Our Grand Escape - A Tale of First Time Travel Trailer Campers

[Dave Miller]

We’re Margret and Dave Miller. Margret retired June 2022 from an elementary school and I just retired this July from software engineering.

Margret and I have done plenty of tent camping and love the outdoors. We plan to visit as many National Parks as we can during retirement. Our last major trip (Rocky Mountain NP, Black Hills and Teddy Rosevelt NP) was hot and it’s getting harder for us to get up off the ground. We followed that up with a fall trip to New River Gorge NP that featured cooler weather and a cot. But we’d prefer more comfort. Living out of Rubbermaid tubs gets old. And we’d like to bring our dog - Charlie the Golden Doodle - but can’t see keeping him in a tent or the car. So we debated easier ways to tour the country and visit remote places. The choices came down to:

Small trailer to tow
Class B Van
Giant RV with a towed car
Corvette and a Credit Card

We ruled out the Corvette. Too hard dragging everything in and out of hotels and eating all the meals in restaurants. I’m not sure I even fit in a Corvette. And Charlie wouldn’t fit.

Giant RVs don’t fit many of the places we like. (Teddy Rosevelt NP, New River Gorge NP). And they’re expensive. Need to pay to store it too.

Margret liked the Van idea but they’re crazy expensive and you need to break camp to go anywhere. On the other hand we could tow a boat or wave runner if we wanted. And we could get into smaller camp sites.

So, a trailer it is.

So we (mainly me) started looking for a trailer.

This tale is multiple parts:

Part 1 - Buying Our Escape 19 - Selecting the Escape and the purchase process
Part 2 - Picking Up Our Escape - The trip to Chilliwack and importing the trailer
Part 3 - Initial Impressions - Getting to know our Escape on the way home
Part 4 - Customization Plans
Additional Parts - Customizations As They Happen