We had the first actual BBQ of the summer yesterday. We invited some friends over, several cakes were baked. Chicken, salmon, bratwurst, burgers, various types of rice, and some excellent pasta salad were prepared. Later on, Catan, and Cards Against Humanity were played. Pandora was being a real bitch, so Spotify provided the music.
We finally called it quits about 11:30 at night, on account of three of the friends having to drive an hour to get home. We offered to put them up in the spare bedroom but they were intent on sleeping in their own bed.
One of the attendees is from Australia, she was an absolute sweet heart, and I’m a little sad that we’ll likely never see her again, except perhaps on Facebook. Never the less, we made a friend. 🙂
The sprinkler company that I paid to supposedly winterize our sprinkler system last fall, fucked something up, and when I cranked on the water to the yard a few weeks ago, the pipe that feeds the yard is burst in at least two places.
The van needs a new radiator fan assembly which took some troubleshooting to narrow down. They’re ridiculously expensive, and you can’t simply replace one of the fans, you can only buy the set. Which is a load of horse shit. I keep forgetting to call the local scrap yards to see if they’ve got anything that’ll work.
I got the nerd cave all moved, which took nearly an entire weekend, but the new space downstairs is really great. I broke it in officially early yesterday afternoon, with a our third session of a game of Beyond The Supernatural. You can check that game out, and find the playlist for that series, below.
I’m also getting ready to resume our D&D game, which has been stalled since last summer. We decided that it would be easier to play on Roll20 for most of our sessions, and then meet in person every so often. It took some notes review, but I remembered where we were in Lost Mine Of Phandelver, and I’ve about got the game ready to play. We’ll be nailing down a date soon.
We’re also working out a camping trip with our good friends up in Kalispell, which I assume is fairly imminent.
Needless to say, I’ve been pretty busy, so there hasn’t been any movement on the Teardrop in a few weeks. I’m hoping to resume that project this week.
Camping with Mom and Dad, 1977-ish. Camp bathing was much easier at that age.
I’ve been an avid camper since I was a kid. My family on my dad’s side is quite outdoorsy, and as a result I spent a lot of time tenting and camping in campers when I was little. I discovered backpacking in the sixth grade, during a brief stint in the Boy Scouts, and that stayed with me all through high school and the first few years of college. I did a lot of hiking and backpacking.
My brother and I in Yellowstone park in 1984. I’m the one in the cowboy hat. Don’t hold that against me.
In my twenties, I backed off to mostly just car camping. Pull up to a camp site, unpack the car/truck, throw up a tent, get a fire going and inside of an hour you’ve got a camp site. During my single years I had a nice little Outback Sport, which was perfect for me, my dog and a mountain bike.
A dog impatiently waits to hit the road on our next adventure in Wyoming.
When my girlfriend and I got together, she already had two children, and we managed to take that same Outback Sport on a two week trip through Yellowstone park and part of Wyoming, and then back home to Montana. It was cramped. We had to put a big cloth topper on the car, which we dubbed “the hamburger” because it vaguely resembled a giant hamburger sitting up there. My poor dog had just enough space in the back to curl up comfortably, but it was awfully tight for everyone. That trip convinced us both that it was time to join the ranks of middle class Americans everywhere, and buy a minivan. We still own that Dodge Grand Caravan and while it’s had it’s problems, it’s served us pretty well. We’ve taken many road trips, some camping trips, with and without the kids, in that van.
Camping with friends, 2013.
Last Summer however, Laure floated the idea of getting a camper. I’ve been firmly against that my entire life. Maybe when I hit my sixties, but for now, no big, expensive camper for me. Then not long after that, she came across a Youtube video about teardrop campers. Not the full size campers, but the little ones just big enough to sleep in, with a hatch that lifts up on the back to reveal a galley. I thought it was pretty cool but didn’t really consider it an option. The idea stuck in my head though and a few weeks later I watched that Youtube video again.
Camping with our eldest son and his friends in 2014.
The idea of being able to just back that puppy into a camp site and be set up in ten minutes really appealed to me. Weekend trips to see friends three hours away would be much easier, as well as road trips and vacations. Plus, there is clearly a massive community built around these things, with conventions and get-togethers all over the country every year. That could be a lot of fun too.
I thought about it all day, and then we talked about it as we crawled into bed that night. We sat and watched more videos about them, did some reading on forums and news articles and before we went to sleep, we’d made up our minds that we were going to get a teardrop trailer.
Campground next to the interstate in Idaho, 2013. It rained that night and we woke up to a lake inside the tent. That tent went right back to Bob Ward’s.
A week or so of research resulted in us settling on a Little Guy, 6×10 Silver Shadow with just about all the options. To get one locally was going to cost about $17,000. That’s about what we paid for our van. About $2500 of that price tag was just shipping, because the local dealer only kept one show model and had none in stock. More googling turned up lots in nearby states. So we decided that the following spring we would secure a loan and I would make a trip to wherever and pick one up. A few hundred dollars in gas, sleeping in the van and eating on the road, I could probably do it in a weekend and save us $2000 or more.
A few months went by with us occasionally talking about it, revising options, thinking of ways that I could build some of those options in on my own, and looking at used models. We figured we could probably get it down to around $12000 if we bought used and made some modifications on our own, in lieu of some of the manufacturer’s options.
Holland Lake, Montana. 2014.
Fast forward to February, and Laure suggests that maybe I build one instead. I dismissed that idea almost immediately. I’m pretty handy with electronics and I can manage my way around simple wood working and home maintenance, but this would be a big project. I found the idea pretty intimidating. I said I didn’t think I’d be able to do it and at the time, that seemed the end of that idea.
As a tinkerer in electronics and general home hackery, I spend a lot of time on instructables.com. A few weeks ago, I just happened across plans for a teardrop camper. Granted, the particular plans I found were a bit hack-ish, in a bad way, and I doubted the structural stability of the finished product but after reading through it and looking at all the photos, I found myself mentally correcting many of his mistakes and thinking up better ways to accomplish what he was trying to do. I realized that yes, this was indeed something I could tackle. It wouldn’t be easy, but it would be doable even at my level.
Camped on an island on Hungry Horse Reservoir, 2015.
I did more research, looked over plans and also a few basic how-to guides that went into great detail about materials, do’s and don’ts, and lots of great advice and ideas. I then spent a few days watching Youtube walk-thru videos. Pretty soon, I found myself with a two page parts list and combing over various home improvement and automotive websites, pricing out parts and materials. A few more days went by, I revised my list a few times, rounded up on everything, added about $1500 for x-factor, and came to an estimate of about $6500 to build one on my own.
So that’s the plan now. We’ll take out a personal loan and hopefully I’ll start piecing the thing together in my garage within the next month. I have no idea how long it will take me, just so long as I have it done by August. I intend to document not only the build, but the subsequent trip we’re planning on taking it on this summer.
The view from our campsite on an island on Hungry Horse Reservior. 2015.
As I said, I don’t think it’ll be easy. It’s by far the biggest project I’ve taken on, but it’s certainly doable.
