I could say that this journey began August 3rd, 2021 at about 5am. It was a Tuesday. Not that it matters, but that's when Debbie turned to me and said, "I want to show you something." That something was Jet, our campervan. Or rather a Craigslist For Sale post about a converted Ford Transit Connect.

The 5-page posting - with an additional 5 pages of photos - was exhaustive. The owner of the van, Scott, went into deep, deep detail about every aspect of the van and his labor of love in converting it from a delivery van into the awesome camper she is today.

Here's just a sample of the write-up:

Needless to say, Debbie had found a kindred spirit.

The price, the location (right in town!), and the size of the van were perfect for us. We'd been looking for a campervan for months. Not actively looking-looking, but looking. Debbie got the Craigslist digest each morning and always leafed through it. And here she was - seemingly the exact camper for us.

I should say that we'd never really thought of ourselves as RV people. Those gigantic mansions on wheels were not our style at all. But like many Americans, the pandemic had us rethinking how to travel safely, and like many, many Americans, we'd concluded that a camper was the way to go.

But we knew we should do a test run before we dropped any cash on a second car. For this we turned to Road Trip Oregon and their fleet of rentable campervans. We knew we'd want small, so we rented their Nissan Recon Weekender for a long weekend in early November.

We learned many things from the trip, including that pop-tops can leak in a heavy rain and that they are really, really heavy! We learned that sleeping on car cushions sucks and that having a place to pee in the middle of the night could, for two middle-aged women, be an important amenity.

That trip showed us, however, that the idea was a good one. We just needed the right campervan.

Enter the Jetpack Van.