Her Maiden Voyage Had to Include Biscuits, Gravy and a little of Dante's Inferno
Original Post Date: Feb 22, 2020
So “the angels sang”, there was a rainbow overhead when we saw her in the parking lot of the dealership and I swear she is still aglow, even as she sits in our drive way, no disrespect intended!
For a long time since seeing the end of the tunnel in educating our children, we have been talking about getting some kind of a truck camper, trailer, travel van OR picking a spot in the Four Corners region to buy a loft or time share in an urban or downtown setting like Santa Fe, Downtown Denver, Moab, Telluride, cause…. well cause below is our driveway ( where mountain lions hang and have snacks,not joking)…
On the eve of our 29th wedding anniversary “the crazy” of if Not now, When?! hit me. We were planning on doing a route up and over the mountains and back around the length of Colorado to see our girls and staying a few days downtown Denver to celebrate. Adding up at least two nights of hotels, all the eating out and inevitable shopping was dang close to a down payment for a truck camper, what we were pondering at the time, like a revolving door of possibilities! Visiting the first kiddo in Grand Junction, we went to a dealership that had the brand of truck campers we thought we wanted and this little darling was right up at the front of the lot and well, glowing.
Jon gestured over to it and said, “you sure you don’t want to get a teardrop?” I looked over and said, “that’s not a teardrop!” Hence has started the discussion, “What actually is a teardrop, calm-shell, etc”. What I know, ( or think, have gathered, but hey, I could be wrong! )
Teardrop: applying to the tear shape, usually or mostly means a tiny trailer that only has room for a bed inside, to sleep or sit cross legged on, although some models you can make a couch, so your feet can be downward.
Keep Your Daydream’s winter season is traveling the SW in a true “teardrop” pulled by a Jeep checking out all the “overland”/ off road possibilities , below is a link to their voyage to Zion!
Their episodes are hilarious, going from a huge 5th wheel of comfort ! But for me, a teardrop would be a claustrophobic nightmare and not meet the ultimate need of a cozy place to sleep, sit with my feet on the floor, work/ entertain and most importantly make and eat the ultimate camp/cabin food “biscuits and gravy” in all kinds of weather, but more on that later.
Continuing with the definitions …
Clam-shell: a open up hatch kitchen on the back of a teardrop ( like a clam opening it’s shell)
There are many a maker of “teardrops”. But NUCAMP is considered one of the best in quality and customer satisfaction, made by Amish hands in Ohio, you can visit their factory! ( I wont tell you what my husband said when I said that would be fun, but it came from one of Dante’ s epic classics so use your imagination)
More definitions…
T@G: the company NUCAMP’s true teardrop
T@B: NUCAMP’s larger teardrop shaped tiny trailer but with at least the kitchen inside with standing room, some have bathrooms as well
Let’s face it, they’re so stinking cute! I started calling ours “Baby” at the RV Dealership. Later I discovered that should be written “B@BY”, get it, T@G, T@B…it’s like a secret handshake everyone in the club does.
Jon did declare we were not calling our trailer Baby, or B@BY, not quoting Dante this time, but he did come up with some pretty profound names and I informed him I was not giving everyone we saw in every parking lot we were with B@BY a literary lesson on some great classic or old English word no one knew. So making a grand compromise, I told him we could call it Frances, but the girl version, not the male like St. Francis. He agreed, thinking of all these monkish ideas like the animals icons he could get the next time we were in Santa Fe. Little did he know then that Frances is B@BY’s real name (our trailer’s namesake whether he likes it or not) in……DIRTY DANCING ! Click on picture for the 1987 trailer…
I mean the retro-ness of the T@B’S just seems to fit the retro-ness of a 1987 dance movie based in 1963 at a declining Catskill Family Resort and I just kept hearing those vintage songs from its soundtrack as we walked around the dealership, okay, I guess I really didn’t hear angels.
And we all know, at least all us girls know…
“NOBODY PUTS B@BY IN A CORNER”
They’re so curvy, inside and out and such a statement just seemed to fit us, or probably more me. I graduated High School in 1986, went to Europe that summer to see great works of art and a little bit more of the world, then by the next summer (1987) had met the love of my life, though I didn’t know it, was settled down into college/art school and had found my home on the opposite side of the mountains, in the rural Southwest and for the first time in my life got out of my “corner”
Do the math, that was thirty plus years ago, three decades of art school, law school, renovating an old Victorian shack in a mining town, building a new log house on an old homestead with outbuildings, a barn and several fruit orchards. We raised our own babies, invested in our community, help build a church from the ground up, took care of parents and now? Now we just want more time to explore this amazing part of the country where mountains and deserts can be found in opposite directions and it would be awful nice, doing it in a bit more comfort then we have been use to.
But in the parking lot of that dealership, we knew nothing of Nucamp, the tiny trailer world, the possibilities, etc. when we saw our B@BY . We had done all the research, otherwise known as “heming and hawing” on getting a truck camper. But we bought her on a big wonderful whim! We tend to do that, like when we went to pick out a new dog, did the research, had many discussion, tried to make the decision with our head, decided we wanted a male dog, more likely to be calm, laid back, slightly stupid and mellow, then ended up taking home a female that in the two visits kept coming over and wanting to say hi when we were trying to pick out one of her brother cause she was curious…
Well, Piper is the bossiest dog ever, is too smart for our own good, does not like other dogs or most people except the family and is so scary looking at about 85 pounds ( kinda like the dog in Harry Potter 4) that people cross the street in fear when they see her coming or hoist up their lap dogs, not at all what we went looking for, but she is one of the best spur of the moment decisions we have ever made!
And one trip out with our new 2020 T@B Boondock CS-S trailer, we knew we had done it again, made one of the best decision of our life in about 3 seconds.
Last weekend we took her on her maiden voyage. We dried camped, keep everything winterized and carried our water, above Moab, Utah, in the middle of February, with snow still in the shade and were cozy as could be! I soon came to realize, a trailer is like a “cabin on wheels”… our very own cabin, loft, timeshare that we can pull anywhere and claim well, a million dollar view for the weekend!
This ( actually a previous trip before you head gets confused from all the green- Sandflats in early summer looking towards the La Sal Mountains) is a million dollar view. I can’t wait to take B@BY to Pismo Beach where we love spending time or along the Washington and Oregon coast, or frankly “moochdock” in family and friend’s driveways not only in Colorado, but Idaho, Wyoming and much to Jon’s chagrin- the Midwest!!
Now, coming up, per say, from car, tent, and even backpack camping- I still want the outdoor picnic table, the camp chairs around a fire pit, to sit around and look up at the stars, listen to Jon quote some more Dante’ and ponder the reddish star that is Orion’s shoulder or armpit depending on different cultural traditions. Scientifically, he coached me, the changing star is either going super nova, has already exploded or according to other countries astronomy experts is only burping gases sideways for some unknown reason and just acting strange…my recap, not his much more intelligent explanation, as we gazed upward. HERE, you can get a clearer explanation than I am giving.
I love those times around the campfire, but when I get sleepy or cold, I want to go somewhere warm and cozy, curl into a soft bed and leave him to ponder such great things as long as he wants. More importantly, in the middle of the night, I want a potty option that does not require watching out for mountain lions or bears, though I do feel pretty safe with said big tough girl dog by my side. It is just by the time the deed is done, I’m wide awake and well, the rest of the night turns into listening to a book on tape or pondering my own contemplation of the universe instead of sleeping.
And in the morning, the most satisfying thing and pretty much required…. is making some stick to the ribs Biscuits and Gravy…
But T@Bs don’t come with ovens and I thought I would have to resign to only stove top culinary cooking or learn how to cook like a cowboy, with a dutch oven over some banked glowing coals…
a Bundt Pan Red Lidded Contraption, started popping up in Youtube travel feeds and Jon got it for me for Valentine’s Day! He contemplates stars, I contemplate biscuits, or how to make ‘em!
Don’t be distracted by my use of a wooden spoon to prop the window… or my greasy biscuit dough smears on the window. There are three parts to this wonderful invention- a heating ring that sits on top of the burner…
a pan with a large center hole that the very limited instruction manual (repeated in like six languages) instructs to fill only half way with anything you put in the oven- casseroles, yeast breads, pizza, pies, brownies, cobblers, I plan to test them all and a domed and vented lid to allow air circulation around the baking food.
By the way, that’s the Slickrock Bike trail parking lot across the way- true bike to door living at $20 a night! Well, when Jon was sitting in our tiny cabin on wheels, eating his second plate of glorious biscuit and gravy…
looking out at our million dollar view, Arches National Park is on the other side of the Slickrock trail…he declared that he actually didn’t think it was going to work, the stove top oven contraption that baked my beautifully browned almost perfect, biscuits!!
He does that, seems to go along with me, till the deed is done, then declares his amazement it actually worked. Oh, Ye of little faith! I guess you have to be a bit of a pessimist to like Dante’s Inferno…
Disclaimer: I think Ohio is a lovely state and I very much enjoy the Midwest and its rolling hills of farmland or the flatness to get there. I’m looking forward to going there this summer to explore, take photos and get inspired! We will be towing B@BY that direction to drop off a kid for field school at one of the Indian mound sites for an archaeological dig. More travel blogs to come.
