Teardrops n Tiny Travel Trailers

Hey Catherine,

I am somewhat new on here though I have read the BIG thread, and now I am reading build threads.

I just wanted to let you know how impressed I am with your gumption after reading the Penguino I thread. I love that you weren't cowed by your (potentially terrifying) adventure and just got back to work and to problem solving with your second foamie.

I am really enjoying this second thread too and want to send you best wishes as you are finishing up.

KCStudly wrote:Try more nose weight. My UT is clunky, dare I say almost evil until it gets a little nose weight on it; axle is too far forward on it 'cuz it is a tilt bed.

I doubt the table and chairs adds up to 100 lbs, but add a sizable loaded cooler and maybe together they would.

Load some more heavy stuff up front as a test and try it (water bottles or jugs are easy to move around, and are easy to calculate weight accurately).

It had more weight in the front on the way home, and it was indeed a smoother ride.

Catherine

p.s. I know I need to resize this picture. It's just a temporary one, really!

Good to hear.... In my opinion (I apparently have lots of them today) that picture is sized fine. I can see it without sliding over it. PERFECT!!!

GoTurtleGo wrote:Hey Catherine,

I am somewhat new on here though I have read the BIG thread, and now I am reading build threads.

I just wanted to let you know how impressed I am with your gumption after reading the Penguino I thread. I love that you weren't cowed by your (potentially terrifying) adventure and just got back to work and to problem solving with your second foamie.

I am really enjoying this second thread too and want to send you best wishes as you are finishing up.

Aw, shucks, thanks. At times I have thought I was just crazy. But I do want to have adventures with my kids, who are getting older all the time (13 this month!). I'm too poor/tight to put us up in hotels all the time, and too old to sleep on the ground in a tent (well, I have a skinny little cot when we do tent-camp), so I need this camper. That is, I need this camper.

Catherine

You are welcome.

And good for you for taking those kids all over - adventures, builds, problem solving... I did it with my three, who are adults now, and this is the most excellent training you can give them. It is priceless for their future. I am so glad that I did it. We were poor as church mice and also traveled by camping. If I had discovered foamies when they were kids they would have been doomed, errrr. blessed, with a build too. I ended up homeschooling them through high school because of poor educational options where we live and they worked alongside me all day. They used to grouse something fierce about gardening, but now I have 3 happy adult gardeners in my life.

Anyway.... congratulations on your progress! And keep up the good work with the kiddos. The growing years fly by at the speed of light.

Cheers,

Hey, I am still around, and still puttering with Penguino II. While my dear stepdad was visiting my brother last month, I used his garage again for buttoning up work. The top and front have been painted with "Storm Coat" paint, the door has been covered inside and out, and there is a door knob installed. The sides still show the "mis-tint" paints used for the first coat--light blue on the street side (shown), light coral on the curb side. One more gallon of Storm Coat should take care of that. Oh, and it needs some black trim, and penguin on the side.

I installed trim around the inside of the door, and weather-stripping. The inside is bare, obviously. The kids are old enough that I suspect we won't be going on a lot of family camping trips now, so I am not installing permanent bunks. However, I did buy (adult-sized) bunk-bed cots for the kids, and I have my own cot that I have used for years now, ever since I decided I was too old to sleep on the ground, even tent camping. A bonus of not installing bunks or benches is that we can use the table that matches this chair inside the trailer if the weather is crummy outside.

Oh, check out the open wheel wells! Still need to take care of those bits of un-intended ventilation. It lets snow blow in.

And speaking of snow, we've had ours for the year. Very briefly it amounted to 11 inches. However, it soon started raining, and the temperature rose into the 50s the next day, and now the storm track is missing us again, so that's it.

Dear daughter looked at the trailer when we got it home Sunday afternoon (in our slushy parking pad) and said, "When are we going camping?"

Catherine

Well now , that’s looking nice and comfortable inside ...

Sounds like a good call on keeping it bare, all things considered. I'm sort of doing that with my galley because I'm not sure exactly how I'll use it.

Not long now before you're camping in it !!
Have you set a date for its first trip yet ?

Wobbly Wheels wrote:Have you set a date for its first trip yet ?

I just checked on the main campground at Bandelier National Monument, just up the road. Juniper campground is open year round, so we'll probably stay a couple of nights next month when the kids are on spring break. Hey, the trailer is well-insulated!

Catherine

Best wishes for the first camping trip, Catherine!

Hi Catherine, we met at Chama. Valley of Fire Recreation Area is a very interesting place if you have never been there. It has very nice facility's. Out in the open on a hill, so the wind can be interesting. A good side trip is over to Lincoln, lot of history there. If you are there on the first weekend of April, or October, the Trinity Site is open to the public. Go thru the Stallion Gate. All very educational for your Girls. Ronnie.

Catherine+twins wrote:...Bandelier National Monument...

I just looked that up - looks like a great spot !!

...so long as one can avoid the holiday weekend crowds, apparently

We would like to take the trailer down to NM and AZ for a few weeks in the winter probably next year, so I'll be looking forward to the pics of your trip

Today was HOT! Not just hot for March, but hot for April and even May (over 60 F and not a cloud in the sky, dear daughter wisely insisted on sun screen). But it was nice for painting. Unlike the last couple of March/April/May-s, there isn't any wind blowing!!!!

Here is dear daughter, hard at work, helping me take a trailer of many colors and turn it into one that is basically white.

Dear son also worked on the far side, but I didn't get any evidence on the camera.

Here we are after a couple of hours work.


I have to work next Saturday, but I'm thinking of driveway camping Saturday night. Probably just me. But I have all the sleeping bags clean and ready for our first camp-out!

Catherine

I have camping envy: mine's nowhere close to that yet

rockinrobin wrote:Hi Catherine, we met at Chama. Valley of Fire Recreation Area is a very interesting place if you have never been there. It has very nice facility's. Out in the open on a hill, so the wind can be interesting. A good side trip is over to Lincoln, lot of history there. If you are there on the first weekend of April, or October, the Trinity Site is open to the public. Go thru the Stallion Gate. All very educational for your Girls. Ronnie.

Hi, Ronnie

For all the camping I did with my parents (and brothers ) as a kid, I only remember a couple of times in KOA grounds when we were rushing to my dad's summer jobs; and I have never stayed in a commercial campground in my own camping experiences. Chama was a new experience, and it was great!

Valley of Fire near Carrizozo? We spent one day there during one of our family reunions. Hmm, that was probably a couple of years before I had the kids, now that I think about it. But we do go through Lincoln on our way to Carlsbad, and we do that every couple of years. It's a lovely drive. I'll have to look for camping areas! I've already seen a couple that look good in the Gila near Silver City. I was planning to make my daughters Battle of the Books competition (yes, competitive reading) into a long weekend and camp out on the way home. Then, after three years of BoB in Silver City, this year they moved it to Santa Fe. Boring!

I've never been that interested in the Trinity Site tour, maybe because my first 15 years here in Los Alamos were in nuclear chemistry, and we watched a lot of the old above-ground test footage in our yearly training cycles. Standing in front of a stone monument seems anticlimactic. If the kids are interested in the next couple of years, of course we'll go, but it is a long drive during the school year.

I do know we'll be camping about every other weekend this summer, as I'm running out of time to keep the kids, ESPECIALLY dear son (oh, yeah, girl AND boy), interested and away from their computers!

Catherine