By Stephanie Abbajay

Mileage: 4,800. Hours of driving: 88. Number of days gone: 21. Number of states: 9. Number of furniture shows: 2. Number of people in a tiny camper: 4. Number of tire blowouts: 2. Number of meltdowns: 1 really big one (and it was me). Experience? Priceless.

I know many of you have waited with bated breath to hear how our family vacation/business trip worked out, and, upon our safe return, I can say that it was a blast. Honestly. There was just the one really big meltdown, outside Zion National Park one week into the trip. Things has actually been going great, but something set me off and I think I had to get the stress out of my system, the whole sleeping in a camper in very close quarters with the whole family, being with my children every single hour of every single day (yea, yea, precious moments and all, but come on!), no privacy, going to bed in 70-degree weather and waking up in 32-degree weather, showering with strangers, not having Internet or cell phone service, dirty feet, worrying about bears and snakes, etc.

Post-hissy fit (which I have to admit lasted for several hours), the family was sufficiently cowed and wonderfully compliant, and the last two weeks were blissful.

This three-week trip was the brainchild of Dave Stine, who had two furniture shows out west (Park City, Utah and Jackson Hole, Wyoming) and bought a camper so we could all go along. Dave was no doubt inspired by my own family’s expansive vacation adventures. My father loved the West, and he would pack the four kids and our Mom into the family wagon and we would head west for six weeks or so. We kids hated it at the time, but now regale all who will listen with stories of our wonderful Western adventures. Like the time Bobby pushed me off a cliff at Mt. Rushmore, or we left Mary at a gas station in Ames Iowa, or I dropped my glasses in a buffalo dung in Wyoming, or my parents hightailing it down a mountain in Montana after running into a bear cub. Good times.

My father was an indulgent patriarch. He would drive hundreds of miles out of the way to take us to see the childhood home of Laura Ingalls Wilder, or the Corn Palace, or Wall Drug, or the World’s Largest Ball of String, or Hell’s Half Acre, or Mystery Spot, or any other bizarre or esoteric site we wanted to see. He also gave us money to blow on stupid trinkets, like stuffed Jack-a-lopes, fake tomahawks, straw cowboy hats and the like. When I was 12, my cowboy hat blew off my head and into the unreachable recesses of Bryce Canyon. Two weeks ago, Willa and I were standing on nearly the same spot and her cowboy hat blew off into the canyon. It was a weirdly precious moment.

Dave Stine was a terrific helmsman for our trip, though less indulgent that my father. No Mystery Spots for us. Dave’s all business. He took us from show to show, from campsite to campsite, from park to park. We are not meanderers. When we had two huge blowouts, his days of driving a wrecker in Pennsylvania came to bear, and he changed the shredded truck tires with swiftness and ease (20 minutes each time!). We had the truck, a slide in camper and pulled a trailer full of furniture. It was a peaceful journey, in large measure because interaction with the kids was kept to a minimum while driving: The kids stayed in the camper while I rode up front with Dave. Whenever we heard screams or crashes from the back, we simply drew the curtain and turned up Howard Stern. What we didn’t know didn’t hurt us.

Our camper was not then envy of the campground. Quite the opposite. It is a very small slide-in, 7 feet wide by 13 feet long. And it was made in 1993. Every place we stayed it was far and away the smallest and the oldest. I think Dave had camper envy by the end of the trip. We camped next to giant, luxury RVs, or Mack trucks and giant busses that had been turned into campers. These things had satellite and big screen TVs, gourmet kitchens, custom cabinets, screened in porches, two levels and were as big as the average American home. Most were pulling Suburbans, Range Rovers or Hummers. And they cost about $800,000. Ours? Not so much. But we liked our little camper.

I wasn’t sure how I would handle camping. I am not, by nature, a camper. The great outdoors isn’t so great when you sleep on the ground and you feel dirty the whole time. And there are limits to intimacy. But vacationing in a camper, even a tiny one like ours, was really fun. It was charming, like playing house. If you have little kids and a willing spouse, I highly recommend it. The key is to set down rules, establish protocol, keep your feet clean, and pitch a fit early on to set everyone straight. The question isn’t, can you live with your family for three weeks in a 7 x 13 space? No, it’s, why not try it?