"So what's it really like camping in a teardrop?"
A question I've been asked a time or two, - or three or four - in parking lots, at campsites, and once even in the camp bathroom by a guy with a mouthful of toothbrush!
So I thought I'd write something up about my day in a teardrop. Though I should point out that I camp alone so there are aspects about my day, particularly inside the teardrop, that will be different for those that are a little bit more sociable and manage to attract others willing to stick around and spend time with them.
First off, unlike The Van or the cargo trailer, which are about 'living on the road', the teardrop, by neccessity, is more about camping.
With The Van, the cargo trailer, and every other rig I've built or owned in the past 25 years, I could shut myself inside and have access to everything I needed to get through the day within my secure little envelope. Kitchen, bathroom, dining room, sitting room, bedroom, entertainment center, closet, pantry, medicine cabinet. All the crap a person needs for daily living all wrapped up into one shell. A handy thing when I was living out of my rig in the parking lot at work during the week for the last 10 years of my career.
And with a few of those rigs I didn't even need to climb out to drive to the next spot!
The teardrop - not so much. At about half the footprint and weight, and pretty much only a quarter of the volume of the cargo trailer, there are compromises to be made!
The primary one is that I have to interact with the environment outside the enclosed envelope much more than when traveling in the cargo trailer. But then again, that's kinda the point, at least for me - you know - being half feral and all. (I keep bringing up the cargo trailer because I still have it and actually use it on nearly a daily basis as an extention of our limited enclosed living space.)
Despite being somewhat uncivilized, I'm a person that embraces organization. When it comes to the teardrop, and by extention the Ranger, both being particularly small spaces that can get overwhelmed with a haphazard clutter of 'stuff' really quickly, that applies even more so.
So let's start with Ranger organization.
In a little bit you'll see how gear loads into the covered bed of the truck, but I also carry stuff inside the cab.
Since there's just the two of us using the Ranger (Around the local area that is. The Wife does not camp with me!), therefore no one to put into the back seat, as soon as we got the Ranger home from the dealer I pulled that back seat out (you used to be able to delete the back seat when ordering the truck, but not anymore) and replaced it with this far more usefull platform, complete with a cargo net and D-rings to secure things back there.
Then I built this box
that holds the Jackery 2000 below and fridge above, and sits behind the driver's seat.
The Jackery is plugged into the Ranger and charges whenever the engine is running, and the fridge is plugged into the Jackery.
The Jackery and fridge are both strapped down to the box and the box screws into the platform to keep things from flying around and smacking me in the back of my already addled head.
During the day, when not actually driving, which is when the inside of the Ranger tends to get pretty warm just sitting out there in the sun, the fridge is moved to inside the trailer and runs off the trailer's solar-powered electrical system.
I move the food-bin (in the background) in here at the same time. It obviously doesn't need power but I'd rather not leave it sitting in the hot truck stewing my ready-rice all day long either. This has the added benifit of moving the food, cold or bin, closer to the kitchen.
Once the sun goes down both the fridge and the food-bin go back in the truck to make room inside the trailer.
In addition to the fridge setup and the food-bin, I also keep my clothes-bin in the Ranger.
Actually it's two bins. One for clean clothes (top) and another for dirty clothes (bottom). These bins nest together tightly enough to seal the stink of hot used socks inside, and since clean clothes don't care about the temperature, these bins just stay in the Ranger. I just have to remember to move tomorrow's clothes into the teardrop before I settle in for the night. (Maybe one day I'll get the hang of that, but for now I frequently forget!)
With the limited space of the teardrop, and because we use the Ranger for other things between trips,
quite a bit of the camping gear spends its down-time on a rack in the barn when not actually out - well - camping.
And yes, I know this photo is annoyingly organized, but it works for me.
In addition to the fridge/Jackery setup (the Jackery stays on the bottom shelf here because that sucker is heavy!) and various awnings and shelters as well as the bike-rack ramp (second shelf), I've got several bins of other essentials - all labled for easy identification of contents.
One for the tabletop firepit and it's accessories and wood, one for trailer stuff like wheel-chocks and various hitch parts, one for pantry items such as a spare roll of paper towels and toilet paper, an extra sleeping bag, colapsable water jugs, extra butane canisters etc., two bins for bike stuff (the helmet with shade-brim takes up a whole bin on its own!), and finally, one for hiking gear.
All this, along with my folding table and chair from the cargo trailer, only gets loaded up into the truck when I'm heading out on a trip.
But enough about the Ranger - on to the teardrop.
One of the first things I did to make it more livable when I got the teardrop home last summer, after putting in a layer of yoga puzzle-mat to protect my old knees and boney ass from the hard composite floor, was add a whole slew of coathooks and other little bits-n-pieces.
The hooks above the window to the right are for coats and clothes. (notice that the curtains are the same fabric as those in the cargo trailer. I like to carry something forward from the previous rig into the new one and I had extra curtain fabric left over from the cargo trailer project.) Though most of my clothes stay in the clothes-bin in the Ranger, I do need space in the teardrop for what I wore during the day, and my jacket if the weather dictates. The small bag hanging there just right of the door is where I stash the elastic bands I use to keep my rolled up clothes rolled up. That way when I'm folding (rolling) clothes at the next wash I know right where to find them. (There's that organization crap again!)
Immediately to the left of the door are hooks for keys and a headlamp. Way left of those is a hook for the mesh bag with all my tooth-care stuff in it, and in between is a hook for my hat.
Hard to see, but on either side of the door (both doors actually) are steamer-trunk style grab handles I installed to assist with moving around - sitting up, getting out of the chair, rolling out of bed, etc. - in the limited space. Unlike traditional metal grab handles these leather-n-strap versions don't knock heads when banged into and partially fold away when not being tugged on.
Just below the mesh pocket that came with the trailer and where I keep bug-spray and sunscreen, (a feature of the teardrop is that everything inside is easily reachable from the outside.) is a boot-hanger I use to keep my hiking shoes off the floor and out of the way. And below that is one of those amazingly absorbent mud-rugs to deal with tracked in crap on wet days.
I also added a combination class A, B, C, and K fire extinguisher to the right of the door (these are non-toxic, water-cleanup, and will handle any kind of fire a lay-person is likely to come across. I have these in both the cargo and teardrop trailers as well as the Ranger) and a fire blanket hangs on yet another hook on the front wall so it's always where I expect it to be.
Since the other side of the teardrop is where I sleep I didn't add too much crap over there.
Starting on the right:
The mesh pocket that came with the trailer is a handy place for my glasses and phone when I'm sleeping.
Above that is the remote for the vent-fan and a residential style (bigger but much more affordable than 'RV' units) smoke and CO detector that I added.
The grab-handles on either side of the door.
And to wrap it up, another one of those boot-hangers (they came in a 2-pack) above the window that I use as a towel bar for the micro-fiber towel I use for my 'showers'. When the towel is damp (they wring out nearly dry so I use the same towel for washing and drying) the bar swings out and holds the towel away from the curtains for better airflow around it but otherwise folds flat and out of the way.
Along the back wall of the teardrop is a shallow shelf with foot-space below. At first glance the shelf looks too shallow to be of much use but turns out to be pretty utilitarian.
In the left cubby I have the cleaner I use for the toilet (more on that shortly), a bottle of water for when I end up brushing my teeth inside (Walmart parking lots, the Sisters' urban driveway, etc.) and tomorrow's clothes.
Bottom center is hand sanitizer, lotion (any more the skin on my legs cracks and flakes off if I don't slather it every day), toilet paper, a few paper towels, a handfull of individually packaged body-wipes, and a cold-pack because old-man injuries can linger if not seen to.
Top center is the rest of my medicine cabinet, including a bottle of Two Old Goats (sometimes I get bouts of leg cramps at night and this stuff helps) and a small roll-on bottle of Icy-Hot for when I've done something stupid and overworked a muscle-group. (I'm not sayin' it happens often but - OK yah - more frequently than it probably should, but that's only because I'm a 30 year old stuck in a septuagenarian body!)
Bottom right are USB, 12V, and 120V outlets.
Top right is where I keep my down quilt and two sets of evening/night wear. One each, lightweight and heavyweight to cover all seasons.
Not sure where it fits into the flow of this narrative, yet very important - critical - to comfortably living in small spaces, is the subject of ventilation.
No matter how many 'diet gurus' we fork money over to, we humans just don't shrink to any significant degree. This means that regardless of the size of the space we're in we are still pretty much the same volume as always and still give off the same amount of water vapor, not to mention noxious gas emissions. Add steam from our tea and the inevitable condensation from temperature differentials, and the smaller the space the more important ventilation becomes.
The photo above shows a closeup of the space under the rear shelf on the sleeping side of the teardrop after I've pulled the tri-fold mattress away.
Bottom center is the corner of my loosely rolled up sleeping bag, left is a corner of the power distribution center and a couple wire-looms, and in the center is the inside part
of this vent mounted just behind the left fender.
There's no way to close this vent because it was originally installed to deal with a problem other than condensation.
Over at Timberleaf they discovered that the high-quality doors and windows they were installing sealed things up pretty tightly and allowed enough pressure-differential to build up between the inside and out when slamming the doors or going up steep passes to blow out the seals around the moon-roof. (I opted out and have a solid roof instead) So this vent's intended function was pressure equalization, not neccessarily ventilation.
But I use it in combination with my specificly requested MaxAir 7000 powered rooftop vent (a first for Timberleaf who had never installed this model before, probably in part because it can't be used in conjuction with thier roof rack, which I didn't want anyway), which, because of its extended cover design, can be left open in all weather to ensure there's a constant supply of fresh air flowing through the trailer. (Well - fresh as long as Uncle Bob isn't standing outside there by the fender-vent after scarfing down beer-n-brauts!)
The only time I close the roof-vent is when actually going down the road. The rest of the time it's open and the 10-speed fan is always running, drawing air in through that side vent and spitting it out the top regardless of the weather. (At speed level one the fan is nearly silent and draws slightly less than 0.2 amps, or 4.8 amphours per day.)
OK, it's finally time to move on to an actual day in the teardrop!
Being the technical kinda guy I am, let's start at the begining. The gettin' there.
At 75 mph the Ranger by itself clocks in at 22 mpg. Throw a bit of slower mixed driving in there and 24 mpg isn't that hard to come up with.
At somewhere around 2700 - 3000 lbs with a 400+ lbs tongue weight and 8' 10" high to the top of the air-conditioner, when towing the cargo trailer you know you have a trailer back there and will be getting closer to 15 mpg in good conditions, and in less-than-good conditions, such as headwinds and rain, 11 mpg isn't unheard of.
However, put the 1300 - 1500 pound (loaded) teardrop behind the Ranger and, not only is it very well behaved and tucked nicely into the same wind-profile as the truck, it's barely noticable back there, and I consistently get 18 mpg at 70 mph regardless of the conditions.
Of course hitting the road means hooking up first
After all, the trailer is designed to handle off-road situations behind a four-wheel drive vehicle and a traditional ball-coupler has some range-of-movement limitations (about +/- 25° max in the vertical and rotational axes before things start to break) that a proper three-axis coupler overcomes.
So, after a nice easy drive to my destination, it's time to set up camp.
You'll notice here that the teardrop is not oriented the same as the Ranger. Instead of facing east/west like the Ranger and the gravel drive of the campsite, the teardrop is facing north/south, sideways across the drive, to take advantage of the sun on the hatch-mounted solar panel and also the view from the sheltered 'lounging area'.
This would not be posible with the cargo trailer because it is way too heavy, but with the bike unloaded off the tongue-mounted carrier the tongue of the teardrop only weighs 140 lbs. So, with strategically placed wheel-chocks to prevent the thing getting away from me on uneven ground, and within the limits of the terrain (I'm not going to be dragging the thing through gullies by hand!), I can pick the tongue of the teardrop up and walk - OK, actually more like shuffle - it to where I really want it.
Even with the bike left on the rack and the tongue weighing 230 lbs, I can still horse the trailer around at about 6" at a time. It just takes a little longer to get there.
Because of the teardrop's diminutive size, ancillary spaces are integral to the functionality of my campsite, and the first one to go up is usually the Moonshade awning over the kitchen area.
The Moonshade, which is quite simple for one person to set up and take down - kinda important for solitary campers like myself - is designed to have one side attached to a vehicle or trailer and the other supported by two poles. In addition to those two poles, the Moonshade, which is 7' across the short side, comes with a spreader pole to support the vehicle-side of the awning where there's less than 7' of vehicle or trailer to hang it on, like the teardrop.
If you add the Moonshade awning option when you order a Timberleaf teardrop they will mount brackets on the rear hatch for this spreader pole.
I didn't include the awning option when I ordered my Timberleaf Pica because I already owned a Moonshade that I use on the cargo trailer, so just below the solar panel I added a couple of U-brackets to the rear hatch that the spreader pole threads through.
A key feature of the Moonshade/teardrop combo is that once the Moonshade is set up - which takes me less than ten minutes at no particular rush - I'm done. It can just be left there, hatch open or closed, as the short video above shows.
As long as we're on the subject of ancillary spaces, I carry two other posibilities with me in the bed of the Ranger. The smaller of these is the pop-up shower/toilet shelter shown above.
Pull it out of its round storage bag, give it a shake to make it pop, and stake it down. The guy-lines and little top bonnet stay on all the time, packed or deployed.
Easy.
It's a diminutive little space, but still has plenty of room inside for my toilet and everything I need to take a shower, or in my case, clean up with a microfiber towel and a basin of water with a squirt of no-rinse body-wash in it.
For times when the weather is a bit on the robust side I also carry a 6'x6' popup screened gazebo with zip-doors on two sides and roll-up weather-closures on all four sides. It's small but that makes it managable for one person and there's still enough room inside for a table and chair so I can kick back out of the weather.
If neccessary I can set this up just outside one of the side doors of the teardrop and use it as a mud-room.
Some people have trouble coiling popups like these when it's time to pack them away, I don't. Maybe its 50 years of practice coiling bandsaw blades with the same twist-n-tuck motion to get the three rings that nest together.
One more ancillary, or maybe ancillary-adjacent, space I carry are these wing-walls I made out of greenhouse cover material and a cardboard template. These give a little more shelter to my cooking space during some less than desirable weather conditions.
Unfortunately they can't be designed to both shed rain to the outside and stay in place with the hatch closed. Another compromise. But honestly, I haven't had to use them all that much anyway.
I've already touched on the subject of how I 'shower' - incidently it has pretty much been the same for all my rigs, past and present - so, in terms of bathroom functions, that leaves the toilet.
When not in the toilet tent, like when on the road, or stopped in a parking lot or driveway, or at night so I don't have to go outside for my middle of the night old-man needs, my toilet lives there next to the mattress tucked in out of the way under the shelves at the foot of the bed.
Any portable toilet or bucket would work, and I think I've used them all over the years, but currently I use a separator-type toilet with liquids going into a tank that will hold several days worth of output, and solids, toilet-paper, and wipes dropping into a one-n-done bag to be disposed of in the handiest trash receptacle.
For times when an appropriate receptacle isn't immediately available (I don't care how expensive the bag or how tightly it's tied off, once used it will begin to stink within hours!) I have an air-tight, latching bin (designed for pet food) strapped in next to the tailgate in the bed of the truck. This is also where I toss full trash bags if I need to wait to find a dumpster.
The urine tank can be dumped into any flush, pit, or portable toilet. Or maybe, in some dispersed camping situations, directly onto the ground, though I avoid this if at all posible because it's one thing to randomly spread out single pees, but quite another to dump several days worth in one spot.
In the evening when 'in' for the night the empty solids bag doubles as trash can, mostly for paper towels and wrappers from evening snacks, wipes from spot-cleanups, and used dental-floss.
I also use the urine collector as a spit-sink when brushing my teeth in rest-areas, parking-lots, and driveways.
If kept clean by hitting the urine-collector 'funnel' with a single spritz of an all purpose, disinfecting cleaner after every use, I find there's no odor from the toilet and the inside of the urine bottle stays slippery and cleaner, avoiding any crusty brown-yellow buildup.
Oh, and by the way guys, after you dip your saggy old-man balls in warm piss once - OK, maybe twice - you'll remember to pull that little red odor-stopper plug before doing your business!
Maybe TMI but personally I think our modern society had gotten far too squeamish about a simple, necessary, biological function.
All this fits into one of the two drawers, along with a couple plates and bowls, and larger utensils like my knife, a fire starter, scissors, and can opener. I also have a splatter-screen I use as a compact and packable strainer when washing rice prior to cooking it, as well as a canning-jar lifter I use to retrieve hot ramkens, used for warming food without exposing it to the water in the pan, out of the saucepan and/or presure-cooker.
Of course, when the dust settles and there's nothing left but a few sad scraps, it's time to clean up the mess.
That process starts with putting the kettle on the stove. I try to fill it with just enough water to wash and rinse with, and experiance has made me pretty good at gauging that, but if I over-estimate, later I'll dump the leftover water into my insulated mug, then fill the mug the rest of the way at the jug, dump that perfect portion into the now empty kettle, and put it on to heat for my evening tea. That way, without wasting water, the kettle stays empty when not being used.
Usually I use whatever pot I cooked in as a basin, just add a few drops of dish soap and a splash of hot water, but I also have this colapsable basin/strainer set I can use too. But mostly I use this basin for my 'showers' and the strainer is handy when washing veggies and fruit.
I've kinda glossed over, or downright ignored, some of the kitchen details, but the video below, while rehashing some of the above, fills in a few of the gaps too.
OK, eventually, after a day of hiking, eating, chilling, etc., the sun is going to set.
Like the majority of the day, at least part of the evening can be spent outside. But there are two limitations to that.
Depending on the season and location, once the sun is down things can start cooling off in a hurry, and in this age of burn-bans and other restrictions, I can't always break out my fire-pit-in-a-bin.
And secondly - and this one is a little fu-fu but still real for me - people with certain types of brain function tend to rely heavily on schedules and routines to find a quiet place in the midst of the chaos of life, and I'm one of them. I rely on kicking back in "my space" to read or watch some mindless video with a cup of tea in order to prepare my brain for sleep.
In 1977 architect Christopher Alexander and a handfull of his cohorts published a book titled A Pattern Language - Towns - Buildings - Construction. A cumbersome title, though not unusually so in academic circles.
I managed to get my hands on a digital copy back in the 90's. (At the time I was designing a lot of RV's, houses, and data centers.)
Buried inside that edifying but somewhat obtuse and cumbersom title is a book focused on "a detailed approach to designing various built environments from individual homes to entire towns" and "empowering individuals to design thier own houses, improve thier neighborhoods, and create fuctional public buildings."
The bulk of the book is devoted to over 250, often human-psychology driven, "patterns" each provided with "a solution to a specific design problem".
"Patterns" such as; building big walls of windows overlooking a fantastic view is all well and good, except that because it's always readily available, those behind that wall eventually stop seeing, appreciating, and enjoying the view. Instead, if you place the majority of the windows high to allow plenty of light (another one of the "patterns") but have limited windows down low, people have to shift position to see different aspects of the view and won't be able to see the whole thing all at once without some sort of effort. This way they will be more likely to appreciate it over the long term. Or; use the squeeze-and-release design, where people are funneled through a restricted, somewhat plain, space then suddenly burst out into opulent open space. This imprints the targeted space memorably on the observer. (Frank Loyd Wright was a master at this, incorporating it even in residential homes)
More to the point of this post, another one of those "patterns" points out that humans evolved gravitating towards snug nooks that closely suround and protect them when they are most vulnerable, like when sleeping. (The ones that did this survived to procreate, the ones that didn't, didn't.) Not the massive, high-ceilinged, voluminous spaces we now seem to insist on for an activity where we spend most of the time conciously unaware of our suroundings. Alexander and crew postulate that, even when sleeping we are subconsciously aware of just how vulnerable we are in large spaces, resulting in less restful sleep, and offer several solutions for creating cozy sleeping 'nooks' within the larger space.
The Dutch and Norwegians have a word, hygee, pronounced hue-guh, that means 'cozy and comfortable - engendering a sense of contentment and well-being'.
The teardrop is the quintessential hygge sleeping nook, a comfortable and secure space. In fact, when ranking hygee-ness of the spaces I frequent; our corner of the barn has decent hygee, the cargo trailer good hygee, and the teardrop great hygee.
For the kicking back part, the next to the last chapter of my day, there's plenty of lounging room inside the teardrop. Not an excess of space, but still enough, for kicking back with a book or a downloaded video.
Following that, switching from "evening lounge" to "bedroom" is an easy conversion that only takes moments.
Like most all camping rigs the teardrop can be thermally challanged.
I usually deal with this with appropriate clothing when awake or sleeping bags when - well - sleeping, but for those ocations when the weather warents a little more thermal help than just clothes I have these two options.
The near one, almost invisible against the black of the thermal pad (designed to go under table-top fire-pits) that I use under both options, is a 500 watt 120v ceramic heater. This simple on/off - no thermostat heater can raise the air temperature inside the teardrop by 20° in about 15 minutes if I have shore-power.
But I often don't have shore-power available hence option two.
This is a diminutive catalitic heater powered by the same butane canisters my cook-top uses. (For scale, the heater is narrower than the canister is long, so when installed the bottom of the canister sticks out the side of the unit by about an inch and a half.) Unlike the popular but massively larger propane powered Mr. Buddy units that only have a high/low setting, this unit has an analog dial that lets me turn it down to just above fluttering. Which is good because despite its limited size and low setting it heats things up even faster than the electric heater!
This thing is from South Korea (I can't read the instructions that came with it but it's not hard to figure out.) and I'm not sure how I got my hands on it because it has none of the safety stuff usually required here in the U.S. No tip-switch, O² or CO detectors, limited touch-guards, so I'm pretty sure it's not an 'approved' device in this country. But I'm OK with that because my personal belief is that we should be taking care of ourselves anyway and not relying on a nanny-state to do it for us.
Both units are always set on a thermal-pad with plenty of space around them when in use, the vent is open and fan running, they are never left unattended, and are always shut off before I get into bed.
And there you have it. A day in the life of a teardrop from one end of the clock to the other.
For now it's time for me to head on home and 'all y'all' to do something more productive than sit around and read this!
