Why a Teardrop?
We've enjoyed roadtrips four or five days long to destinations as far as 500 miles away for years. A trip out to the Grand Canyon and Phoenix may be the record for distance. In those cases we were quite happy to rent a room with a comfortable bed and visit a restaurant to let someone else cook. We were also quite happy to motor along the highways unencumbered by a trailer. 75mph speed limits are great!
Santa Fe has been a common destination. It's not too far to drive. The food is great. There are a few arts districts to explore. We even enjoyed some shows at the Santa Fe Opera. It was in recent years where we discovered some allergies and sensitivities that made eating in foreign kitchens less pleasurable. Staying in a motel doesn't always make it easy to cook for yourself, and I don't relish lugging a cooler up to a suite hotel.
A few years ago, after a trip to Santa Fe full of ingredients-angst, I came into a last-minute reservation at Utah's Dead Horse State Park. It was for late in October when it might be too cool for tent camping. Since we already had a hitch on the car for a bike rack, I thought it wouldn't be too much trouble to get a wiring kit for trailer lights and rent a teardrop. It wasn't. We did. We towed an early rental from Colorado Teardrops up and enjoyed some good weather. It was on our last night there when temperatures dropped 20 degrees that the teardrop really shined. We thought this would be pretty cool. Coincidentally, we could see that these trailers were small enough to fit into the remaining part of our 2-1/2 car garage.
For the following years the idea marinated. I considered a tent trailer. Livin' Lite was making small aluminum trailers that would easily be towed by our 4 cylinder Subie. I wasn't sure about the perceived lack of security with cloth walls. The space would be nice, and the lesser insulation could be made up with by a furnace. You can even get fresh and waste water systems. A guy at work was able to borrow a space-age trailer from his parents. A Cricket trailer has an aluminum frame, is short enough to park in a garage and has a pop-up roof so you can stand up inside of them. The price was a little high, and they were a little heavy for our Subaru. The Tigermoth is a smaller version of the same, and came under some pretty serious consideration. The Tiermoth is very much the size of a tear drop. It's basically a 5x6 mattress on the inside that can be converted to a small sitting space. The galley is a slide-out drawer with maybe half the space of a teardrop's galley. I think the techno-look killed it from my wife's perspective. So the teardrop it was.
A teardrop is not just a novel mode of travel, but a kind of food security: you take your kitchen with you. It has good insulation for cold nights, and it's a box you can lock up.
Santa Fe has been a common destination. It's not too far to drive. The food is great. There are a few arts districts to explore. We even enjoyed some shows at the Santa Fe Opera. It was in recent years where we discovered some allergies and sensitivities that made eating in foreign kitchens less pleasurable. Staying in a motel doesn't always make it easy to cook for yourself, and I don't relish lugging a cooler up to a suite hotel.
A few years ago, after a trip to Santa Fe full of ingredients-angst, I came into a last-minute reservation at Utah's Dead Horse State Park. It was for late in October when it might be too cool for tent camping. Since we already had a hitch on the car for a bike rack, I thought it wouldn't be too much trouble to get a wiring kit for trailer lights and rent a teardrop. It wasn't. We did. We towed an early rental from Colorado Teardrops up and enjoyed some good weather. It was on our last night there when temperatures dropped 20 degrees that the teardrop really shined. We thought this would be pretty cool. Coincidentally, we could see that these trailers were small enough to fit into the remaining part of our 2-1/2 car garage.
For the following years the idea marinated. I considered a tent trailer. Livin' Lite was making small aluminum trailers that would easily be towed by our 4 cylinder Subie. I wasn't sure about the perceived lack of security with cloth walls. The space would be nice, and the lesser insulation could be made up with by a furnace. You can even get fresh and waste water systems. A guy at work was able to borrow a space-age trailer from his parents. A Cricket trailer has an aluminum frame, is short enough to park in a garage and has a pop-up roof so you can stand up inside of them. The price was a little high, and they were a little heavy for our Subaru. The Tigermoth is a smaller version of the same, and came under some pretty serious consideration. The Tiermoth is very much the size of a tear drop. It's basically a 5x6 mattress on the inside that can be converted to a small sitting space. The galley is a slide-out drawer with maybe half the space of a teardrop's galley. I think the techno-look killed it from my wife's perspective. So the teardrop it was.
A teardrop is not just a novel mode of travel, but a kind of food security: you take your kitchen with you. It has good insulation for cold nights, and it's a box you can lock up.
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