Hello From Washington State!

J

Jack & Susan

Newbie
Hi, I’m Susan. My husband, Jack, and I live on Vashon Island. We’ve been lurking here for a month or two, learning everything we can. Decided to introduce ourselves after seeing our first Camp Inn trailer yesterday -- in the aluminum, so to speak.

Thanks to Ken in Olympia, for giving us a tour of his 560. He generously shared his CI owner-knowledge and his plentiful enthusiasm for Camp Inn and our beautiful part of the country. A delightful time . . .

Jack and I both enjoy camping (tents and a truck camper for Jack, tents for me), but haven’t done much in the last 15 years or so. We’ve been enjoying the Salish Sea via boats and, as Jack approached retirement, we realized we wouldn’t be able to keep our much-loved boat, Ellie. It was hard to let go, but she’s in good hands and we want to start camping again. We’ve looked at various small travel trailers and teardrops: Scamps, Casitas, Little Guys, Silver Shadows, Retros, several teardrops manufactured in the PNW. Lots of online searching. Continued to love the idea of small but the build quality of these trailers was lacking.

I came across a Camp Inn video on YouTube a couple of months ago and shared it with Jack. You can all guess what happened then: it was on to exploring the Camp Inn website, followed by reading almost every word on this forum. Thank you to all who have spoken here over the years -- and Evan, for keeping it all together! It’s such a terrific resource and so enjoyable to catch the spark that comes shining through.

Craig and Cary, thanks for such creating such an outstanding company and such great products and, Cary, thanks for your email correspondence with Jack over the last few weeks. I’m sure we’ll have more questions!

We look forward to being involved here and getting to know all of you as we move through the phases from wannabes to gonnabes to haves.

Cheers,

Susan
 
Hi Susan and Jack,
We are part-time residents in Olympia too. We just purchased a used 550 Ultra. We live in Sisters, Oregon but are slowly moving up to Olympia. Our goal is to get down to one car and the little trailer so they can both be parked in our condo garage. So far, our 550 is parked in our garage in Sisters but you are welcome to come down there to see it if you'd like. Just wanted to let you know that we're around in this area. Welcome to the forum!
Lee and Don
 
You have certainly been doing your homework! (Like most of the rest of us, I suspect ☺️) You will not be disappointed in your Camp-Inn, I assure you. Welcome!
Diana
 
Lee and Don -- big congratulations on your new-to-you 550; so much fun ahead! And thank you for the invitation. We don’t have any plans to head down to Sisters anytime soon but if that changes, we’ll PM you and see if we can work it out. Are you newly moving to Olympia or returning to the area? Either way, welcome to Washington!

Pat, Diana and Bear -- thanks for your welcoming words. I guess we have been doing our homework but, even though we looked at all those manufacturers I mentioned, it feels like the search was in a background sort of way. Batting the idea around, looking at trailers but not particularly serious about it. I guess that’s because nothing really caught our eye – and our imagination. The whole idea was percolating, I guess you could say. But since discovering Camp Inn, well, now we’re laser-focused! ;)

Jack got at least one email out to CI last week and he’s since started reading the manual, so I’m sure there will be more questions. (He did have an uh-oh moment, though, when he got to the section about unhitching the trailer, where it says, as part of step 3, to “shake jack roughly.”)*

We’ve decided on a 560 to accommodate camping with our 80 pound Heinz 57 dog, Aaron. We’re discussing how we’d like the trailer configured and seem to be easily agreeing on what options we do and don’t want. And we’re discussing whether we should put in an order right now or wait until closer to the price increase to see if, by chance, a used one becomes available? Decisions!

Bear, love your “one teardrop away from happiness” comment. We’re pretty happy people already and land-based camping as more of a pack-and-go experience is something we’re really ready for. We look forward to crossing paths with you, too! We do get to up Whidbey several times a year, so it just might happen.

Wishing everyone a great week ahead! -- Susan


*FYI – and be forewarned -- Jack loves puns! :D or :rolleyes:, depending on your taste . . .
 
Howdy & welcome from Texas! Your journey so far sounds familiar........discover the teardrop camping/lifestyle.......begin looking at what is out there........get a bit discouraged with quality of what you find.......run across CampInn online.......live/lurk on the forum for weeks/months researching.......see one in person........and then you're a gonner & the rest will be history........except for all the fun & great adventures you will have! :) Wishing you all the best on your next step deciding option, placing your order, or buying used if the perfect one comes up @ the last minute to make things intersting & traveling cross country to buy it (that's exactly what happened to us).
Casandra
 
Hi Casandra,

Thanks for your howdy and welcome! We are enjoying the CI experience so far and imagine it will only get better. Lucky you that the perfect trailer became available and you were quick enough to snap it up and get a cross-country trip out of it. How great was that?! We tried for a used 560 here in Washington -- pretty close to what we would order, but not quite -- and we were too slow. The good thing about the experience is that it served to really sharpen our focus on how much we want one of these trailers, so we made our decisions and placed an order for a Raindrop of our own. Looking forward to seeing build pictures in the not-too-distant future. Oh, it's good fun already!

Hope to cross paths with you and Mark one day,

Susan
 
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