Years of calculated preparation have led us to this moment! We bought a bigger truck a few years ago and paid it off, then sold our pull-behind camper last year and started saving money for the day we’d find a decent deal on a Northern Lite truck camper.

And that day has come!

Welcome to our new 2022 Northern Lite 9-6 LE!

We found a decent enough price on one that looked brand new in Kamloops, British Columbia, which is a really, really long distance from here. But since everything is a long way from here, the difference in a 3 or a 4 day drive felt irrelevant. Jeff was ready and willing to go for a week long drive so we put down a deposit and he packed a bag and a bunch of snacks and prepped his truck for its next job!!

We thought it was a 2021, so the deal was even better when the paperwork arrived and it was actually a 2022!

And it really seems either incredibly well cared for, or just barely ever used. It looks practically brand new!

Now, we loved our trailer. It felt so much like a cottage. It had a bathtub and shower and couch. But where we live, pulling a trailer around on our rough rocky roads is so hard on it. It is beat by rocks, the axles take a killing (we had to replace them), and by using the truck hitch for the trailer, we were unable to also bring our boat trailer or a trailer with our ATVs. As we realized this over the years, migrating to a truck camper makes us so much more adaptable. We can just leave it packed with our essentials and easily (we hope?) get it loaded in the truck and head out for adventure.

Of course, though, it is much smaller inside than our trailer.

But the essentials are there! A queen bed. A bit of storage. A decent sized table (that converts to a bed). An oven and stove top. Pretty big fridge and freezer.

A tiny little wet bath.

It has two propane tanks, two batteries, and two solar panels up top to charge the batteries!

Jeff drove all the way down to Kamloops to pick it up. He left here on a Friday after work, and arrived in Kamloops on Monday afternoon. We booked him hotels in advance in Whitehorse, Fort Nelson, and Prince George along the way. This nicely prevented him from driving all day and night, like he has done before.

He sent pictures along the way of bison, caribou, and deer. I stayed behind to keep the home fire burning (literally, the wood stove), and to watch the pets. (Thank goodness I stayed home because the day after he left, Sally, our elderly cat, started failing. More on that later. She’s still with us, but is actively, and thankfully peacefully, passing away. ☹️ )

In Kamloops, it took them a few hours to install the necessary brackets to the truck frame to tie down the camper, and to give Jeff a tour of it and show him the features. Here it is loaded up at the RV dealership:

Then he turned around and headed back home!

He left around noon on Tuesday and was here on Thursday night.

Our friend Tim is lending us the space in his yard to store it on, so Jeff doesn’t have to drive around full-time with it loaded up.

It has power jacks with a wireless remote so you can lift it up and down fairly effortlessly, so we were able to get it offloaded while we wait for spring and our first adventure!

Jeff slept in it for a couple nights along the highway on the way home. He wished he had stopped an hour before bedtime to fire up the furnace because it is pretty cold inside at -20°C until it warms up. But he was so tired from driving, he just crawled under some warm blankets and fell asleep.

Now, the downside.

We thought we had this incredibly well-planned and executed. However. Trucks have a payload capacity. Which is why we bought a Ford 350 Diesel crewcab long box. And which is why we looked for a light camper, but also one that is considered 4-season (probably just 3-season up here?) with a well-respected brand name that really retains its value (thanks to it being two pieces of molded fibreglass – less likely to leak!). (Also, Canadian made!)

However, the load capacity that Jeff thought his truck has – well the paperwork from his truck purchase agreement doesn’t match the door sticker, which is significantly less than he thought it was. And the fact that it is a diesel (far heavier than a gasoline engine), and has most of the bells and whistles, well those all add to the weight of the truck, which reduces the available weight capacity even more.

This means Jeff’s already mandating a short packing list with one plate each, one fork, one pair of pants, etc, so we don’t load it up with any more weight when we’re out adventuring.

In reality, it means we may need to look for another truck? Sigh. Fortunately, he said it rode quite well. He had also installed timbrens to his rear suspension (instead of air bags) before he went down, and thanks to the diesel engine the difference in fuel mileage with the camper loaded on the truck was very minimal. It really just is how comfortable are you being near or over the payload capacity of your truck? Switching to a dually would solve the issue (a truck with double wheels in the back) but that’s a lot of truck to be driving around when the camper isn’t loaded on it.

This purchase is part of our retirement plans too, allowing us to head south for winter trips out of the subarctic, or just to go camp by a lake somewhere and go fishing in the boat for a weekend. I can’t wait to tell you about a treasure hunt we’re hoping to do soon too!

Before all that though, this year I have a 3-month sabbatical from work. Jeff was able to take a month off work too, so we’re going to head out for a month of adventure this summer!!

We had hoped to visit Yellowstone and check that off my bucket list, but while the man in charge of the USA wants to economically destroy and seize our country, well I think we’d be better off just staying in Canada this year, so we’re looking at exploring more of interior BC and Vancouver Island. Maybe some of Alberta, depending on how fast the time flies by!

Do you have any favourite camping spots in western Canada that we should check out?