The poor little trailer, parent to it all, can seem to fade in the face of all this glamour. Or does it? Because, when you get to the park and set up camp, the advantage goes to the guy pulling a trailer. Take less than five minutes to slip the bonds of your ball hitch, and you can go anywhere you please, in the full-size tow vehicle that can take you wherever you want.
Another aspect that may be a win for a towable trailer instead of a motorhome is budget. Let’s say you’re just starting out with a yen to go RVing, and there’s no way you can afford a large motorhome, nor can you afford a major tow vehicle, a truck, or a large SUV. A small trailer could be your best option, because you may be able to tow it with the vehicle you already drive.
For years, we owned a Honda Odyssey, a very popular family minivan. The 2020 Odyssey has a respectable tow rating of 3,500 pounds. You can find lots of great small trailers out there with a dry weight that’s less than 3,000 pounds. In our own Airstream family, you don’t even have to go with an ultra-light Basecamp — the 16-foot Bambi with the classic silver-bullet shape comes in with a dry weight under 3,000 pounds. Just search the web for “trailers with dry weight under 3,000 pounds” or whatever weight your car can tow. Your options and choices are much bigger than you think.
DISCOVERING VINTAGE STYLES OF THE ’40S AND ’50S
Recent bursts of imagination in the RV business have brought back so much that was good in America in the middle of the last century. Canned ham trailers have made a comeback, and major manufacturers are getting into the vintage game, like Gulf Stream with the Vintage Cruiser and the Riverside Retro by Riverside RV. And the return of the teardrop trailer has opened up a great option for first-time RVers, with their lower cost and ease of towing.
Teardrop trailers were a product of the earliest years of towable campers, in the 1930s, and they have a very ’30s outline. The buzzword of the period was streamlined, with sleek, aerodynamic designs that said a new age had arrived. For the glampers we talk about in the first chapter, canned hams and teardrops are the rig of choice, with their glamorous retro appeal.
At their most basic level, a teardrop is a towable bed. You may have seen very simple ones in a camping store like Cabela’s or Gander Outdoors. The first teardrops were built around a standard piece of 4-x-8-foot plywood, with another sheet bent to create a rounded roof. Like the first Airstreams designed by Wally Byam, many were home-built, from kits or simple instructions published in magazines of the day, such as Popular Mechanics. When the ’50s arrived, bigger was better. Cars could tow more weight, highways were more dependable, and Americans wanted more space. By the early ’60s, teardrops died out.
The return of the teardrop came in the late ’90s. We saw one of the first ones in Europe, and if we hadn’t been on a busy highway in the south of France, we would’ve turned around and followed, just to get a better look. We were thrilled when we began to see them in the United States, where the designers were attempting to give the essentials of the design a bit more space and a few more amenities, such as a kitchen and a toilet or even a small wet bath (a combined shower stall and toilet). Most had a fun outdoor kitchen at the rear, with a lift of a clamshell hatch, though others had small kitchens inside, in the wide-end front. In the next decade, designs began plumping up even more, like the Tab Outback 400, part of their popular Outback line, and the Little Guy Max. Both kept the vintage charm and teardrop outline while including a much larger kitchen and a queen-size tuck-away bed, with built-in TV and stereo. These trailers offer easy towing and the freedom of easier access to the backcountry.
Whatever the size, teardrops have cute nailed down at all four corners. If you have a teardrop, people will often stop you and ask about it. One of the biggest advantages is that just about any family car or van can tow a tiny teardrop. (Always check the stats on your own vehicle to make sure.) A classic bed/teardrop can even be pulled by a motorcycle. Many teardrops actually have handles — they’re so lightweight, you can push one into your garage.
Space Odyssey: How Much Do You Need?
The second key question you need to answer has to do with interior space: How much do you really need?
Our first travel trailer was an Airstream 23FB (those initials stand for “front bedroom”). It had an amazing floor plan, one of the best uses we’ve ever seen of a mere 23 feet from stem to stern with no slides. And if we’d been camping in the thing — and only camping in the thing — we’d probably still own it.
But we weren’t. Our first major road trip had us out for well over two months, visiting family in California, six states away from home. California in the winter, a winter that was breaking all records for rain. And the 23FB, despite its nifty floor plan, had no space whatsoever for a living room. Apart from the bathroom and the galley, it contained only a dinette and a bed. It had a very large shower stall, but not large enough for a pair of recliners. Lying in bed just to watch TV is depressing — you feel like you’ve got the flu. The best of dinettes aren’t made for long-term sitting comfort, and many a dreary hour was spent standing up and staring out the door at the incessant downpour, thinking what we really needed was an ark. We won’t deny the snappishness that began to affect our domestic bliss. In the end, we weren’t halfway home before we got on the phone to our dealer to find out what would be involved in trading up to a larger unit.
In our rambles through the campgrounds of America, we’ve seen lots of people who just can’t stand not being outdoors. They’re out in any and all weather, even if they have to wear snowshoes. They’re often the ones with the most elaborate campsites, lighted awnings and cooking tables, and comfy chairs, with an assortment of killer decorations. This sort of camper will often look for an “outside kitchen,” available in many RVs, where, with the lift of a hatch, all the essentials of meal preparation can be had without ever going back inside your rig. You may be this sort of person yourself, in which case interior space isn’t your biggest worry. But this attitude just isn’t universal. Your RV is your home on wheels, and if you’d like a few of the comforts of home, you have nothing to be ashamed of.
In the following sections, we walk you through some other major considerations when you’re deciding how much space you need.
SQUIGGLY LINES AND LABELED SQUARES: MAKING SENSE OF FLOOR PLANS
Some people are very good at reading floor plans, tossing around terms like traffic flow and direct access. The rest of us need a little help.
In the exploration stage of considering an RV, you’ll see lots of videos and photos of the insides of people’s rigs. But you also need to understand a little about floor plans. Why bother? Well, start checking out the websites of RV manufacturers. An amazing number of them will only give you a picture
