My wife and I have been on-again off-again campers since we married. We tent camped for many years, then eventually bought a Coleman pop-up camper when we lived in Austin. It sat unused for a couple of years after we adopted our daughter, so we decided to sell it. We almost immediately regretted it and shortly after started to search for another camper. I have always loved Airstreams, but new ones were out of our budget and, even though I am a designer / sometimes home builder and very handy, the thought of restoring a vintage one seemed a little too daunting.

After becoming thoroughly disgusted with the lack of variety and style in reasonably priced new campers, we finally decided to start seriously searching for a vintage Airstream within our budget. Ideally, I wanted something around 22′ or less, but we quickly learned the smaller vintage Airstreams are harder to find and more valuable. After a little research, I found that even 30′ models were light enough to easily be pulled by a 1/2 ton truck or full size SUV and were much more readily available.

I found myself addicted to the search and was checking Craigslist and Ebay several times a day for any for sale within a few hundred miles of Houston. After looking at a few early 70’s models locally and just not feeling they were right for us, I kept coming back to one I had seen on Ebay about seven hours from us in Central Arkansas. We loved it from the photos. It was a 1968 (my favorite year because of the design of the control panel), looked like it was in great condition, and after talking to the seller, I found out it had only had two owners and had always been stored under cover. We decided to buy it site unseen and a few weeks later made the drive to pick it up.