New Monday Series: My Pop Up Camper Dolly

Every Monday I’ll be sharing my journey to find and restore a 1985 Coleman Columbia pop-up! I’ll share different crafts I did along the way too. In this first post I’ll share how I changed tow vehicles, learned about tow capacity and weight ratings of campers and sources I used to find all that information. I’ll even end with my inspiring story of acquiring Dolly, my camper.

I loved camping as a little girl. There’s just something about that camping night life I can’t get enough of. The glow of the fire, the sweet smell of s’mores and the boundless stars above. I wanted to relive these moments so bad and it was only a matter of time until I was back out there camping again as an adult.

I found the Pop-Up Princess blog a few years back and I knew I found my people. The blog is a wonderful tool and highlights other people’s pop-up camper transformations. They turn ugly, outdated campers into these magazine drool worthy campers. Another source I found was Pop-Up Portal which had more help when it came to needing to fix things. My next step was to find an actual camper.

Except I realized my actual next step was to get a tow vehicle. I was driving a 2013 Dodge Dart at the time which had a tow capacity of 1,000 lbs – typical for a sedan. I work at a Chrysler/Dodge/Jeep/Ram dealer and knew it’d be a matter of time until a vehicle came in that I could trade out of my Dart and into a tow vehicle. I had my eye on a Jeep Grand Cherokee.

One day we got in a real old Jeep Grand Cherokee, it had like 110k miles on it and it was CHEAP. We don’t sell just any vehicle so if it passed the service inspection and was being sold on the lot I knew I could buy it with confidence. I spoke with my good friend Herman who is a sales person at the dealership and he knew that I was looking to upgrade into a tow vehicle but it would still need to be my daily driver. He suggested a low mileage 2015 Jeep Patriot we had also just got in on trade (13k miles!) and it was only a few thousand more. It didn’t have as high as a tow capacity as the JGC but it was still double the Dart and I could get closer to realizing my dream of having a camper. I test drove it and it was great! Not as many amenities as my Dart Limited but I had some extra cash saved and I could change out the radio and add a backup camera which I imagined would be important for hooking up my camper. We made a deal and I was driving the Patriot the next day! Now I could look for my camper.

Except pop-up campers are still kind of heavy. Who knew? I had a tow capacity of 2k lbs. I searched craigslist nearly everyday. (This was before Facebook Marketplace was a thing) I hadn’t made up my mind on a budget but I was more interested to see what was out there and how much it weighed. I learned on pop-up portal you don’t want to max out your towing capacity. So I didn’t want to end up with more than 1500 lbs towing behind me and that is a hard thing to find. You have to be careful when you’re looking at weight ratings – are you looking at dry weight or gross vehicle weight? The difference being dry weight is without things like water and propane added. Gross weight is all the things at their fullest added.

Most campers will have a sticker on them somewhere with this information and when browsing listings sometimes sellers will share this. You can also google as much as you know about the camper – say 1985 Coleman Columbia – and one of the top search results will be for a NADA website. This website is crazy helpful in weight ratings. If you are looking for a specific weight rating like I was, don’t be afraid to message the seller. They should know how much it weighs. A good rule of thumb that worked for me though was the larger the camper, or if it had slides, it was definitely too heavy for my weight restriction. I needed something small. Which was fine since it was just me and my husband!

After months of obsessive searches on RV Trader and Craigslist I pretty much knew what I could tow and what I could quickly not tow. Coleman had a line of campers from the 80’s and 90’s that were small and light and would pretty much do the job so when I saw those I knew they were keepers.

In late November 2016, there was a terrible fire in Gatlinburg, TN and I heard a news story about how Dolly Parton was giving money to families in the area for an extended period of time to help get them through those trying times. I thought it was so charitable and wonderful of her that I knew when I got my camper I wanted to name it Dolly.

Two weeks after that fire, I was dog sitting for my parents and I had just made up my mind on my budget for a camper. $2k was all I wanted to spend. If a camper needed a new canvas I would need to purchase a camper for less than $500. My parents had given me some money for watching their dogs, something like $400 for the week so I knew that could be the start to my, “Get Dolly fund.” That same week I was on Craigslist as usual and I expanded my search out to Columbus (I’m in Cincinnati) and I saw her. A 1985 Coleman Columbia pop up that weighed a whopping 900 lbs and was listed for $300. THREE HUNDRED DOLLARS? I HAD THAT MONEY! Problem was it was in Zanesville which was 3 hours away and my entire family was out of town. I’d have to take this trip alone. I asked my boss if I could leave early to buy a camper and he said absolutely! (He’s big into camping himself so he was all about my enthusiasm as I’d talk constantly about owning a camper one day) So after messaging with the seller and telling him not to sell it before I could get there I grabbed my money and some road snacks and off I went!

Once I arrived in Zanesville it was dark but the neighborhood was nice, the camper was set up and a quaint lamp was on inside. He also set up a little space heater so it wouldn’t be too cold when I was looking at it. I was so excited and ready to hand over my money I almost skipped important things like checking the mattresses, canvas, boards the mattresses were on, cabinets etc. When looking at a camper you want to get a checklist of things to look at to make sure you’re ready to fix things that might need attention. If the mattresses were old and worn out they’d need replaced. If there’s water damage you might have to replace the ceiling or floor. I’ll have a future post about all of this! I did manage to check out some things, it would need some work but overall, $300 was a steal to me!

I wasn’t able to drive it home that night because I didn’t have the right size hitch or ball – also important things you’ll need! But I left with the title and key and I had paid him for Dolly.

A week later my dad and I drove up to Zanesville to pick up Dolly. I’m really glad I took my McGyver dad with me because we weren’t able to keep the door to the camper closed, and the tires both needed air bad. I had a tire compression kit I had bought from an auto store in my car and we were able to get enough air in both tires to get it down the street to a gas station where we filled them up the rest of the way. We also had to bungee cord the trailer plate on! Then we stopped at a Lowes further down the street and bought Gorilla Tape so we could tape the door shut to make it 3 hours back home. It was snowy and cold but I was so excited I could hardly wait to work on my camper!

Next Monday I’ll go over my assessment of what the camper actually needed done and the first project we did on it!

xoxo -Robin