Friday Teardrop Photo

The Ghana Think Tank teardrop trailer at the Queens Museum in New York. 

From the Ghana Think Tank website:

The Ghana ThinkTank in Corona involves a custom-built teardrop trailer designed to journey into different communities in the “First” world, collecting community (and personal) issues and sending them to think tanks in Ghana, Cuba, El Salvador, Mexico, Serbia, Iran, Afghanistan, and on…

Once we receive the solutions, our trailer rolls back into the communities, this time as a mobile workstation, so that we can implement their solutions, whether they strike us as brilliant or impractical…

It’s become a way to explore the friction caused by solutions that are generated in one context and applied elsewhere, while revealing the hidden assumptions that govern cross-cultural interactions.

See more of this cool, standy teardrop on their Flickr page.

Burning Man Teardrop Camp Setup

The Sunflower is heading out to Burning Man this week for her 6th year out on the Playa. There will be several teardrop campers out there this year including my friends from Trailer Trash Camp. I wrote a post last year about how to bring your teardrop trailer out to the desert event.


This took a while, but we finally got a video of us setting up our camp for Burning Man 2012. Our teardrop friends, the Stargazers, joined us and we took a timelapse of what it's like to set up camp at Burning Man. Our camp configuration changes every year, but that year it was nice to have two "bedroom" teardrop trailers and a central living room and lounging area.

Friday Teardrop Photo

The Sunflower hooked up to power at a campground near Shasta Lake, California. It's rare that we hook up to campground power, but we always carry a 25 foot power cord and a 50 amp male to 30 amp female adapter under the teardrop bed. It is nice to run our sunflower lights all night long.

50A Male to 30A Female

50A Male to 30A Female

50A Male to 30A Female

Teardrop Trailer Door Shelters

The separation between your teardrop trailer bed and the outdoors is a very fine line. Sometimes it's nice to have a comfortable transition area into the elements from the warmth of your bed—this can come in the form of a teardrop trailer door shelter.

Door shades and shelters come in various designs, from large umbrellas to custom covers complete with floors to pop-up ice house lodges. They can be as simple as just a covering for your head as you step out the door or a complete enclosure with room for dressing, lounging and even putting down beds for dogs and children. I've even seen full little rooms with camp toilets, closets and dressing tables. Lux!

 Personally, I don't have any type of shelter covering the Sunflower's doors. I've thought about getting one that can double as a changing area, but I really enjoy seeing mountain and lake views outside my bedroom window in the morning. Does anyone use a door cover where you can have both a view and shelter at the same time AND doesn't get blown around in the wind?

 

 

Friday Teardrop Photo

An amazing view during the Jefferson State TearJerkers’ Mystic Mt. Shasta Gathering at Panther Meadows. The gathering took place at 10,000 feet elevation on the slopes of Mount Shasta in northern California. Thanks for the great photo Kay!

My Teardrop Trailer Shower

Many teardroppers feel that a camp shower is a luxury, but I think it's a necessity. After hiking or kayaking all day and then hanging around the smoky campfire, having a shower before bed helps me feel like a cleaner and happier camper. It also keeps our bed sheets clean during a trip.

Our teardrop trailer camp shower is nothing fancy. We have had more elaborate setups in the past—like solar showers hung from trees and poles made of rebar and conduit—but now our shower system is very simple and easy.

It consists of an inexpensive Gear Guide pop-up shower shelter without a floor. This particular shelter is no longer available on Amazon, but they do sell similar showers like this. Since the shower doesn't have a floor, we use a plastic drip pan for hot water tanks. This actually works better than a floor since we can pull it out to dump the water and dry it off. I built a wooden platform out of 2x2 pieces of redwood to either stand on or to put our shoes on. The pop-up shower, the platform and the stakes and guylines for the shower shelter all fit into a round bag that fits right into the drip pan. Towels can be hung from the sides of the shelter and we use a small camp table for soap, shampoo and clean clothes.

For the actual shower portion, we just heat up water in a small pot (just to lukewarm or warm) and then take it into the shower with a small cup. We use the cup to dump the water over our heads (most of it being caught by the drip pan) and then wash with biodegradable soap like Dr. Bronner's. It only takes about 5-6 cups of water to thoroughly wash our bodies and hair.  So essentially, this is more of a Navy shower. It feels fantastic and it's so amazing to shower in the cool, fresh air.

The shower takes about five minutes to set up and break down with minimal cleanup. However, I recently purchased a small tarp to put on the floor of the shower—just to keep leaves and bark out of the drip pan.

* Just a tip, before you head into the shower, be sure to have everything you need with you so you don't have to ask for any help.

Friday Teardrop Photo

Vintage salt and pepper shaker in the teardrop galley of Bob and Lynn's Midget Trailer. You can sometimes find these cute shakers on Etsy or eBay.

10 Clever Teardrop Ideas

Another reason to check out a teardrop trailer gathering is to get up close and personal with the many clever ideas that teardroppers think up. From interesting storage techniques to ingenious ways to use hardware, teardroppers need to think outside the big white box in order to have a comfortable (and creative) camping experience. In addition, sometimes these ideas are just plain fun.

 

These ideas include everything from outdoor tables that do double duty as storage, smart garbage bag, paper and cloth towel holders, pretty storage and door shelters, mason jar lighting, and (my personal favorite) a beaded curtain that separates the galley serving area from the bed area.

 

 

 

  

 

 

 

 

Friday Teardrop Photo

The Sunflower and the Stargazers teardrop at a gas station and snack stop in Bridgeport, California. We tend to stop at this station nearly every time we drive Highway 395 South and attract some attention in this small town.