A Surprise in the Woods
Have you ever watched American Pickers? Well, sometimes this is how we find our campers, too. One day we were driving on some back roads in northern Minnesota, looking for a job site; in those days, John was a home inspector.
We accidentally turned down a wrong road and then spotted some silver wings sticking out of the thick woods on the passenger side of the vehicle. (It’s still up for debate which one of us saw it first.) We turned around to get another look to confirm our finding, and there they were again, Shasta wings!
Our First Pick Attempt
We already had a camper at this point, but after our first Shasta search, we knew they weren’t easy to find with intact wings so we decided to drive in and see if anyone was home.
A gruff looking man came to the door and his dog was viciously barking at us. We were seriously reconsidering our decision at this point. But, he said he’d be open to an offer, and walked us outside to take a look at it. As we approached the trailer, we could see that sure enough, it was an original Shasta Airflyte with wings.
We stepped inside to see that there were four ice-fishing holes carved in the floor. And bonus - there was a very large squirrels nest under the back bed! I started to wonder whether I really wanted this thing, but we also knew that 50s and 60s Shastas were hard to come by. This was especially true back then, when they weren’t widely known and trailer restoration wasn’t really a thing yet except for a few people across the country. So, we decided to make him an offer of $300, and he accepted!
Back at Home
We decided that our newest trailer should have a “vintage” name. Since our other trailer was Ethel, we named this one Lucy, in honor of the most famous best friend duo of 1950s television.
We embarked on the restoration of Lucy shortly after the purchase, and ended up with two restored Shastas; we were hooked with this new hobby.
Take a look at the gallery below for a few selected shots from our second Shasta restoration and her I Love Lucy theme.
