In 6 Short Years…

It was this afternoon in 2009 when I hitched up our brand new red 2010 T@B, “Cherry Bomb”, and headed for our first camping trip, a weekend trip to Summit Lake State Park near New Castle, Indiana. We had the T@B for about a month, but when we bought it, I had to borrow my dad’s truck to haul it from Tiara RV in Elkhart, Indiana to Indianapolis. You see, we didn’t have a tow vehicle when we bought it. And the reason we didn’t? Prior to September 2009, we weren’t RVers, let alone campers.

Buying a teardrop trailer was something we always wanted to do, and I always had an interest in the “Airstream of teardrops”, the Camp-Inn. I spent many a night in the mid 2000’s browsing their website and thinking “one day” we’d be in a position to get one. In 2009 when we saw our first T@B while in Missouri one weekend, the following Wednesday we made a deal over the phone with Tiara RV on one of a few T@Bs they had left, as then manufacturer Dutchmen had ceased production of the T@B about a month prior. Sight unseen, other than the pictures on their website, we took the plunge and bought it without having anything to tow it with. Our first priority was to get it and get it home. After that, I found a high mileage 1997 GMC Sierra that fit our budget, so we were set. And the fact the Sierra was red too was icing on the cake. By the time I replaced the rusting hitch on it, we were ready for our first camping trip. That happened on this day in 2009. We were on a T@B online forum on Yahoo Groups when we found out a small group of T@B owners were meeting for the weekend at Summit Lake State Park. We decided this would be a great way to meet other owners and for them to educate us on what we had. It was a rainy afternoon when we arrived, but we were met with open arms. We got a tutorial on how to set up our awning and we ourselves got an indoctrination into the “process” of camping, because when you’re new at camping, there are a lot of new processes to learn.

That weekend started a new way of life for us. We’ve made more new and close friends than I can count and that purchase has opened more doors than I ever imagined it would. I never thought that chilly weekend in October that 6 years later I’d be reminiscing about it on a website dedicated to small travel trailers I created that nearly 2,000 people visit a day either. If you’re reading this, there’s a good chance you already have a trailer, but if you don’t and need a life change, you won’t find a better way to change it.