With the snow melting it's easier to see some of the carnage both around and on the house left behind by yesterday's Spring snowstorm.

There are some things that I really liked about the bronco. Well, not so much about the bronco specifically, but truck campers in general. And some of the things that I enjoyed the most were....

The mobility.... What I would normally do towing the Arctic fox  to a new location was stay at an RV Park or a State Park for a night, unhitch the truck and drive around the area looking for boondocking sites. It's usually not wise to pull a 30-foot trailer down a dirt road that you've never been on before looking for a place to camp. But with a truck camper on, I can go most anyplace that the truck will go by itself, so I no longer worry about things like that.

It's better than a tent.... A couple of summers ago, before I bought the bronco, you may remember, I bought a tent with the intention of using a tent to go camping just like I did in the old days. Unfortunately, it didn't take long to remember why I stopped sleeping in a tent 30 years ago.

 They have made great strides in tent building, and it's amazing how high-tech some of them are, and how fast you can put them up. But despite that, they all have the same old problem... There a tent. They've always been a cold, uncomfortable, drafty, leaky, grizzly bear magnet. And no matter how bad the bronco is, it's still better than sleeping in a tent.

The truck gets pretty good fuel mileage with the bronco on the back. I was getting sixteen, seventeen miles to the gallon on average, which is five or seven MPG better than I get pulling the Arctic Fox. I'm sure I wont get mileage that good with a hard-sided truck camper since the front will be taller, and I'll be pushing more wind. But it won't be nearly as tall as the Arctic Fox is, and the weight in the bed will probably be about the same. so I  hope I will only lose a couple of MPG with a normal-size truck camper in the bed.

Two or three times in my travels this winter I can recall being in a situation, maybe it was road repairs, or a blocked street, or maybe I just turned somewhere I shouldn't have and I can recall saying to myself.... "I sure am glad I'm not towing the trailer right now." And it only takes a few situations like that to show me how stress-free my travels are without a trailer behind me.

Theboondork

Cold miserable Iris, trying to survive in a frozen alien world devoid of heat or warmth.

Looks like I should've stayed gone for another week or so. In Colorado the Spring is my least favorite time of year, and this is the reason, it was 90° day before yesterday and now it's snowing. And spring snow is heavy wet snow that's hard to shovel, breaks the limbs off of trees, and my solar panels hate it.

While they were fresh in my mind, I jotted down a few things about how I felt dealing with the bronco last winter. I'm sure these aren't things that everyone would think is a problem with the bronco, but after spending six months living in it, these are some of the things that stuck in my mind enough to bother me.

I can't stand up when putting away the groceries after shopping at Walmart.....  not wanting to put up the top at Walmart, I have to put away the groceries while crawling in the bronco on my hands and knees to get to the refrigerator. Not a deal-breaker, but it isn't very pleasant, and I'm sure it will be even less fun as I get older.

I can't spend time in it just to relax for a few minutes... It's hard to go into the bronco and relax for just a few minutes while driving somewhere, and the top is down. There's no place to sit because my bedding is piled on the sofa.

Cant keep it warm in the cold.... There are just too many air leaks in the bronco, and of course, the canvas sides aren't much in the way of insulation either, so as soon as I turn the heater off, it starts getting cold really quick.

Canvas is noisy on a windy day.... Yeah, the wind blowing the canvas is annoying, and the harder it blows, the more annoying it gets.

Not fun putting the top up and down .... This is a no-brainer. I grew tired of putting the top up and down even before I started living in the bronco, and it didn't get any more fun doing it for a few months. I can live with many things, but putting the top up and down is a dealbreaker for me.

Tucking in the canvas.... Some pop-up campers are designed so that the canvas automatically folds in when you put the top down; the bronco engineers never gave that any thought whatsoever, so I have to walk around the bronco poking the canvas in with a stick.

Not much storage room for a full-timer to live in; it's really a weekend camper.... Most of my complaints go away if you're only going somewhere for a few days. But it was never meant to be lived in, so I can't fault it for being unable to do what it was never designed to do.

Refrigerator too small.... The fridge might not be too small; maybe a full-timer carries too much food;

The bed is hard to get in and out of; and it will probably get worse.... Yeah, the bed is pretty darn high, and climbing up into it takes some practice. I can do it, but there is room for error which could be catastrophic. And something tells me getting older will make the problem worse, not better. But that's going to be an issue with any truck camper.

Too much stuff to move to put the top down.... I wondered why I didn't have so many problems with my Hallmark pop-up truck camper. But I finally figured out that I didn't have to disassemble my bed and throw it all on the sofa to put the top down. Instead, the top went down on the Hallmark with all the bedding in place.

Leveling up takes too long.... Getting the bronco level enough for the refrigerator to work efficiently takes too much time and effort. This could be solved with an AC refrigerator, or stay in Quartzsite all the time, where the land is pretty flat, and often no leveling is necessary.

Those things gave me some problems this winter in the desert, but not everything was terrible; there were some very good things about living in the bronco, which I will talk about tomorrow.

Theboondork

My daughter's neighborhood. In a lot of places late May could be considered summer, but in the Colorado Rockies;  not so much.

And speaking of broken limbs, my daughter's trees had more than their share. And see that huge limb on the right side hanging over the house? That was a real concern, if it broke its big enough that it would damage the house.

I've lived in the bronco long enough that I can read it's tiny little mind, and it's thinking; please send me back to the desert!

My grandson. There wasn't much time for picture taking today, there was a lot of cleanup going on.

It's either been a long, long, time since I've cleaned my camera lens or it's snowing like a bat in Denver.

 The fact that I could live in the bronco for six months doesn't necessarily mean that I always want to live that way, but it does mean that I can live that way if I want to, but hopefully, I won't have to.

I've thought of various ways to make life better for myself while staying highly mobile, including fixing the problems with the bronco so it would be more livable. But other than a major overhaul which would include building walls where the canvas is and turning it into a hard-sided camper, it sounds like way too much work. And usually, homemade campers look pretty ugly no matter how skilled the builder is.

So it seems like buying another slide-in truck camper, but a hard-sided truck camper this time makes the most sense because I loved the ability to go places I never would've considered going with the Arctic Fox, and I didn't miss all the added space that the Arctic Fox has.

When I first walked back into the Arctic Fox yesterday, it was like walking into an apartment I had so much room, but instead of thinking how great it was to have all this room to move around in, my first thought was; why do I need all the space? And the answer appeared to be; to carry around all the stuff that I don't really need anymore. And coming to that realization made it clear to me that the Arctic Fox, which I dearly love, was way more RV than I needed in my current lifestyle... To be continued

Theboondork

Yes I still have a grandson, but he was in school while I was taking pictures. Tomorrow will be his turn.