After a year and a half of solid time in The Binker Lee, we had gotten comfortable with camping — maybe too comfortable. We loved it, but the popup had its limits. Setting it up and taking it down was a production every single time: unlocking the corners, cranking the roof, unfolding the beds, wrestling with the canvas. It was manageable, but after enough trips you start doing the math. All that effort was fine for a long weekend, but for longer stretches on the road it added up fast.
We also knew that if we were going to start doing bigger trips — the kind that take you across multiple states and keep you out for weeks at a time — we needed something we could actually live in comfortably. The popup had been a great first step. It was time for the next one.
A friend told me about RV Wholesalers up in Ohio. The price for the exact same rig was significantly less than anything I'd found near home in South Carolina, so my friend and I did what any reasonable camper would do: we drove from South Carolina to Ohio, bought a 2013 Forest River Wildwood Heritage Glen 312QBUD, and turned right back around.
The plan for the first night was simple — stop at a campground, unhook, and crack a cold one to celebrate. We pulled in, got the trailer unhooked, and headed down to the convenience store just down the street.
It was a dry county! There would be no celebration beer that evening. But it became one of those stories you tell every time someone asks how you got the rig.
Two slide-outs changed everything about how the interior felt. Suddenly there was actual room to move around — to turn around without performing a choreographed sidestep. After the popup, it felt like a palace.
But the feature I loved most was the outdoor kitchen. Under a flip-up hatch on the exterior: a sink, a countertop, a storage cabinet, and a black mini-fridge that was, let's be honest, primarily a beer fridge. A bumper-mount grill swung right around beside it. On a warm evening at a campsite, that setup was the center of the whole operation.
The rear bunkhouse slept three people, and that changed how we camped entirely. My son could bring friends. Family could join us on the road. We went from a couple camping to a crew camping, and some of the best memories from those 4.5 years came from those bunks being full.
We logged 257 nights in this camper over four and a half years, and the trip that stands out most was our first big cross-country run — out to Mount Rushmore, Yellowstone, and Grand Teton. It was the first of what would become many long hauls, and it set the template for everything that came after.
It was not without drama. Let's just say the trailer had an opinion about Wyoming, and that opinion involved a blown bearing and a new axle in Gillette. But that's a story for another post.
This rig hooked directly to the park sewer. A real toilet. With a real connection to the actual sewer system. If you've ever dealt with a cassette toilet, you already understand why this deserves its own paragraph. If you haven't — consider yourself lucky and trust me that it matters.
We made a lot of great memories in this camper. It was the right rig at the right time, and it took us places we'd never been. But like all good chapters, it eventually led to the next one.
