The girlfriend and I took it out to a little place called the Meadows of Isleton right near the Sacramento River delta for its inaugural trip and had a blast! We learned very quickly some of the things we want to modify to make cooking and cleaning a lot easier, and experienced a few hiccups too with the vent fans among other things...
The very next week we took it out to a campground at Point Reyes which was also great! We're planning the next trip for when I have another weekend off, hopefully get to stretch its wings a little further and head up Eureka way!Some of the important lessons I learned on this build:
-Make sure you are flexible with your design, some issues can pop up that will make certain elements of your trailer very difficult to build/drive/store away. Also some changes may make it cheaper and easier to build!
-Give yourself a LOT more time than you expect, I first estimated around a 5-6 month build time (little did I know...), and it will make your life a lot easier knowing that you can always finish things later. Remember, you're on Teardrop Time!
-If this is your first build, you may need to learn how to do things you've never done. Be patient. You can do this. I never knew anything about electrical wiring or design but I did my research and learned how to size the battery and wires/fuses, and how to solder as well!
-Document EVERYTHING. There are some things I wish I had taken a picture of/written down during the build process, and if I ever have to change some elements of the trailer I'll have to rely on a shaky memory of what I did or how I did it. I did take a lot of photos though and even created a build journal 3/4 of the way through so I could write down some notes and I hope that will help a lot for the next build!
Anyways, hope to share more of our journey now that we've got our own teardrop! I'm so grateful for this community of DIYers, adventurers, stubborn get-it-done-ers and quirky idea thinkers, y'all are the best and I hope to see some of you out there! We're planning on doing a grand road trip this summer from CA all the way to FL and back, let us know of any good places to stay!
Happy camping everyone,
Lawrence & Andrea
*So the trailer will never actually be truly finished, just finished enough to take it out and point out some things that we'd like or want to incorporate at a further time, but that's the beauty of this project! If you made it this far, enjoy the photos of the trailer!
