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    The Camper Book: A Celebration of a Moveable American Dream
    The Camper Book: A Celebration of a Moveable American Dream
    The Camper Book: A Celebration of a Moveable American Dream
    Ebook348 pages5 hours

    The Camper Book: A Celebration of a Moveable American Dream

    By Dave Hoekstra, Jon Sall and Jeff Daniels

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    About this ebook

    The Camper Book will captivate all those who dream of waving good-bye to the rat race from the window of their own moveable home, be it a camper, RV, travel trailer, camper van, or tiny camper. Not just for placid retirees anymore, camper culture has sprung up among simplicity-seeking millennials, retro-loving "glampers," sports and movie stars, aging hippies, contract workers, "road-schoolers," and others. Award-winning journalist Dave Hoekstra hit the road in his own custom camper van, named Bluebird, to explore the history, culture, subcultures, and future of camper life. Traveling and talking his way through US campsites, RV parks, landmarks, and communities, Hoekstra draws out revealing stories from all walks of life—from Americans who are downsizing material goods while upsizing spiritual pursuits to RV enthusiasts such as Grammy-winning singer-songwriter John Prine and Chicago Cubs manager Joe Maddon. A modern-day Studs Terkel, Hoekstra provides a delightful mix of oral history, in-depth reporting, and practical information, while photographer Jon Sall's beautiful color photographs illuminate the unique people, places, and rigs that typify camper life.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherChicago Review Press
    Release dateJun 1, 2018
    ISBN9781613738238
    The Camper Book: A Celebration of a Moveable American Dream

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      Book preview

      The Camper Book - Dave Hoekstra

      better."

      Spiritual Camping Flocks

      Author Dave Hoekstra finally reads the Bluebird owner’s manual at Camp Mi Casa in Carthage, Missouri.

      Mi Casa Es Su Casa on Route 66

      We began our American camper van journey on June 5, 2016, at the Route 66 Association Hall of Fame Museum in Pontiac, Illinois. That evening we landed at the St. Louis West Historic Route 66 KOA on Old Highway 66 in Eureka, Missouri. Everything was wrong with the Bluebird. The inverter did not work. We blew fuses. We couldn’t turn off the ceiling lights. We thought about getting a motel—on our first night. The whole project seemed like a bad idea. We spent much of the next day in Lebanon, Missouri, looking for mechanics and a Ford dealership.

      We found our footing that night on a rural stretch of Old Route 66 in Carthage.

      Like secrets from a distant dream, ghost buildings punctuate Old Route 66 on the drive from Springfield, Missouri, to Carthage (pop. 14,378), roughly seventy miles west. There are vacant shells of gas stations, forsaken tire shops, and crumbling general stores. Maybe a long time ago an attendant smiled as he pumped your gas. Or beads of sweat rolled down the cold bottle of RC Cola purchased from an upright pop machine.

      People came and went.

      Carthage was quite the thing. At the turn of the twentieth century, it was the capital of America’s marble industry because of its gray limestone mine. Wild West outlaw Belle Starr was from Carthage.

      A June 2016 drive through the tiny downtown finds the restored Boots Motel, a 66 legend, and a Springfield-style cashew chicken restaurant, a staple of the Ozarks. The 66 Drive-In Theatre can’t be missed coming out of the western end of Carthage. The drive-in opened in 1949 on a rural nine-acre field. This stretch of 66 took advantage of the post–World War II boom when Americans flocked to their cars.

      Camp Mi Casa owners Stephanie and Dale Garber spent time living in their trailer while building their dream campground.

      Suddenly, in the long shadows of the drive-in, something new emerges.

      It is fresh and modern retro.

      The young campground owner is on a roadside patio serving traditional Hawaiian snow cones with ice cream on the bottom. Kids and early-summer campers stand around her, patiently waiting for the sweet treat.

      Good things take time.

      Camp Mi Casa is a new year-round campground at 17601 Old Route 66 about three miles west of Carthage. The subtle Art Deco/Pueblo-designed space features thirty-five camping sites (twenty-five pull-throughs and ten back-ins). Camp Mi Casa opened on the site of the popular 1950s–60s Westgate Mobile Home Park. After the park closed, a wide-open biker bar called Los Amigos operated on the property in the 1970s. The grounds sat vacant after Los Amigos closed.

      We lived down the road and I’d drive by this place daily, says owner Stephanie Garber of Carthage on the morning after our visit to Camp Mi Casa. It was such a waste. There were squatters on the property. Trash was waist high from corner to corner. And I’m not exaggerating waist high.

      The couple broke ground in October 2014 and opened in August 2015. Terrible timing for an RV park, right? she asks. We had a handful of travelers coming through that were heading south. That ended about October. We sat with one or two campers November through February. Come March [2016] things picked up.

      Their dreams were coming to fruition.

      After the Garbers closed on the property, their preacher and church family came on-site to bless the space. The property had such bad history, she says. People have been stabbed here. Nancy Cruzan left the Los Amigos bar and had a serious car accident. Cruzan made national news in January 1983 after the accident. She was left in a vegetative state for eight years and died in December 1990 after the US Supreme Court ruled on her right to die. Cruzan was thirty-three years old.

      The Los Amigos Bar was a centerpiece of the February 2002 Operation Cocaine Cowboys drug bust, which uncovered cocaine, methamphetamines, and marijuana in different spots throughout Carthage. The Associated Press reported that at least forty-six people were arrested in Carthage and more than one hundred weapons were linked to one subject.

      Light always follows darkness. A bright 1969 turquoise-and-white Kit Companion camper trailer sits on a nearby hill. There are small beds on each end of the fifteen-foot camper, along with a refrigerator and stove. The Garbers lived in the trailer for six months as they finished their rebuild of the campgrounds.

      Stephanie and her husband, Dale, cooked up the campsite plan in 2000. She had worked in the banking industry and taught high school business in Golden City, northeast of Carthage. Dale is a full-time mechanic and tow truck operator who has owned his shop for twenty-five years. Everybody thought I was crazy, she says. Even Dale had his doubts about Camp Mi Casa.

      I was wondering what she was seeing because I didn’t see it, he says. But I do now.

      Dale is originally from Washington, Pennsylvania, outside of Pittsburgh. Stephanie was born in Jacksonville, Florida, but moved to the Carthage area during her childhood years to be nearer to family. The couple met through mutual friends and got married in 1992. Dale says, This is her vision. And I’m not afraid to follow her. She followed me.

      What brought Dale to a rural stretch of Route 66 on the Missouri countryside? Do you really want to know? he asks. I was running from the law. Stealing cars, nothing to hurt nobody. I came to Carthage when I was 17 to see my uncle and I never left. I was a kid without any guidance. Dale has the deep voice of Toby Keith. He looks at his wife in the distance and says, There’s my guidance, right there.

      Times could be tough—especially when living together in a fifteen-foot trailer.

      What is their advice for getting along in a tight spot?

      You stay busy so all you do is sleep in it, Stephanie answers with a laugh. With a coy smile, Dale adds, We got along just fine. Just like sixteen-year-olds.

      Camp Mi Casa owner Stephanie Garber.

      The Garbers bulldozed the land and kept just two buildings: the current bathrooms, which had been the previous trailer park’s laundry facility, and a vintage gas station that is now the front office. Anybody in this area knows this as the Los Amigos bar, Stephanie says. The bar was over on the concrete patio where we were playing pickleball [hybrid of tennis and Ping-Pong] last night. That’s how we derived our name and Spanish theme.

      The Garbers lived about a quarter mile from the site since 2000. When they opened up Camp Mi Casa, they sold their house and moved on-site. The Route 66 connection has attracted campers from Belgium, France, Scotland, and a Japanese tent camper who was doing Route 66 on his bicycle. The campgrounds have been reconstructed to accommodate large RVs, and in future summers Camp Mi Casa will host vintage travel clubs.

      Stephanie hired a seventy-year-old area sign maker to design the retro Camp Mi Casa sign with an inviting arrow. He hand cut each letter. The couple added an outdoor swimming pool and a covered pavilion with a fire pit. Our camping space was a bit muddy, which attracted mid-June mosquitoes, but the climate-controlled bathrooms were some of the cleanest we saw on our cross-country journey. They will stay that way, she says. You can come back ten years from now and they won’t be any different.

      American pride defines the Garbers’ work ethic. They have made Carthage a better place for campers and community. It was a beautiful piece of land that had been abandoned and abused for years, Stephanie says. The mobile home park was its glory years. This was where people raised their families. It was a wholesome environment. The last twenty years or so, not so much. I’d drive by and think, ‘What could somebody do with that?’ I never thought, ‘What could I do with that?’

      All in the Family at Coeur d’Alene

      Like the necklace of mid-June stars over northern Idaho, the connective spirit of American camping was clear at the Coeur d’Alene RV Resort. Everything came together. There were people on a family restoration project. There was the first of many traveling nurses I would meet in campgrounds across the United States. The Coeur d’Alene RV Resort was even within walking distance of a Walmart, the terminally happy place for campers.

      Campers at the Coeur d’Alene RV Resort were hopeful in the summer of 2016.

      The younger generation wants freedom, said Jodi Francis, who is traveling with her family and working full-time from her RV. Francis, fifty-one, looked over her shoulder at the family’s forty-three-foot Palomino Columbus 377 RV and said, "And this is four hundred square feet of freedom. Over there is a neighbor with two children and three dogs. They just went [camping] full-time and they are in their early

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