Puttin' off Gradin': Trashing Trailers

Let's talk trailers. We have really thrashed through a lot of camping "solutions" over the years and, surprisingly, often found other folks' musings to be helpful.

We slept in the back of a Mazda pickup under clear plastic at Lake Wenatchee. We slept in tents. We slept in back of the Mazda with a tiny camper on it for half of our honeymoon.

Up in Port Townsend, we tried an old 1950s trailer (never did anything with it and eventually basically gave it to a friend in need). Got a cool little Passtime camper for the tiny Toyota truck and used it a good bit. However, it was a little big for the truck, and the truck is uncomfortable and aging. We didn't want a new truck.

Other camper problems:

1. You can't leave it somewhere and go tootling off.
2. I had to crawl over Scott and sleep in the upper bunk, while he slept in the lower.
3. The propane tank ran out quickly if you used heat. We found this out the hard way waking up one freezing morning at, thank goodness, Dosewallips.

We were back to a trailer. But we didn't want to spend money. We found a great post in which this guy had converted a cargo trailer for people, and it sounded like a deal. Lots less money. We checked it all out and it looked good. When I go to look again, I see lots of folks have jumped on this. However...

We ordered a 6' x 10' Wells Cargo with windows, a door, vents, etc. It ended up being pretty expensive (to us), but when we went down to Freeway Trailer Sales Inc. to get it, we could only be thankful it was a rainy, stormy day. The trailer was leaking along the windows and door. The folks at Freeway Trailer were great about eating that one and giving us our money back.

Our trust for cargo trailers sort of evaporated after that. Or should I say it was washed away? More research led us to fiberglass trailers as the best. We wanted small, smaller than the cargo. That led us to all the cool little old trailers and new, like Bolers, Scamps, Casitas, and many more!

So, we naturally looked for used ones. Good luck. They would come up on Craigslist and disappear instantly, and the prices weren't very good. We didn't want to drive to Canada to get an ancient Boler or to Texas to get Randi's sister's cool thing I can't remember the name of. [Randi?] We have a dog so forget the overpriced teardrops. However, we were very tempted by a cool new company: Eggcamper. Not only are these beautiful and simple, but the folks there are really helpful, unlike, say, Casita, who didn't contact us for a month. But the Eggs were too big, the teardrop version too small.

Scamp, it turned out, was the cheapest and also extremely helpful and quick to respond. After checking out a 13-foot Scamp in Seattle, we decided to go for it. All this seems easy as I describe it, but it all took months of hard work at the end and some dumb purchases. I'm a little nervous about driving with a trailer, but we'll tool around on some back roads with it and practice.

So, if you have trailer questions, don't ask me!