So there is this organization called Tear Jerkers, a group of like minded folks that love their tiny trailers as much as we do. We discovered this group a while back and this past week we met up for the first time with the New England Chapter. We arrived at Ross Hill Park in Connecticut last Thursday and stayed until Sunday and without a dull moment. We had heat and rain, and more heat then more rain. . . but it didn't matter as the great folks of the Tear Jerkers group made up for it all. We met so many nice people and learned so much. Surprisingly we have been doing some things right but we learned a lot of simple tricks and got so many ideas about how we can improve our camping experience. These folks love to share. There were three main types of trailers there, manufactured trailers like ours, home built trailers and a wide variety of vintage trailers. Some people have moved up from teardrops to larger sizes but they all still fit in just fine. No worries.
There was even another Vistabule there, #55, owned by a lady named Susan, we exchanged a lot of good ideas. She has had hers for a few years now and it still looks like new. Susan travels with her dog, a Scottish Deer Hound - this is a very large dog for a very small trailer. We arrived Thursday around one in the afternoon, checked in and found our site which was right on the shore of a beautiful little lake. When we arrived at the campsite, Nancy, the organizer of the event met us and had selected a perfect site for us. We could not have asked for a better view and the site was well maintained, grassy and large for our little trailer, but we have enough other stuff that we spread out quite a lot. We have recently purchased a Clam, a pop up screen house that is absolutely awesome. It really does set up in about 2 minutes from out of the bag to up, and it goes back in just as easily, and actually fits in the bag. When it was time to take it down we had an audience to watch - the 'Clam' certainly got a lot of attention and of course it went right back in the bag as billed. Our camp consisted of the Vistabule, the 'Clam' screen house and a small pop-up privacy tent which is a 4x4 foot tent with a 7 foot ceiling for changing clothes and such. Once we got those set up, about ten minutes total I took the bikes off and we began to decorate for the weekend. We did a 'Fiesta' theme so we were all chili peppers and sombreros. We walked around the park meeting other teardroppers and checking out the variety of little trailers. Somewhere in there we also made a trip to Walmart to pick up a few things we had forgotten. (there is always a trip to Walmart). Thursday was a very hot day, but a perfect day with blue skies and puffy white clouds.
Out site had both water and electric so we were all set for the weekend. That evening we sat with some newly made friends and neighbors, Art and Dianne, around their campfire and got to know each other. Art and Dianne have an older (1968 I think) Airstream Bambi that they have lovingly restored. It is beautiful and looks like it just came out of the showroom. Art has replaced all of the woodwork and built custom cabinets. He stripped it to the frame and replaced some of the frame structure and installed a new axle and all the electrical. It is now quite a comfortable and charming trailer. We have always been a big fan of Airstreams. . . some day. We turned in well after dark and had the air conditioning running so we had a comfortable night and escaped the heat and humidity.