Can you tell me a little about yourself and when and how you became interested in teardrop trailers?
My husband Robert and I were always the outdoorsy types, but it wasn't until we took up kayaking that we started to camp. We live in Central New York where there are plenty of bodies of water and the nearby Adirondack Mountains, so in order to kayak further and further from home, we started to tent camp.
First there was car camping, then kayak touring (living out of your boat for a few days is quite awesome), then backpacking. However, we never really got to love tent camping, it was always a means to something else: being in beautiful remote places and the physical challenge of our endeavors. Tent camping presented a large overhead effort for us for two reasons. First, setting up, breaking down and then having to dry all the gear at home is always so much work, that it sometimes deters us from going.
Second, we have a dog and a parrot, which prevents us from being spontaneous - we can't just leave whenever we want, we have to arrange for animal care every time, which is costly and time consuming. We do take our dog camping, but you obviously can't leave him in a tent unattended for any duration of time, so kayaking is out of the question when we camp with the dog unless we take turns or go hiking instead. Here comes the trailer part.
A few of years ago we saw a teardrop on a highway passing by and were immediately in love. We had never heard of teardrops or seen one before then, and we thought it was awesome. We googled it and decided this is what we wanted some day. Last year we went camping and found that one of our friends got herself a Little Guy teardrop. That reignited our "some day" dream and off we went shopping.
What kind of trailer are you getting? What factored into your decision?
We’re getting a Camp-Inn 550 Special teardrop. Primary reasons for our selection:
1) More flexibility and freedom: We hope a trailer will solve our animal issue. Since the trailer is insulated and has a fan, we could leave our animals in it for a few hours while we kayak. It is also bear proof. That should enable us to camp more often.
2) Easier: Less overhead / setup time.
3) More comfort, better sleep (hopefully).
4) Towing with a sedan: The reason we picked a teardrop over an RV or a pop-up was the weight. We both are extremely stuck on driving as fuel efficient vehicles as we possibly can to still fit our livestyle, and we didn’t want to buy something that would warrant having to buy a truck. I drive a VW Jetta Sportwagen TDI (4 cylinder diesel), and it can only tow up to 1000 lbs. So our trailer had to be under that weight.
5) Winter storage: We can tuck away a teardrop at the end of our driveway, which we couldn’t do with an RV.
6) Retro look with aluminum finish: We just loved this type of design.
Will you name it? Decorate it?
We will most likely name it, but it doesn’t mean we’d paint the name on it. We always name our cars just to refer to them in a conversation, so I feel the trailer deserves the same. I’m not much for decorating, so we probably won’t be decorating it, although I wouldn’t mind some kind of vanity plate.
We love camping in the Adirondacks, we already have two trips scheduled there for June and July, one near Old Forge and the other near Speculator. We’re hoping to get out more for longer trips, drive out to Maine while camping along the way in New York, Vermont, New Hampshire etc. Then there is Canada, especially Quebec and Saguenay Fjord National Park near the estuary of the St. Lawrence River where we kayaked with whales a few years back. Finally, we’d love to go to the west coast, but we’d need a lot of time off for that, so I don’t see that happening any time soon.
What other teardrop trailers do you like or admire?
We like a lot of different teardrop trailers, that’s one of the reasons I love visiting your blog – to look at photos and see different layouts and solutions. I love how creative people get with them, whether they build their own, restore an oldie, or customize a factory model.
