Well, I've been lurking here for the last few days and I guess it's time I introduced myself. My name is Ken Worster, and I am a high school physics / chemistry teacher at a small high school in Milo, ME. My wife and I and our two children live in nearby Bradford. I first got interested in teardrops after watching "RV Crazy" on the Travel Channel about a year ago. (I see from other people's introductions that I'm not alone). My wife and I did some tent camping before we had kids. We really enjoyed the outdoors life, but the hassle of pitching a tent and packing our small car with supplies made it something we did once or twice a year. Since we've had our boys, our outdoors trips have been limited to day trips to local state and national parks.
No one in our family has seen much of the United States. My wife and I have often talked about taking the boys to places like the Grand Canyon and Mount Rushmore once they are old enough (the boys are currently 4 and 2). We have decided to build a teardrop over the next year or two to use camping around Maine. Once the boys are old enough to remember the trip (we're targeting June 2010), we are planning to drive cross country with our tear to experience as much of the country as possible. The current plan is to build a 5' wide Cubby a la Tom Swenson (great website, by the way) for my wife and I and have sleeping arrangements for the boys in the rear of our as-yet nonexistent cross-country towing vehicle. If anyone has experience with this kind of arrangement I'd appreciate any information you could pass my way about how well it works.
The wife and I are very excited about this project. We will be ordering the Kuffel Creek plans shortly, and I downloaded the generic Benroy plans as well. I'm sure I'll have tons of questions throughout this project, but I've already found a wealth of answers by reading many posts on the boards. Thanks for a great resource.
Ken