Last year, I wrote a column concerning the possible sale of our travel trailer camper, a long-time object of my disdain. Well, perhaps disdain is too strong of a word but definitely some level of aggravation.

Suffice it to say, being the only female in the camper’s confined space of the camper with my three active sons, husband, dog, and a chemical toilet is not exactly my ideal vacation. Still, we have had a lot of great camper memories over the past six years going to places like Gettysburg, Maine, Florida, Niagara Falls and Cooperstown.

My husband, Kevin, an Eagle Scout and camping fanatic, started to consider selling the camper last year because we didn’t have time to use it anymore. It was me, ironically, who talked him out of selling it because I knew how much it meant to him. Then came our most recent trip in the camper over spring break at King’s Dominion. We stayed at the King’s Dominion campground, which Kevin entered into his GPS. He trusts this thing so much that when we finally got to a sign at midnight that read, “King’s Dominion Camp Wilderness Campground,” he drove right past it, despite the sign and my pleas to turn, because the GPS voice said it was still 500 yards ahead.

On the first day of our trip, we became suddenly aware that our sons, ages 17, 14, and 8, had all grown a lot over the past few months. Our oldest, Billy, is 6 feet 5, while the middle one, David, is 6 feet 1.

The bunk beds that were such a great place for them to sleep when we bought the camper weren’t so great anymore. Billy had to crane his neck or he’d hit his head on the ceiling. Whenever one of the boys would walk from the kitchen table to the bunk beds, he would inevitably run into one of his brothers, prompting a fight about whose fault it was. It was painfully obvious that our family had outgrown the camper.

Thus, Kevin began thinking again of selling the camper. The economy had gotten so bad that he said selling was really the only economical thing to do. Before I knew it, we had a buyer for the camper and were meeting them at the storage place to sign the papers. The thought of staying again only in hotels with towel service made me a bit giddy, but I also began to become sentimental about how the boys had grown up in our camper.

When we met the buyers, a 30-something couple from Columbia, S.C., we also had a notary public with us who had to sign off on the official title. “Sign beside Kevin’s name,” I was told. After both of us had signed, the buyer picked up a pen and then informed us that Kevin and I had mistakenly signed in the buyer’s spot. Freudian slip maybe? The buyer laughed and asked Kevin, “Are you sure you want to sell?”

Kevin and I watched as the couple drove away in an SUV attached to ‘our’ camper. We rode behind it for a few minutes, both of us feeling a bit odd to see the camper as a part of some other family. Then the highway split, with us going one way and them going the other. As we watched our camper go in the opposite direction, both of us had tears in our eyes.

It was a consolation, though, that the couple who bought it have two boys, ages 11 and 5, close to the ages our boys had been when we bought the camper. Somehow that was only fitting. The torch had been passed from one testosterone-laden family to another. Travel safely and treasure every minute.