I’ve been camping regularly since I was a teenager, but always in a tent; the closest I’ve been to a camper was one weekend when I was quite young and we stayed with a friend in a tent trailer that was two narrow beds and a foot or two of floor space between them. Over the last few years our tent has grown from a cozy two-person tent to a spacious two-room tent, but we’ve always been happy to make a tent our home away from home. What we haven’t been ecstatic about lately was the lengthy setup when we arrive at our campsite (and then the even lengthier tear-down at the end of the trip) that was required for our family-sized tent, dining shelter, and all the associated things that go with us on our trips. We’ve tried to trim the extras, but the setup always remained.

Last year the idea of a trailer started to take hold to cut out at least a portion of the setup/tear-down. We took a few half-hearted looks through the classified ads, but we didn’t find anything that really grabbed us before the end of the season. The idea resurfaced again this year and once we narrowed down what we were looking for, we set about slogging through all the listings again. Finding trailers that we liked was quite easy. Finding something that was within our weight range, price range, and – most importantly – wouldn’t require a six hour drive to scope out, wasn’t as easy. The first few trailers that we physically looked at ended up being ruled out for one reason or another, but we were determined not to rush the decision or compromise (too much) on our criteria and our patience finally paid off with a trailer that mets our wishes. All it needs are a few finishing touches to make it feel like our new home away from home. I’m not sure that I can get everything that I want done before we leave for our next camping trip, but since I think the search for the trailer used up most of my patience, I suspect that I’ll at least take a stab at some of it. Because, you know, I needed another project this Summer.

Well, actually I guess I did since my front patio project ended up being more Charles’ than mine. 😉