MEEET VERN–OUR 1971 DOLPHIN CAMPER
In May of 2021, my boyfriend and I started dating after falling for each other at the skatepark. We spent many dates skateboarding, hiking, camping, and sharing our mutual interests in wanting to one day live on the road. In August of 2021, Anthony was passed down a vintage camper that has been in his family since the ’70s. We spent every single day for the rest of that summer and fall working on fixing up this cute camper. We thought we’d be on the road by now, but with big old campers come big old problems. A lot of people think we are crazy for working on a camper every day together when we just started dating. But it’s taught us so much about each other and it’s made us such great communicators.
Our camper needed a lot of work. There were cracks and holes to be filled. The roof had lots of leaks–which we found out after a 7-foot snowstorm. melted into our camper with freshly installed wooden decking over top of the old walls. Every day there seemed to be a new issue that was uncovered. We probably drove to Home Depot 200 times–and sometimes five times in a day. Our brains were exhausted, clothes drenched in sweat from the Reno sun, and bodies tired. Anthony was skilled beyond belief and totally in his element most of the time. He builds custom homes, so it was always so fun seeing his craft bring Vern to life.
I on the other hand, had a lot to learn. I definitely was not in my element with gutting the camping, using a nail gun, and using power tools like a table saw. Most days, Anthony was patient enough to teach me so I could help. Other days, I knew it would be faster to just help with side work like lacquering the new countertops or removing all of the old staples and screws from the exposed ceiling. When I got the chance, my favorite thing to do was document Anthony in his element with the camper build. I spent hours and hours filming our build.
It’s been an incredible journey so far. While our original goal was to do a cross country trip by October of 2021, we realized the best thing to do was take our time with everything: from the build to living in it full-time. Most of the camper is rebuilt now, but with traveling it in part-time we’ve realized there is definitely some things that need to be modified on the truck and the camper. For now, we are enjoying hitting the road when we can, and coming up with future exciting plans to live in it. Out of anything, the best thing we learned is to be adaptable, and enjoy the journey. 🙂
In the future, I hope to do content creation full-time while on the road. Anthony plans to help me, but also still stay true to his passions–carpentry. He is currently planning how he can do traveling carpentry and help people with projects–whether its renovating a kitchen, building cabinets, or helping with a van or camper build! I’m staying hopeful that content projects will keep coming our way. This past Fall, we worked with Chacos to show our camper build process. The photo to the right was a shoot we did for our takeover, wearing their new booties.
This past Spring, we got invited by Sun Outdoors RV Resorts to come onto their show RV Cribs, to which we said YES. We got to explore their Wine Country RV Resort in Paso Robles. We enjoyed having all of the amenities before camping along route 1 to explore the coast and skateboard.
We are so excited to share this journey with you! As we continue finishing the build, we will be sure to update you on our progress and travels!
To stay up to date, you can follow my Instagram and TikTok for daily adventures. 🙂
Instagram: Shelbssays
TikTok: Shelbssays
