by Ted Morris
My family and I love camping; we started taking our girls camping when my oldest daughter was only seven months old. When went on a trip to Detroit Lake one year in a tent and the day started off beautiful, but one night it rained and it leaked through on my wife and daughter. We were miserable the next morning we woke up and broke down camp in the mud. It was at this point I said never again; I said we needed a camper. But being on a budget and not wanting to buy a cheaply made older camper I decided to build a tear drop.
My thoughts were we needed something to keep us off the ground; something small enough to fit in a single car garage and easy to tow. A tear drop was a perfect fit; but the typical teardrop wouldn’t work because I needed something to fit a family of four and I’m 6’7″. So I scoured the internet for inspiration and ordered a templet and built one that was five feet wide and nine feet long with no plans.
It had a bunk bed that floated in the air that my girls slept on and worked great; with all of us snug as a bug. Eventually though they out grew the bunk and so we sold it to move on to a tent trailer. It was great but on the maiden voyage we blew a tire and packing it was tricky because folded down you had to really plan on how to pack it. I never felt comfortable towing it since the blow out and just found it a lot more work to set up compared to the good old tear drop I once made.
Finally this last year I decided to build another one; but wanted to do something no one else had done. I liked the shape of some of the other tiny campers that had a more square shape. So searching the internet I combined different campers in to my own design. I was inspired to build one that had a easy manual pop up roof with a loft; and again I built with no blue prints just figured it out as I was cutting. So with it being a foot wider combined with a pop up roof I figured the girls would have their own separate sleeping areas and they wouldn’t outgrow it until they became teenagers.
That’s my story and if you would like to see pictures of the builds of both of them I would be honored to accept your friendship request so you could see more. Thanks again for your interest of my story. View construction photos by clicking here.