A WORD ABOUT US
Although we both had done our share of camping and hiking in our youth, it wasn’t until 2012 that my partner and I decided to get back to the woods, first on a three-day backpacking hike through the Shenandoah Mountains of Virginia, and then on a five day excursion to Northern New Hampshire with several local trips in-between.
After enduring five rainy days and a freezing night in New Hampshire, we realized that, at our age, a tent simply isn’t big or comfortable enough for two adults and two pups and we began to contemplate a move from “camping” to “glamping”, perhaps in a popup trailer.
For Reina, that conversation led to several months of research that culminated on the purchase of our rig, an amazing trip through several states on our way to Glacier National Park, Montana, and the purchase of a beautiful site at a campground near the Kittatinny mountains of New Jersey. This site is our base-camp for eight months out of the year and from where we plan our adventures during the winter months.
Boondocking, Southern New Jersey
THE CREW
REINA
CHARLIE
BARON
OSCAR
OUR RIG
Quite often, the first question we get on the road has to do with our rig, a 30 feet Keystone Premier. In one of our trips to North Carolina, a Nissan Technician came to our site to inquire in amazement. After all, 30 feet long Travel Trailers are usually behind bigger trucks, like a RAM 1500 or a Ford F-150, but if you manage what you carry in an ultra-light RV, a six cylinder 4.1 litter Nissan Frontier can easily handle 3 tons up and down the Blue Ridge Mountains in North Carolina, the Black Hills in South Dakota, or the Rockies in Montana. It is also the best way to make sure you aren’t carrying things you don’t really need… and we keep a close eye on the numbers using a variation of the third law of physics: for every pound that comes in (the action), there must be an equal pound that goes out (the reaction.)
UPDATE (11/25/2022)
With gas prices the way they are, we decided to leave our Premier behind to try a considerably smaller InTech Sol Rover as we make our way from New Jersey to California and back. With only 14 feet of living space to share on a four month journey across the U.S., we are also taking a 10 by 10 tent to give us the space we need and force us to spend more time outside, exploring the beautiful BLM campgrounds that we’ll find along our way.
