Plus, we ran into my uncle, Matt, there too – gotta love small towns!

After that, we took a walk around the river, which fits perfectly into Nathan’s and my routine of about 3 miles of walking a day.

Knowing we needed to spread our time out, we made our way over to the Weils’ for the afternoon and dinner. We had a lovely visit, chatting and talking about some of the things we could help with when we were there for a longer period of time in July.

Monday came way too soon, but I don’t think we could have planned for a more perfect Sunday. Thankfully, our drive home was uneventful. Surprisingly little traffic for Memorial Weekend.

This trip turned out to be a perfect getaway, and now we have a trailer to enjoy even more of them!

Yay for being spontaneous!! 😜