Open House

Earlier this week, all the folks in our trailer campground got together and decided to hold an Open House! Or in this case, Open Trailer. Just for fun, and to give the non-trailer people an idea of what it might be like to live in a camper. If appearance is any indication, we all spent a couple days cleaning up our rigs and held a party in the parking lot after work Tuesday night. Everyone was invited to walk through, around, and in some cases on our mobile homes. And even though I’m one of the trailer people, I really learned a lot about others’ rigs, how and why they acquired them, and what they plan to do next. Below are some fun photos of some very different living spaces, and as one attendee commented, people’s personalities really come through in their living spaces!

First, you have the full-timers: people who have given up their residences and live on the road year-round. They have services that provide them with a mailing address and forward their mail to them, and have basically everything they own in their trailers (OK, maybe a few things in a storage unit somewhere or with family). Their rigs are really big (fifth wheel or Class A) and rightly so, because these are their permanent homes–one even has a fireplace. And Lenny let me pretend to drive his away!

Next, we have the mid-size trailers. We’re included in this category, but we are the only Airstream here, and as a 1975 we’re definitely the oldest. Owners of these trailers might live in them year-round, or like us, just camp in them for vacations or while working seasonal jobs. We all have Ford F-150 pickup trucks as our tow vehicles, but that’s where the resemblance ends. Tilapia was in her travel kennel on the bed during our tour, as we were afraid she’d try to run out while people were walking around. But she really enjoyed the folks who came in back to pet her!

Finally, we have one custom camper van among us and it is really an amazing feat of engineering! Holding everything its two occupants might need for a six-month season, it’s full of nooks and crannies, the latest in folding beds, chairs, and tables, and still manages to look pretty comfy! The owners have a small trailer of incidental items that they tow behind it, but like the Scooby Doo van, when they take off for the weekend or just for a day-trip, the whole thing goes with them!

A friend asked me before I left Chicago whether I had lived in a trailer before, and I had to admit I hadn’t. This gave me some pause because I hadn’t though much at all about whether I would actually like living in a trailer–it was just part of the plan and it just had to work out! But it’s been over three months now, and I can actually say that I really enjoy it a lot. There are some challenges, of course, particularly in this situation, where I have to come to the dorm to use the internet and take a shower. But on the whole, it’s not really that different from living in our apartment in Chicago. It’s a little smaller, to be sure, and we have to throw a lot of things like clothing that we’re not imminently using or other household items in the bed of the pickup truck for storage. We have to pick up a lot–clothing, books, dishes, you name it. But the place stays pretty clean overall. We and most of our neighbors have had the occasional mouse in our camper, and we’ve spent some time lying on the ground underneath looking for holes we can seal, with some degree of success.

Our one big challenge relates to the climate. As you have probably seen from the pictures, we’re out between a parking lot and a field, with absolutely no shade in sight. So when it’s sunny–which is pretty much every day–we just bake. And at the beginning of the season, it could get pretty cold. We’ve solved these issues with a few pieces of equipment: space heaters (both electric and propane-fueled) for cold nights and mornings, insulating foil for our windows to keep the sun out, the A/C unit that’s built into our trailer, and a new acquisition that’s known to many as a “swamp cooler.” Swamp coolers work on the principle of evaporative cooling: basically, it’s a fan that passes over a tray of water and blows it into the trailer. These devices work incredibly well in hot, dry climates such as the one we’re in, but are less effective in more humid parts of the country. We found that our A/C wasn’t really getting the bedroom cool, so we set up the swamp cooler and now our cat is as cool as a cucumber when we come home. But the most amazing climate-related acquisition is our new Wi-Fi thermometer. Although it’s really just a thermometer, it broadcasts via the Wi-Fi to an app on my phone and I can see what temperature the trailer is at all times. It also has an alarm that you can set to notify you if the area goes above or below a certain temperature range. I have ours set to notify me if the trailer gets hotter than 85 or colder than 45 degrees. And most of the time it actually works, even though the Wi-Fi signal in the trailer is so weak that I can barely answer an email. I have received notifications through my Apple Watch that the temps hit 85 and have been able to go home to check on the cat, who, predictably, is loving every second of the heat wave. So I no longer worry when we go on day trips without her anymore.

I don’t think I would want to give up my land home to live full-time in the Airstream, but it’s really a fun option for specified periods of time. Although if it weren’t for the fact that nearly all our friends live in the greater Chicago area, I could see myself spending longer and longer periods of time this way. Our friends who are on the road permanently love it and can park at campgrounds or BLM lands near their friends and family for weeks at a time. And the open house provided a really great glimpse of how others make this work. Hope you enjoy the photos, and feel free to ask questions!