Thrak
Advanced Member
Actually my second post. The first was to ask a question in another section of the forums. We camped for many years in a tent and then graduated to a truck tent. One that was made to fit the bed of our F150. That got old - especially as I got old and found I had to get up in the night. We moved to a Teardrop and loved it. We did a 7 week camping trip from northern California up through Canada to Fairbanks, AK. We did the Teardrop thing for 10 or 12 years but now we're even older and my wife wanted something with seats (rather than just the bed) for when it rained or snowed. She wanted to be able to stand up to dress and something that didn't require her to trundle down to the campground bathroom. Sooooo...
We considered Casita but then heard about Escape. We looked at one fairly close to home and loved it. I loved the dual axles and pretty much everything else about the Escape. I started to spec one online and discovered that, with the things I wanted, it was well north of $56k - closer to $60k. OUCH! My wife checked around and found one that is only 5 years old - a 2020 E19 - that had what we wanted plus a couple of things I hadn't been looking at due to the already high cost. The used Escape was waaaay cheaper than the new one I had been looking at buying. The catch: we live in Northern California and the trailer was in New Mexico. Additionally, the owner wanted to leave very soon for another state. Hmmm... What to do... My wife said we could be there in a few days and the owner said if we could do that it could work. We jumped in the truck and took off for New Mexico.
We arrived in New Mexico, got a cashier's check at the bank, and went to look at the trailer. It was immaculate. Perfect in every way we could see. We handed over the check, hooked up and left for home. This is totally new for us. Hookups, dump stations, etc. Very strange. We slept in the new Escape on the way home and loved it. I spent today taking everything out of the outside storage and sorting it out. I kept "most" of the stuff and reorganized the rest.
The trailer has the heavy duty hitch with the anti-sway bars but we didn't attach them before heading home. We had pretty high winds all through New Mexico and Arizona and had zero issues towing without the anti-sway bars. Not sure if we will actually use them or not as, like I said, we had no issues towing even with the high winds. (Any thoughts on that? Are we nuts or...?) Anyway, this is obviously an overly long introduction but I decided to make an account for the forums and see what developed. Aside from camping - my wife "collects" US National Parks and currently has (I think) 46 of the 62 - we also cruise. (We "got" the US National Parks at the Virgin Islands and American Samoa - Pago Pago - while cruising.) We tend to take our land trips in the summer and cruise in the Spring, Fall, or both.
We considered Casita but then heard about Escape. We looked at one fairly close to home and loved it. I loved the dual axles and pretty much everything else about the Escape. I started to spec one online and discovered that, with the things I wanted, it was well north of $56k - closer to $60k. OUCH! My wife checked around and found one that is only 5 years old - a 2020 E19 - that had what we wanted plus a couple of things I hadn't been looking at due to the already high cost. The used Escape was waaaay cheaper than the new one I had been looking at buying. The catch: we live in Northern California and the trailer was in New Mexico. Additionally, the owner wanted to leave very soon for another state. Hmmm... What to do... My wife said we could be there in a few days and the owner said if we could do that it could work. We jumped in the truck and took off for New Mexico.
We arrived in New Mexico, got a cashier's check at the bank, and went to look at the trailer. It was immaculate. Perfect in every way we could see. We handed over the check, hooked up and left for home. This is totally new for us. Hookups, dump stations, etc. Very strange. We slept in the new Escape on the way home and loved it. I spent today taking everything out of the outside storage and sorting it out. I kept "most" of the stuff and reorganized the rest.
The trailer has the heavy duty hitch with the anti-sway bars but we didn't attach them before heading home. We had pretty high winds all through New Mexico and Arizona and had zero issues towing without the anti-sway bars. Not sure if we will actually use them or not as, like I said, we had no issues towing even with the high winds. (Any thoughts on that? Are we nuts or...?) Anyway, this is obviously an overly long introduction but I decided to make an account for the forums and see what developed. Aside from camping - my wife "collects" US National Parks and currently has (I think) 46 of the 62 - we also cruise. (We "got" the US National Parks at the Virgin Islands and American Samoa - Pago Pago - while cruising.) We tend to take our land trips in the summer and cruise in the Spring, Fall, or both.
