Hello Everyone,
I've been lurking around for a month or so getting ideas and figuring out what I wanted to do.....either buy a teardrop (Campinn, Vistabule, Little Guy Silvershadow, Highcamp Trailers, etc.) or build my own. After seeing some of builds here, I'm certain I want to build my own.
My wife and I were tent campers until the kids came along. In 2008 when our youngest was just 1 year old, we bought a Rockwood Premier pop-up camper and loved it. Now that the kids are 15, 11 and 8, we've out grown the pop-up and find it hard to schedule any camping trips with the whole family (too many kids with too many activities). Also we've found the time it takes to set up the pop-up and tear down the camper resulted in us not traveling more than a days drive from home. As an avid amateur astronomer, try to go to as many "star parties" (camping events under dark skies with fellow astronomers) as I can. Most of the time it's just me or one of my boys that comes with me (wife an daughter enjoying camping but don't really get into astronomy). In fact, the teardrop trailer would be used mostly for star parties or weekend astronomy trips.
I've already put together some 3D renderings using SketchUp, check out my gallery/album.
-Mike