[davlin]

Originally Posted by inghamm

We’ve been tent campers for years, gone on some great camping trips, Washington of course, Oregon, California, Canada, and several to Yellowstone. You read and follow all the bear warning instructions, but you still don’t really rest easy camping in a tent in Grizzly country. Every twig that snaps in the night you take heed of. One night in Yellowstone we hear this blood curdling scream in the middle of the night. In the morning we heard that a teenager had a nightmare. At the time it was very unnerving.

The 3 things we like least about tent camping:
1) Walking to the bathroom in the middle of the night. For my wife and I it’s 2-3 times a night. Usually cold, sometimes raining. We always go together. On the clear nights she’s looking up at the stars and I’m looking down watching out for slugs.
2) Packing up a wet tent and canopy. Then you know when you get home you have to wait for a dry day, set them up in the backyard so they dry, then pack them up again, or else you have mildew. The joy of living in the Pacific Northwest.
3) Tent leaks. Usually everything is fine in the rain, but sometimes something happens and you end up with water inside the tent, wet sleeping bags. Last time we didn’t get the ground cover right and we had water coming up from the floor.

I started looking at tent trailers with some kind of toilet around the year 2000. In the summer of 2003 we were camping at a Leisure Time/Thousand Trails camp outside of Leavenworth, WA, and I saw a little Trailmanor ad in a RV magazine in the lodge. Looked up the website and had them send me a brochure. Never considered a tent trailer after that.

I wish I still had those original TM brochures. I kept dreaming though. Around 2007 we traveled around 40 miles to the local dealer to actually look inside some. Kept dreaming. Sometime after that our local dealer went out of business. Our new local dealer was 200 miles away outside of Portland, OR. In the summer of 2014 we dropped by in Portland on our way home from a tent camping trip to look again. Finally in February 2015 we were able to afford a new one. Unfortunately, the factory was never able to deliver our order. We felt really blessed in June finding a 2007 model about an hour north of us. It was in pretty good shape. We’ve had to repair a few things and we’ve been making upgrades, but it really is a dream come true for us.

The bathroom is way better than any tent trailer I’ve seen. It’s nice to be able to shower in there. Not having to worry about mildew from wet canvas is great. My wife is a true Seattleite – finds anything over 75 degrees as hot. Now with the AC we can venture forth into lands previously forbidden. (I know they put AC’s on tent trailers, but it’s hard for me to imagine them being as effective as in the TM.) On our last 2 camping trips it was below freezing at night. We were warm and cozy in the TM. We’re looking forward to more trips to come.

GREAT story! Thanks. Bill, we need a "like" button.