For those of you that know us already or have been following us for a while, you know that we love to travel. This lead us to look into campers and discovering people living full time in RVs and traveling the world. We were hooked! We immediately started researching the life and equipment.
We love our T@G trailer. We have a place to sleep, a place to cook food, a place to wash, we can tow with the car we already own (saving us money and a larger commitment), and the build quality is amazing. Let me backup a little and give you a peek into the past. How and why did we choose a teardrop as our first trailer?
We chose the T@G after looking at several trailers of various sizes as we were not sure which direction we would end up going and if we wanted to ease into camping or jump with both feet into full time RV living. We looked at many trailers from teardrop trailers through 20 foot trailers. We considered trailers we could tow with Subacca and trailers that would require us to buy a new vehicle. Some of the trailers that we considered were: NuCamp T@G and T@B Boondock, Forest River E-pro (from the 12 foot through the 20 foot E19FD), Forest River R-Pod, The Happy Camper, The Scamp, and many more that we found through Google searches and YouTube videos. Researching trailers was a big effort and a lot of fun. At this stage we were just trying to decide what we wanted and what we needed. We watched A LOT of YouTube videos of people who are full timing in their RV.
We were discussing the need for a bathroom, shower, kitchen, and bed type. We also discussed the pros and cons of a smaller trailer with Subacca towing versus a larger trailer and buying a new tow vehicle. We had to decide if we were going to camp on the weekends and continue our current way of life or are we going to jump into full time RV living. Camping on the weekends means that we must use Subacca and the trailer must fit inside the garage. Full time RV living really opens up our options as we won't be restricted on trailer size. We didn't want to go huge since it's just the two of us and the pups and a huge trailer means a huge tow vehicle and an enormous price tag.
Many of the people we started following online who are full time RVing either didn't have an indoor bathroom or had a cassette or composting toilet. A lot of them talked about showering either outside or at a gym. They spoke of the wonders of cooking outside or cooking simply with one pot meals which saves on dishes and water usage. As far as the bed goes, Laurie fell in love with a Murphy bed layout. It is not a necessity but is nice in that it gives you a sleeping space which converts to a living area when not in use and the bed can stay made and ready for sleeping while in transport. Most of these full timers talked about how much time they spent outside of their camper and that being outside was one of the big perks of this lifestyle. This really spoke to us as we also love spending time outside.
Being new to the towing/RV world and not wanting to spend a bunch of money before we knew what we liked, we bought our 2019 T@G Boondock Edge on Labor Day weekend 2018. Ultimately, we decided to save money and buy what we could already tow. Our limits were: under 2,000 lbs with electric brakes (so Subacca could pull it), under 7 ft tall (so it could be parked inside the garage) and with as many comforts as we could get inside those parameters. We wanted to take as many trips as possible with our set up and see what we liked and disliked about it over time to help us decide what was important to us and what we don't really need.
We bought our 2019 T@G Boondock Edge on Labor Day weekend 2018. So far we have taken some 2-3 days trips and one week-long trip for Christmas 2018. We also have a two-week trip planned for the summer of 2019 to Colorado to ride some mountain biking trails. It does great towing behind Subacca and Dominic says that he can barely feel it back there. It was a great choice that we are happy with.
We love the kitchen, decorating it was fun and we got to use a lot of brain power to find items that would be useful and fit in the teeny tiny spaces in the T@G. It is really hard to find light-weight items that are small enough to fit in the tiny cabinets but still be useful. Cooking has been good, we have a 2 burner propane stove in the clam-shell kitchen as well as a microwave. So far on the stove we've made bacon, sausages, and heated water to clean with since we don't have a hot water heater. We also made some instant oatmeal in the microwave and reheated leftover from eating at a restaurant. We are able to wash dishes in the sink, though we do struggle with grey water. We are currently collecting it in a collapsible bucket which works OK when we have a sewer connection to dump it in but when we don't, it is hard to dispose of in a proper manner. The indoor cabinets are also tricky to figure out the best way to fit clothes into and keep it functional. The cabinet are not very deep and we want to be as efficient as we can. Using compression containers for smaller items has been working well and keeps them organized. I also found that rolling my clothes and putting an elastic band around them keeps them from unraveling as I wear items and the cabinets become less full and the clothes less compressed together.
Our first trip out, we loved the mattress that came with the camper. Trip two had us both very sore upon waking up and that was a trip where we were going biking that first morning! Before we headed out for Christmas, thankfully, Dominic remembered how sore we were from the bed and we ordered a Lucid 4" memory foam mattress topper and it was AMAZING. It saved our backs and Laurie's hips (side-sleeper) from being sore. It does make the camper feel more moist so we also got a dehumidifier as well to help keep the camper dry. The third item that we purchased to make our Christmas trip great was a Handy Heater, it came highly recommended by just about everyone in our T@G Facebook group. It plugs into the wall, there is no cord and it takes up very little space. It kept our tiny trailer comfortable all week and we could not have made the trip without it and the mattress topper. Our final purchase for our Christmas trip was a Coleman Mountain view 12' X 12' screen dome tent. We had seen another T@G with this tent and it fit perfectly over the kitchen hatch and around the sides of the trailer giving an additional room outside to cook and eat. Once we set it up behind our trailer we realized a few things, that other T@G was not an XL or a Boondock version (our trailer was too tall and wide to fit inside the tent the same way), the tent only comes with 2 removable walls and 4 screen doors. While we can be protected from some elements while cooking and we can fit the bikes inside to protect them as well, we can't use the tent for all that we had hoped. We were hoping that we could also put a portable toilet in there to save us having to walk long distances at night when we don't score a site close to the bathrooms or when boondocking. This would not be possible in this tent due to not having 4 solid sides. We are discussing getting a second tent, since you can't buy spare parts for this model per the manufacturer, then we would have all 4 sides and spare fiberglass poles in case we break one. We are still working on figuring out a portable bathroom situation.
The Christmas trip was our last trip at this point and we are planning the next one as soon as possible, AKA once it stops raining long enough for the biking trails to open. We will likely take the T@G and bikes for a short local trip just to get them all outside and in use. Keep an eye out for some new videos as we also just bought a GoPro Hero 7 Black!
As much as we love the T@g, there are some downsides that we encountered with our set up as well. These led us to learn what we don't want to go without in our next camper. We don't have a bathroom, which means that we sometimes have to walk great distances at night and in the cold or rain. We chose a trailer without a bathroom after our research of other people living in trailers and their opinions on bathroom situations after having been on the road for awhile. The main difference being that most of them were boondocking and we have been staying in RV parks, which leads to very different circumstances. We do plan on boondocking a lot once we are full time so we will see how our opinion changes but, it is easier to delete something and make room for something else than the other way around. Our kitchen is outside and with the weather the way that it has been this year (raining a few days a week since August) it means that we either have to cook in the rain or cold or we may not want to cook at all and we end up eating at restaurants. The third thing that we have learned about living in a trailer is that the entire inside of our teardrop is our bed, this means that the adventure pups are always walking around on our bed even when they just went outside to the bathroom. It also means that after a long day of biking and in sweaty, dirty clothes we really don't want to lay in our bed to get shower stuff and fresh clothes. There are a lot of things that we just haven't figured out yet about camping in a teardrop but, we are willing to learn and we gain new knowledge with each trip.
However, as time goes on and we think more about our life and how we want to live it; it is becoming more apparent that our dream is to begin full time RV living. We do not feel that full timing in a teardrop is for us. Between the adventure pups, mountain biking, camera gear, and work gear the teardrop isn't going to be able to support our needs. We are looking for something bigger with more creature comforts while still maintaining the ability to spend as much time outdoors as possible, weather permitting. It has been a really tough year to ramp up two outside activities (mountain biking and camping) being that is has been raining almost constantly for seven months!
We love the T@g because it gives us the ability to go to new places and get there easily however, looking to the future we feel like our little T@g doesn't have the space that we will need to be able to live full time on the road.
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