My daily driver / only car car was a Honda Civic and, while it's great around the city, it doesn't have a lot of room for myself and the four kids for weekend adventures. I want to get out camping more with the kids and, lately, I've been falling in love with camping in the Alberta Public Use Land Areas (not exactly Civic-friendly terrain).
So... I had been thinking about buying an additional (old) vehicle that I could use for those adventures.
I used to have a old 2005 Toyota Sienna and, while I loved that vehicle because of its practicality, I wanted to try something different. I've only ever owned a few cars in my life: a Toyota Corolla, 2 Honda Civics, and a Toyota Sienna.
While browsing around the local classifieds I found a 2002 GMC Yukon XL. A previous owner had customized it, taken out the third row seats (which I don't need) and added a pretty handy bed and storage system. I bought it. At first I wasn't so sure about the camper modifications, but we took it out camping over the weekend and it was brilliant!
The pull out bins are roughly 5' long by 12" wide by 9.5" tall, which gives a HUGE amount of storage space. There is a nice handy piece of plywood which fits in the one bin and gives a nice work surface for cooking, etc. The previous owner also placed little LED lights around the inside of the cab for mood lighting, as well as a strip over very bright LEDs over the headboard as a reading light. The bed itself is huge and comfortable, but does require me to fold the middle row of seats down to get the full length.
Naturally, being an older vehicle this truck needed some work.
So I brought it into the shop and got that fixed up. Then I kitted it out with a Kenwood TM-281A HAM radio, and a Garmin Montana 610 (with dash mount).
| Description | Price | |--------------------------+-------------------| | Vehicle | $3,200 | | - Safety Maintenance | $1,400 | | - HAM Radio * antenna | $350 | | - GPS (Montana 610) | $650 | | - Registration | $100 | | - Insurance (monthly) | $35 | |--------------------------+-------------------| | TOTAL | $5,700 |
All in, this vehicle (including toys) cost me just about six thousand bucks. It's a joy to drive and I love having camping stuff accessible. We've had a number of picnic breakfasts out at nearby parks and the design is great.
I'm looking forward to many future adventures in this monster.
