The Hunt, Part II (or, "And Then There Were Three....)

Without the threat of giving away too many secrets here, one of the largest resources I found in my hunting for information and tin was the Vintage Shasta Trailer Forum message board:

http://vintageshasta.proboards.com/

There are a great many resources there, including a lot of folks who have a lot more knowledge about these ole gals than I.  There are several members that have spent a lot of time and money rebuilding old campers, and who are very willing to share their knowledge.  There are several whom I have had the pleasure of communicating with, directly or through the board.  I could never thank them all enough for the sharing of laughter and information that the time there has brought.

{EDIT:  As of mid-June, just as summer hits, the Vintage Shasta forum has been closed down.  Some info still remains for now, but it his under lockdown.  Most members who were active there took their wealth of information, knowledge, and humor, over here:   

 http://vintagetrailertalk.freeforums.net/




}

I have also had the extreme pleasure of being introduced to our next addition to the stable by one of the members there.

It seems there was an ad posted on another website...might have been "Tin Can Tourists", looking for a bit of information concerning the proposed value of this older trailer.  She had run across the ad, and sent me the photos of it. 

 It was located here in New York State, was a family heirloom, and was about to be sold or become a storage shed....'nuff said.

 It had been parked in the woods on this very spot since the late 1970's.  The inspection sticker was dated 1977.

This photo probably caught my attention the most.  This ceiling shot included the edge of the vent.  It was amazingly undamaged.

This interior was in great shape, or at least appeared to be.  I knew we had to look at it.













The "hunt" took a really strange turn here, because we had found a '70-s Shasta in our summer travels that we were negotiating for.  In fact it is still on the wish-list.  Even though we had the 16SC in the shop, in torn-apart condition, and the Compact waiting on the to-do list, the one we found was a great answer to our "let's-get-going" needs while the others were in the repair bins.  But then this one found us.

After a bit of arranging, we went to see this older one.  It was located a mile from the road back in the woods.  One of the big reasons it was still there for us to see by the time we got there, was that no one wanted to venture that far out to see it, and the owner was not willing to drag it out just to be seen, and beaten up over price for it.  Who could blame him?  Not me...thank you very much!

The back story was, it belonged to its owner's father, who bought it in the early '70-s.  They had used it on the road for trips when he was a teenager, then it landed in their woods for use while they built their cabin.  In later years, his folks still had used it when they would visit from their Florida home during the summer, and eventually the cabin became their primary digs out in the woods.  Their property is located within literally minutes' driving time from the place my father had grown up and my grandparents owned till they passed.  The owner turned out to be a year younger than myself, and had attended and graduated from high school with one of my cousins.  It turned out that location is everything, for more than one reason....

We looked at it on a sunny Saturday, a nice drive through the woods with the 4WD, back to about 300 yards from its parking spot.  It was love at first sight again...  However we did take a lot of time looking everything over.   It had the obvious typical old-age rot problems, but the plus column definitely outweighed the minus column.  There were insect problems, but not a sign of mouse leavings, no stink or anything.   It had a "parked-in-the-woods" odor to it, which is far better than mouse pee no matter how you slice it.  Most of the original features were not only intact, but were in remarkable shape.  My wife Melaine met me going around the back side of it, away from everyone, and said, "We better buy this."

All I could say was, "Yup."

It took a week or so to land on a final price, which as it turned out, was his initial price...he refused to come off it and who could blame him?  It actually bought enough time to put the money together.  We agreed to go ahead with the purchase, and he was kind enough to visit the Motor Vehicles Department and get all of the papers we would need to transfer ownership, since the original registrations were long gone (remember, it was off the road since the late '70-s).

On a rainy leafy slicked day in early October, the 1964 Airflyte took its first trip out from the woods in 35 years.