Travel Trailers

Marcia’s Soo Line Caboose

Marcia Weber lives full-time in a Soo Line train caboose that was built in 1909. She purchased the caboose with her husband at the Tunerville Station in Whippany, New Jersey in 1975 from an ad in the Wall Street Journal that simply said “wooden cabooses for sale.”

Big Sur Cabin Rentals

by Christina Nellemann

If you want to get a taste of a tiny house on a big coastline, visit the tiny cabins owned by Richard Wagnoe who has 54 acres on a stretch of Hwy. 1. The carpenter, stone mason and horticulturalist rents out several tiny cabins and a few Airstreams to visitors traveling along this beautiful area of California.

Our ALiner Restoration

by Kent Griswold

Guest Post by JoAnne Leonard

Our story about our little 1998 Aliner camper started two years ago when my husband and I brought home a funny camper with a rotted floor and got the evil eye from our neighbors. We salvaged it from its destiny of the dump from a couple camping friends of ours. They were getting older and had given up on most camping and didn’t have the time, energy or desire to fix the rotting floor, a known problem for this model and year. They had offered it to us a couple years prior, but we didn’t really have the means to deal with it. We were very happy camping in tents as we were lifelong campers ourselves and wanted to keep it simple. But this camper was different, it was simple, a basic popup but without the hassle of canvas, a unique triangle profile and a small foot print (6’3”x12’).

We’d bring the subject up to each other every once in a while until we decided to just go get it. It sat in the furthest corner from their house, the tires sat almost half way to the ground from sitting for so long, a branch had pierced a hole in one of the vents from a bad ice storm the year before and the floor was now growing things under the linoleum that was keeping it together. Looking back now I am not sure how it made it through the 30 mile trip back to our house.

Modern Sheepwagon

by Christina Nellemann

This beautiful custom sheep wagon by Wizard Wagonworks is based on the original “sheep camp” of the 1880’s with a modern twist. It is designed for both highway and off-road use as well as for durability, comfort and ease of maintenance. Kenny Harris of Wizard wagonworks is in the cabinetry business and built two of these sheep wagons according to a customer’s specifications. One is now being sold for $60,000, but Kenny can build any custom sheep wagon for less than the current price.

The exterior of the wagon contains laminated oak struts, a T&G planked floor and metal roofing. The wagon is insulated and the exterior wood is finished with teak oil. The interior has oak bead board paneling and the benches, tables, cabinet doors and drawer fronts are solid oak. The wagon can by towed by a truck or other large vehicle and handles well on the highway with speeds up to 70 MPH.

Mini Caravan

by Kent Griswold

The 2011 ETA QTVan is minimalism at the extreme with a high price to match. The ETA QTVan is Designed and built by an English company called Environmental Transport Association. With the Royal Wedding approaching the company is promoting it as a way to camp in royal style. At $9,000, … Read more

Utilitoy Trailer

by Kent Griswold

With gas prices so high these days and not likely to go down anytime soon. The idea of towing your vacation home down the road may soon be a thing of the past. Like the Utilitoy site says, if you want to vacation in your home, than camp in your home, if you want an adventure go in a Utilitoy.

Though not a tiny house the Utilitoy would make a great extra bedroom for a tiny house or hop in your small car and attach it and go on a vacation to the beach, or the woods, or mountains.

The Utilitoy is made to be ultra lightweight and is very versatile and practical. It is designed to fit into a standard garage for easy storage and unlike most teardrops will easily sleep a family of four. It also can be used as a utility trailer, so you can haul around kayaks, mountain bikes, lumber or furniture. It can be cleaned out with a garden hose. At a base weight of only 962 pounds it really is a light trailer.

Towable Gypsy Wagon

by Kent Griswold

Darrel Schultz is building a light towable gypsy wagon. The floor is 12 feet long and 54 inches wide. The roof overhangs each end by about 16 inches.

It’s totally scratch-built from the fram up, as the pictures show. I used a Dexter torsion-bar axle with electric brakes. Darrel likes keeping things simple, so there will be no electrical system other than the trailer lighting. The lights on the inside are gas, exactly as were used on early airstream trailers.

Darrel will be using a wood-burning stove (a ” Lil Sweetie” boxwood stove from Vogelzang.) for heat. Darrel is building it to camp in, because his Teardrop that he built doesn’t hold three people. He won’t have the interior finished, but he hopes to have the exterior complete enough by late summer for a trip to Yellowstone.

Wandering Book Artists Gypsy Wagon

by Christina Nellemann

Peter and Donna Thomas are book artists from Northern California who have been spending the last year traveling around the U.S. in a handmade gypsy wagon. The wagon is their temporary home as well as a place for them to sell their books, teach book arts workshops and give talks and lectures. Wherever they’ve gone, their gypsy wagon has attracted attention for its whimsical color and design.

Peter and Donna fell in love with gypsy wagons when they were craftspeople at Renaissance fairs. Many of the fair vendors built the wagons to sleep in and sell their wares from. Peter and Donna built the wagon on a 16-foot Carson car hauler. The entire trailer weighs 3,800 pounds and it took them three years to build. The rafters were made with laminated pine boards and the floor with locally milled sugar pine. It is insulated, contains a small kitchen and electricity. They have a camping toilet in the closet and a solar shower that they keep in their tow vehicle, but the couple usually use campgrounds, friendly locals and universities for their bathing.

Managing Miniaturization

by Kent Griswold

Guest Post by Matthew Hofmann

10 advantages of living and working in tiny spaces (with wheels)

Hofmann kicked off his quest for inner peace at the most logical place – CraigsList. He found an Airstream in “fair condition.” A 4-digit deal was struck and one dark and rainy night he rescued the abandoned abode from behind a chain link fence guarded by a Pit Bull in Mira Loma.

“Crap! I’d just written a sizeable check for what looked like a glorified dog house. The trailer’s swaying back and forth along rain-soaked 101, like the pendulum of doubt pounding in my brain.”

The body was solid, but inside the trailer was a mess. “I’m fairly certain the last resident was the junkyard dog.”

Step #1: Demo – Take everything out (which got the wet dog smell out).
Step #2: Design – The creative process, Hofmann believes, isn’t accomplished by adding more, but by taking away what’s distracting. “The design questions were How much does one remove? How much does one keep?

“For me the solution was creating open space using honest materials. I wanted to bring a sense of outdoors in, so it needed to be bright and airy by nature, yet warm and multi-functional.”

Trillium RV 1500

by Christina Nellemann

Last year I wrote about the re-emergence of the Trillium 1300 travel trailer. The brand has recently expanded with the introduction of the Trillium 1500. This trailer is different than the 1300 in that it has two extra feet added to the middle, larger counter space and a larger dinette which converts into a bed. Four floorplans are available for both the 1300 and the 1500 including a corner restroom and a restroom/shower floorplan.

The Trillium is unique to the fiberglass trailer market in that the company bonds all fiberglass components, uses no wood in the structure, uses closed cell foam ceiling and wall insulation, provides upscale, contemporary interiors and builds each unit to the owner’s specifications. The stylish interior of these trailers is what attracted my attention.

Living Large in a Tiny Place

by Kent Griswold

Guest Post By Matthew Hofmann

The reality of living in 160 sq.ft. Why would anyone choose this?

The nostalgic Airstream still gets grins from the gold era of travelers who trekked in Bonnieville station wagons towing their “drag-alongs.” Today, this 1978 Airstream is the home, office and access to the great outdoors for an industrious 27-year old Santa Barbara-based architect.

Chances are good that your grandfather owned one of these ubiquitous travel trailers. Except for the iMac mounted on the wall and the hi-def printer in the drawer, they haven’t changed much in the past 75 years.

Airstream’s been around since 1936 when the smooth-skinned aluminum bodies rolled aerodynamically off the Chicago production line. They temporarily stopped production in 1938 when the new lightweight material was needed for World War II. Many are still on the road today.

Eddie Bauer Airstream

by Christina Nellemann

If you want a small trailer, but also want to enjoy the outdoors in style, you might want to look into getting the new Eddie Bauer Airstream which combines two respected names into one small package. This stylish trailer can hold you, all your toys and even a dog or two.

The Eddie Bauer Airstream is a 25-foot trailer with the classic Airstream styling and costs $74,000. It has a queen-size bed with an Eddie Bauer Goose Down duvet, pillows, and throw, maple and soapstone laminates, quilted fabrics, and stain-resistant Sunbrella upholstery on the interior, an oversized hatch for loading and unloading gear like bikes and kayaks, and a generous side awning. The panoramic windows and the hatch let in the outdoors and fresh air. Other features include: