Hi Ron. How are you doing my friend? I can lend you a hand again with your teardrop if you want.
I recently returned from IRG 2016 way up on the Northern California coast near Eureka. Slept in a "soft sided teardrop" just to be there. I really don't like sleeping on the ground in a tent. Those days were supposed to all be in my past. After one uncomfortable sleepless night I drove in to Eureka to buy a sleeping cot to make tent camping less intolerable.
On the upside my motivation to get on with the construction of my teardrop considerably increased. I was holding off a little to go to IRG to see if that changed my plans much. Learned a few things that I'll incorporate. So my plan changed just a little bit.There's a local Makerspace workshop I can join to provide some of the tools and work space I need to build my teardrop.
The 2017 Shasta Gathering is now on my bucket list.
As Ron said friends and I put on three SLO Gatherings. At IRG 2016 I chatted with Wes from SoCal who came to the first SLO Gathering. That was fun. Once I have a campable teardrop I really want to do more gatherings and explorations. Will want and need help from friends and fellow teardroppers to do them. I've talked on the phone with Vedette/Brian from B.C. Canada and Todd from Tearjerkers about creating another California Tearjerkers chapter and the possibly of co-directing it. That may (or may not) come about the future. I had the pleasure to again meet Lydia and see her Lady Bug trailer (we first met in Mendocino and at IRG 2008) at IRG 2016. She's the director of the Jefferson State Tearjerkers Chapter. Lydia very successfully organized the recent Shasta Gathering after the Dam Gathering came to an end.
There seems to be many more teardrop owners on the California Central Coast than most of us are aware of. Small world. At IRG 2016 Stacy T. and Fred told me a woman from SLO was camping there in her teardrop. She apparently left the Pamplin Grove Campground before we had a chance to meet.
Maybe we need to have some kind of social get together to meet one another and to begin planning some future events? Possibly something like a SLO Teardroppers potluck at
Montana de Oro State Park? If there's enough interest I'll set a date for it. Local people could come for the day and/or people from greater distances could come to camp overnight there. We had the
1st SLO Teardrop Gathering there (thanks Gage for the photos) that attracted people from near and far (Idaho) who completely filled the campground with teardrop trailers in Sept. 2007.
It could become the SLO Gathering 3.5!