My Family’s Camper Is Falling Apart So Fast, We Can’t Believe What Broke After Just A Year

Camp Scholler isn’t as much of a madhouse this year as it was last year. It also feels as if AirVenture hasn’t attracted as many visitors this year as it did in 2022 or 2023. Then again, those years were pretty special. We were still coming out of the pandemic in 2022 and 2023 marked EAA’s 70th anniversary, a huge deal.

Still, Camp Scholler remains one of the coolest camping experiences ever. The campground is basically a small city where most people are friendly, chaos is the norm, and you see the coolest stuff. I’ve already seen a Tesla Cybertruck towing an old travel trailer, all sorts of awesome motorcycles, and even some homebuilt scooters and such. There isn’t a KOA on this planet that can match Camp Scholler for pure awesome.

It Runs In The Family

In case you didn’t read my last entry, here’s an overview of my family’s camper situation.

My family has been lifelong campers with an affliction for RVs. Sure, I’ll sleep in a tent if I need to, but I do like a small trailer with stand-up room and a bathroom. I’ve done enough roughing it for years that I now just want some basic amenities. I’ve had enough of waking up to water features appearing in my tent. That’s why a small fiberglass trailer like a U-Haul VT16 is so appealing to me.

My parents are different. They don’t just want basic amenities, but to bring a whole house with them. Over the years my parents have owned everything from old Winnebago motorhomes to scrappy travel trailers to the two giants they have today. In 2016, they purchased the trailer I’m sleeping in this week, a 2007 Adirondack 31BH by Thor Industries.

RV manufacturers aren’t that creative and you’ll find that the “31” means the trailer has a 31-foot box. It’s also 35 feet long in total and weighs 6,292 when dry. This trailer also has a 46-gallon fresh tank, a 36-gallon gray tank, and a 34-gallon black tank. Sheryl and I have found that these stores are good for about a week of showers and toilet use. The Adirondack’s water tank isn’t fully clean, so we get drinking water from elsewhere.

The funny part about “dry” is that it means really empty without a drop of water in the tanks and without any propane tanks mounted. This is why it’s important to have a lot of overhead when it comes to tow vehicle capacity. The listed tongue weight is probably wrong as it stands, but is even worse once you start adding basic stuff.

The Adirondack is very much your standard-fare travel trailer. It has lauan plywood walls, a plywood floor, wood framing, a rubberized roof, and fiberglass sheeting for siding. This is very much the kind of trailer that is pumped out of Indiana as fast as physically possible with seemingly little care for quality control. This trailer is the kind I caution against buying unless you’re getting it for hilariously dirt cheap or you at least know what you’re getting into.

The Adirondack showed early signs of distress from the moment my parents brought it home. They saw that the trailer’s fiberglass siding was bubbling — a sign of water ingress — but the dealership said that this was “normal” and that all old trailers do it. Perhaps that was a bit on the nose, but my parents bought it. My family then took it camping for a few years, creating the kinds of memories a hotel stay can’t match.

Over this time, I observed the trailer’s bathroom floor getting softer and the fiberglass bubbles turned into giant waves. My parents continued to ignore this, saying they were told nothing was wrong. Well, my parents eventually had to face the music because the deterioration became so bad that the outside walls of the trailer quite literally split open.

Now, the official fix for water damage that bad would be to tear down the walls and rebuild. However, such a job would total the trailer. Instead, in 2022, my family found a crafty RV repairman who was able to rebuild just sections of the walls and replace the rotted floor without doing a complete teardown. Even the $7,500 price wasn’t too bad. Obviously, the work wasn’t perfect, but that’s easy to live with.

In 2022, my parents also decided to pick up a second travel trailer. They purchased a brand-new 2022 Heartland Mallard M33. I’ve written about this pile of junk before and somehow, this brand-new trailer was in worse condition from the factory than the Adirondack was before the walls split open. I’m talking frame rust right off of the showroom floor, interior walls that are separating, broken safety chains, and just a general lack of attention. That alone is shocking because “attention to detail” is not really a selling point of the big RV makers.

Anyway, what you need to know is that my parents own two massive piles of junk.

Last Year’s Problems

Let’s start with what happened last year.

Upon arrival at the overflow campsites of the Experimental Aircraft Association’s Camp Scholler, I found that the gray and black tanks were reading 2/3 full. This was alarming because we hadn’t used the trailer yet. My brother’s family used the camper last so I thought they filled the tanks and left them sitting full over the hot, 100-degree summer we were having.

Many readers pointed out that gauges become inaccurate as your RV ages, something I hadn’t ever paid attention to before. Sure enough, they were right. The tank readings always either read as empty or full throughout the week, but we survived the week without actually filling the tanks. Now that we know the tanks can last about a week, we no longer even check the gauges.

We also had problems with the battery monitor, or so we thought. The only time the battery showed as full was when the generator was running or the trailer was hooked up to the 2023 Toyota Tundra TRD Pro. As it turned out, this was because the battery was just super trashed. My parents allowed the battery to die at least a few times in the past and now it couldn’t even survive a full night. Running out of power was a major headache because Sheryl’s health condition requires running water and a toilet. This is non-negotiable and will kill any camping trip if we cannot get access to either.

We also had problems with the trailer’s stabilizer jacks, which are bent enough to jam in the shut position. Finally, the trailer also had problems delivering propane to the stove and freezer.

Things Are Better!

So, we learned a lot of lessons last year and are applying them to camping at AirVenture this year.

Last year, I talked about upgrading the trailer to a lithium battery, solar panels, and possibly bringing a 12-volt air-conditioner. This wasn’t necessary. Replacing the dying RV battery with a new one has totally fixed our overnight power issues. Sure, the battery doesn’t have the same kind of legs as a good lithium battery, but it lasts the night and then some without losing vitality. That’s all I can ask for right now.

As for cooling, coming to AirVenture early enough means we have access to a 24-hour generator spot. Basically everyone’s running a generator in the 24-hour generator section, so it’s not a big deal if we do too. The Champion generator I bought last year remains my rock. The darn thing hasn’t run in a whole year, but like a reliable snowblower, it sprang into life like I ran it yesterday. I highly recommend a Champion if you want reliable power. Just be prepared to live with a noise level rivaling that of a fighter jet.

I’ve also learned how to work around the trailer’s limitations. I’ve found if I turn the gas on before I park the trailer, the propane finds its way to where it needs to go. We haven’t had a single propane issue this year thus far.

I also just give the stabilizer legs a little kick and that dislodges them before lowering. Overall, camping at AirVenture is now even better.

But Things Have Also Gotten Way Worse

What really surprised us was how much Adirondack’s condition had declined since we last saw her.

Sheryl and I were the last people to use the Adirondack last year. We’re also the first people to use it this year. So, we cannot blame my brother for anything this time. We shut down the trailer last year and my parents had it winterized. When the trailer came out of storage this year we were shocked to see that things have gone so far downhill.

Let’s start with the exterior! The trailer’s awning has been slowly disintegrating, but the wear has accelerated over the year it sat in storage. The awning was so dry-rotted that it started tearing away from the trailer’s roof. My mom hated how ugly it looked, so she had the entire awning material cut off from the trailer.

I warned my mom not to do this because the frame of the awning uses the awning to help hold itself against the trailer. Without the awning, you have just a few clips holding the structure on, and in my experience thus far the old clips can’t do the job on their own. So, I’ve employed ratchet straps. My mom isn’t feeling the irony of trading an ugly awning for ugly ratchet straps.

At first, that seemed like the only problem, so we hauled the camper to my parents’ house to begin cleaning and setting it up. Another nightmare presented itself when we opened the door. Rats or mice had taken residence in the trailer and it looks like they were drawn to an open bag of Fritos one of my brother’s kids stashed in one of the trailer’s compartments. So, we had to clean up all of the poop.

But worse was the walls. The ceiling above the forward slide had mold or mildew on it. Here’s the crap halfway through cleaning. The trailer smelled like a towel that’s been wet for a while:

That was the first time we’ve seen this stuff in this trailer since buying it, so that was alarming. But that wasn’t all. There was some brownish-red dried liquid on the floor next to the rear slide. Clearly, this liquid came from somewhere, but its origins weren’t obvious.

Oh, and speaking of that slide, when I hit the rear slide switch there was a huge spark show and no movement. I yanked it out of the wall because it seemed like it was going to start a fire as it let out all of its wiring smoke.

Before I could finish dealing with that, we discovered more black particle-looking stuff in the primary bedroom and huh, the headboard for the bed came down too. All of this came on top of discovering soft patches in the floor.

Keep in mind that this trailer has done nothing but sit for a year. These problems weren’t obviously present last year, especially the horrible-smelling black stuff. But, seriously, what the heck is going on?

I’m not one to just accept that something is broken. I have to figure out why it’s broken. Once we got to Camp Scholler I started my investigation. First, I tackled the slide.

I had a hunch that Thor Industries wasn’t going to use different switches for the slides, so I yanked out the working switch from the front slide and hooked it up to the rear slide. Sure enough, the slide deployed without issue. Deploying the slide also allowed me to research the brown water ingress issue. The front part of the rear slide is suffering from some serious water damage. The wood and boards are all warped, rotted, and falling apart. As for the “brown” part, well it looks like water is traveling from somewhere in the slide and is leaking out of the now rotting carpet on the edge of the slide.

I still wasn’t satisfied, so I went outside. This is where I discovered additional problems. See, the slides have their own self-retracting awnings.

It would appear that the retraction mechanism is no longer working properly on the front slide, so the awning gets caught up in the seals of the slide. This was something I caught entirely by accident. Obviously, no longer having a proper seal is allowing water to get in, which appears to be the source of the nasty stuff above the front slide.

As for the rear slide, conditions are worse. There appears to be some kind of wood under both slides and the wood under the rear slide is totally rotten. Rotten wood “snowed” on my head while I set up the generator.

That’s the bulk of the new stuff. By my best guess, water is finally doing damage in front of the primary bedroom, which is why the cabinets look like this:

And that is possibly why the headboard fell. All of this sounds expensive. My parents will have to hire the RV repair guy once again to pinpoint the source of all of these water leaks before having him seal them up. Then comes the repairs and my, there’s a lot that needs doing.

The rear slide will need an entirely new lower board plus the interior wood, then the soft spots in the floor will also need to go. I wouldn’t be surprised if my parents threw another $7,500 or more to fix these issues.

It may sound like I’m complaining, and I am, but I also want to use this as an example of all of the things that can go wrong with a used camper. These rigs may look nice on the outside, but you never know what they’re hiding underneath.

Despite those issues, we’re still having a ball of a time. Having hard walls, a roof, and a nice bed to sleep in makes camping so much better than a tent and an air mattress. Things have been so nice we even just shut off the generator every night and sleep with confidence. Sure, we lose the air-conditioner and household outlets, but the new battery is a champ and keeps the water flowing and the lights on. Being able to use our own private bathroom and clean ourselves in our private shower is also awesome. This is especially nice in this era where trans people like ourselves are targets of certain people and politicians. It’s just easier when you have your own bathroom.

Also, shenanigans are afoot! Sheryl accidentally locked me out of the trailer. Normally, this wouldn’t be a big deal, but my phone was in there and I had no idea how to contact her. As it turns out, these things are super easy to break into when a window is left open:

Don’t try that at home, kids!

Our campsite neighbors are cool people and Camp Scholler remains a special place that’s about as fun as AirVenture itself is. There’s nothing quite like pitching some chairs, firing up a grill, and having a good time while ultralights buzz overhead. I still say that camping in a pile of junk of a camper is better than holing yourself up in a hotel.

If you’re at AirVenture and want to pay me a visit, you’ll find me directly across the street from Alro Steel Oshkosh in Camp Scholler. I’m usually around in the morning and in the evening. Knock on my door and say hi!