Latest Project/Improvement

Ever since we bought this camper, I have known about a cubby hole in the left rear corner. However, access was in the closet, right down near the floor through a small door. It was next to impossible to really access this storage space. One really had to get down on their hands and knees just to see what was in there. For this reason, we never used it.

I finally decided to do something about it. For several years, I thought about cutting a hole in the outside of the camper and installing a door. So, a few days ago, I got around to ordering a door. I did my best to take some measurements to figure out what size door would work the best and found that a 14 X 18 inch door would work the best. I took some more measurements to try and center the door front to back in the compartment. I then drilled a hole from the inside where I wanted one of the corners to be and then went outside to mark out the size of the hole. I marked it all out with tape, made some more measurements and then, with great trepidation, started cutting into the side of the camper.

Below, you will see the results of that cut. As you can see, the door to access this from the inside is very small compared to the size of the compartment.



The next step was to frame in the opening by inserting wood all the way around the opening. I didn't need to do much across the top, but the rest of it all need to be framed in. As can be seen below, I am all set up to cut some wood and frame it in. I used some scrap 2X2 I had laying around the garage, because the space between the inside wall and outside wall was 1 1/2 inches. After cutting to the correct length, I then used my air stapler to attach the wood, both outside and inside.

After getting it framed in, I then cleaned up the inside of the compartment. Since it never saw any use, it was full of spider webs and a lot of dust and such on the floor. Below, you can see the hole all framed in and the compartment all cleaned up.



The next step was to install the door. Below, you can see the door laying on my portable workbench. I had to run some caulking tape all the way around the edge before I could install the door. After doing that, I then installed the door and screwed it down with my battery powered drill/driver.

And, TADAAAAAAAA, here is the final result. It has a key lock installed, so it will be semi-secured. We plan on storing the small propane bottles, some blocks of wood (I use those under the jacks when raising and lower the camper) and the trailer stabilizer jacks that I use when setting the camper on the ground. We will have to see what else might fit in there once we start using it.

Springer Fishing

Hi all;

It has been a while since I put anything on here, so I thought I would put up something that I did recently with Kevin and a couple of friends from work. I was invited by one of my friends from work to go fishing for "Springers" (Spring Chinook) with him down on the Columbia River. We drove down on Thursday afternoon and spent the night in Clatskanie, OR. Early the next morning, we drove down to Vancouver, WA, launched the boat and proceeded to go fishing.

Here are the other three getting the bait ready for the day of fishing, and getting the poles ready. On the left is the boat owner, Doug. Gotta tell ya, he is a master fisherman, he knows what he is doing. Next is another driver, Dave. And then, on the right, is Kevin.

These are the two fish that were pulled into the boat. I got the one on the left and Kevin got the one on the right. When we were ready to start, Doug told us to drop our lines to the bottom. Before he had a chance to get his line in the water, my pole started bouncing real hard. Not really knowing what the bottom of the river was like, I asked Doug is that was the bottom causing the bouncing. He yelled that I had a fish on. Sure enough, I had a fish. About 1 minute after dropping the line, I had a fish. Guesstamite was around 11 to 12 pounds. At this rate, I figured we would only be on the water for a hour or two. Wrong!!!! It took about 2 hour or so for the other fish to be hooked and then pulled in by Kevin.

Here are the two of us holding our respective fish.

When we got home late Friday evening, we did the cleaning of our fish, bagged all the entrails and heads and stored them in the freezer to keep them from smelling. On Saturday, we proceeded to process the fish. They were cut up into steaks and then vacuum-sealed in bags and frozen.

We did have some of the steaks the following weekend, and I gotta tell ya, I don't think I have ever tasted better tasting fish. They were laid on foil with slices of lemon and onion on top, with a dash of lemon pepper sprinkled on top. Then the foil was sealed around them and baked in the oven till done. It was DELICOUS!!!!!!