Dennis and I dream of one day being able to travel all across the country – and we would love to explore Canada as well. The one thing slowing us down is that we certainly don’t want to go on extended trips with our tent.
And our currently vehicle isn’t capable of pulling most RVs on the market.
In a perfect world, we would own a brand new 4-wheel drive truck pulling an Airstream. However, we don’t have a wad of cash burning a hole in our pocket and neither of us is keen on the idea of going into major debt.
Doing What We Can With What We Have
Fortunately, our Ford Escape is capable of pulling a small camper so we decided the most fiscally responsible way to get on the road would be to purchase a teardrop camper. We did a lot of shopping and soul searching trying to find something we would be happy using.
After all, Dennis is 6’3″ and we’re not small people. We thought it was important that we ended up with something we could both sit up straight inside.
We actually contemplated building our own teardrop camper so that we could modify the plans and make ours a bit taller than average. We started down that road and even purchased the utility trailer on which we would build our camper.
Then reality set it. Building a camper is a lot of work!
And Dennis’s full time job doesn’t give him a lot of extra time to get into major projects like that.
We realized we would have to choose between spending Dennis’s spare time working in the workshop or buying something ready-made that would enable us to get on the road more quickly.
Rustic Trails Teardrops
We were fortunate to find a small, family-owned company called Rustic Trail Teardrops, located in North Carolina, that specializes in making teardrop campers. Their campers are special, however.
The first thing that attracted us to their company is that they are affordable. We didn’t want to take out a loan to buy a recreation vehicle and their prices made it possible for us to pay cash… with a little bit of saving.
Another thing that makes them unique is that they have several designs that are larger than traditional teardrops. The height inside some of their campers would be comfortable for Dennis to sit in!
Yet they were still light enough to be well under the tow rating of our vehicle.
Let me just say right now that this is NOT a sponsored post. All of the opinions here are honest and we aren’t receiving anything for giving our feedback about our camper, which we purchased ourselves.
There are definitely pros and cons to tiny camping. You have to live more minimally than you would if you had a larger RV.
When we first started looking at campers, I told Dennis I had to have a kitchen and a bathroom. And guess what?!? Our camper doesn’t have either.
We do bring along a cassette toilet for those middle of the night bathroom needs. But otherwise, we use public restroom and even vault toilets at the campgrounds where we’re staying.
And I’ve found that this option isn’t as bad as I initially thought. Keeping hand sanitizer and sanitizing wipes in your pocket makes it a much more “pleasant” experience. LOL
And we have an outdoor kitchen setup which has actually turned out to be way more convenient than I ever dreamed. We love being able to bring our camp stove/kitchen with us in our truck no matter where we are so that we can easily make meals on the go – rather than relying on restaurants.
Our kitchen isn’t stuck with our camper! I envision us continuing to keep this outdoor kitchen setup in the truck with us even after we have an RV that has a kitchen!
How Do We Like our Tiny Camper?
If you’d like to see a detailed tour of our tiny camper, we made a video that you can watch here.
When we first picked up our camper, we were a little bit shocked at how small it was in person. We bought it sight unseen since we live 10 1/2 hours away from the manufacturer.
In fact, I didn’t even step foot inside the camper until after we had written a check and were on our way back home.
That first night camping in it was rough.
Like everything else in life, it took a little bit of getting used to. We were coming from a spacious tent so having those four walls so closely around us was a bit disconcerting.
However, soon after that, we headed out on a week long trip with our camper and that gave us enough time to figure some things out and fall in love with our camper.
Some of the big things we had to figure out were:
1. How to maximize the storage so that everything had a place
2. How to sleep comfortably
3. The best ways for two tall people to share the space inside a tiny camper
We’re still working on a few of these things but every time we take a trip in our tiny camper we come up with more solutions to make things even more comfortable. But every time we take it on another trip we fall in love with it a little bit more.
And we have also discovered a lot of unexpected benefits to tiny camping that have been a pleasant surprise as well.
A tiny camper might not be the best option for every situation. However, we think we made the best choice for us to help us spend more time traveling and less time working to pay off the cost of a large truck and rig.
Do you have a tiny camper? If so, we’d love to hear about your experience! Please leave a comment below.