say goodbye to Betsy Ford

We traded our F250 for a minivan with Art's brother Tom. We had a loving term for our old truck....."Betsy Ford with an Alkie on her back". The Alkie was an Alaskan camper, which is really a very cool camper. It's not a pop-up, it's telescopic, with the top half raising and lowering hydraulicly. We had a lot of fun with that rig, but with the price of gas it was just too expensive to run. So we went back to using the smaller truck and the Boler.

The camper is extremely heavy and doesn't attach to the truck the way other campers do. There is no overhang so it can't be clamped. Instead, it is bolted right through the floor to the truck bed. It is NOT an easy operation to put it off and on so we always said that if anyone wanted to buy the truck they had to take the camper, too. Thankfully, though, we now have heavy equipment to make these tasks a little easier. We used the skid steer to yard it off the truck and onto a platform of tires and pallets.Here is a view of our "camper row" .... the Boler, Grant's camper (which he brought up from Kamloops this summer), and Alkie.Funny though, Alkie wasn't sitting there very long before someone else fell in love with her. Our niece Cindy's boyfriend Brian got a glimpse and had to have her. I don't know what I was doing that kept me from witnessing them putting her on his truck, but here she is all strapped down and ready to go to her new home.Bye Alkie. Have fun!