Tent Camping

With Mike and Terri Church

Tent Camping

We found our European motorhome in an ad in the Highways Magazine. It's a 1983 diesel-powered motorhome on a Mercedes chassis. We met the couple who placed the ad, Monte and Walt Lloyd, in Benson, Arizona in January 2002. Over coffee, cookies, and several dinners we admired dozens of pictures of the inside and outside of the RV, swapped fun stories about favorite places and experiences of European RVing, and became great friend. Soon thereafter, Monte and Walt returned to France for the winter. We arranged to meet in Amsterdam in late March to complete transfer of title, insurance, and other administrative matter related to the motorhome.

Our flight to Amsterdam arrived on Tuesday and Monte and Walt's flight home was booked for Saturday giving us several days to do paperwork, go over Walt's 47-item list for operating the motorhome, and visit. We intended to tent camp for these four nights, after all, we love tent camping and feel it's the easiest and least expensive method for an extended stay in Europe. The first night the temperature dropped to below freezing and in the morning we sleepily climbed out of our tent to find the grass frozen and the temperature just above freezing. Monte brought us to the motorhome and warmed us up and brought us back to life with lots of hot coffee and a big breakfast.

Later in the day with the paperwork completed and all the items checked off of Walt's list, they suggested trying to arrange an earlier flight home. Still suffering a bit with jet lag and contemplating thoughts of another freezing night in the tent, we didn't argue. So on night 2 we fell comfortably to sleep in the warmth of our new motorhome.

In this pictures Terri takes a rest on one of the cots inside the tent. This tent is 10' x 10' and 6' high. Plenty big enough for 2 cots and a table and two chairs if it happens to be a rainy day. We have spent months camping in the warmer weather of southern Europe with this tent and a Renault lease-purchase rental car.