Hi Everyone,
Just received the notification from Craig that the final build pictures for our 550 Ultra # 658 is on-line. I guess that means she's done!
We're planning to name her the "Growler-Prowler" since lately, all of our camping trips have devolved into brewery/tap-house crawls!
Here’s how/why we ended up with a Camp Inn. I bet there might be some similarities to how/why you ended up with one, too:
I saw my first teardrop in the (in)famous Sundance catalog and I thought it was the cutest thing ever. At that time, it was just a novelty, until my husband and I started doing some long car-camping trips. Same thing as Craig – you start thinking about how many hours you spend unloading all the junk out the car, putting up the tent, setting up the camp kitchen, breaking down the camp kitchen, rolling up the (inevitably wet) tent, loading all the junk back into the car – when we’re on our own, we don’t usually stay in the same place for too long, so it was a lot of packing and unpacking. Originally, we thought maybe my husband could build a teardrop – I even drew out some plans – but the more research I did (trailer frames, leaking galley hatches, etc) the more I wanted to buy rather than build.
Everywhere we went, we kept out eyes out for tiny campers – we’d see teardrops and vintage canned hams once in a while – I think we even came across a Tear Jerkers campout at Nelson Dewey State Park in Wisconsin! Someone there gave us a Camp Inn brochure, and on our next trip north, we decided to stop by and check it out – beautiful! We made the mistake of “thinking about it” and it was another couple of years (and I don’t want to think how many wet tent roll-ups) before we finally committed.
In the beginning, we thought about an Airstream Bambi, but we really wanted something we could tow with my husband’s 2007 Subaru Outback (2700 lb limit). We looked at a CampLite and a T@b and an A-Liner and a Little Guy but they were so RV-junky compared to the Camp Inn. We even considered (not really) a VW Westfalia!
Our big epiphany happened last spring when my parents (who live in Gig Harbor, WA) let us take their PleasureWay campervan to the Olympic National Park for a week. It’s a beautiful camper that gets great gas mileage and it’s perfect for my parents, but without shore power, it’s just a headache – too many lights and a pain-in-the-neck to level. And the worst thing – we were in the camper all the time!
We thought we wanted something we could stand up in, something we could take our wet/dirty clothes off without getting everything all messed up. But for us, as tent campers, the most important thing is actually...camping! A teardrop really is the perfect camper. If I was going to live in my camper full-time, I **might** want a stand-up, but for getting out and enjoying nature, the next best thing to a tent (which is the next best thing to sleeping under the stars) is a teardrop!
Just received the notification from Craig that the final build pictures for our 550 Ultra # 658 is on-line. I guess that means she's done!
We're planning to name her the "Growler-Prowler" since lately, all of our camping trips have devolved into brewery/tap-house crawls!
Here’s how/why we ended up with a Camp Inn. I bet there might be some similarities to how/why you ended up with one, too:
I saw my first teardrop in the (in)famous Sundance catalog and I thought it was the cutest thing ever. At that time, it was just a novelty, until my husband and I started doing some long car-camping trips. Same thing as Craig – you start thinking about how many hours you spend unloading all the junk out the car, putting up the tent, setting up the camp kitchen, breaking down the camp kitchen, rolling up the (inevitably wet) tent, loading all the junk back into the car – when we’re on our own, we don’t usually stay in the same place for too long, so it was a lot of packing and unpacking. Originally, we thought maybe my husband could build a teardrop – I even drew out some plans – but the more research I did (trailer frames, leaking galley hatches, etc) the more I wanted to buy rather than build.
Everywhere we went, we kept out eyes out for tiny campers – we’d see teardrops and vintage canned hams once in a while – I think we even came across a Tear Jerkers campout at Nelson Dewey State Park in Wisconsin! Someone there gave us a Camp Inn brochure, and on our next trip north, we decided to stop by and check it out – beautiful! We made the mistake of “thinking about it” and it was another couple of years (and I don’t want to think how many wet tent roll-ups) before we finally committed.
In the beginning, we thought about an Airstream Bambi, but we really wanted something we could tow with my husband’s 2007 Subaru Outback (2700 lb limit). We looked at a CampLite and a T@b and an A-Liner and a Little Guy but they were so RV-junky compared to the Camp Inn. We even considered (not really) a VW Westfalia!
Our big epiphany happened last spring when my parents (who live in Gig Harbor, WA) let us take their PleasureWay campervan to the Olympic National Park for a week. It’s a beautiful camper that gets great gas mileage and it’s perfect for my parents, but without shore power, it’s just a headache – too many lights and a pain-in-the-neck to level. And the worst thing – we were in the camper all the time!
We thought we wanted something we could stand up in, something we could take our wet/dirty clothes off without getting everything all messed up. But for us, as tent campers, the most important thing is actually...camping! A teardrop really is the perfect camper. If I was going to live in my camper full-time, I **might** want a stand-up, but for getting out and enjoying nature, the next best thing to a tent (which is the next best thing to sleeping under the stars) is a teardrop!
