#brian&jen2.1.1
It’s been a while since our 1995 VW Eurovan camper caught fire and burned until there was nothing left to burn. It’s been just over a year, actually. Feels like longer.
After we lost the van, I wrote this:
I’m trying hard not to think that this van going up in flames isn’t a bad sign for #brian&jen2.0. That would be dumb. But now that this van is gone, we’re back to the drawing board, trying to figure out, how does #brian&jen2.0 move forward, so to speak? It’s an important question. We are climbers. We like camping. We like going on long trips to camp and climb. We tried a Eurovan do-over, and well, that just exploded. I don’t think we want to join the ranks of 90% of the US outdoorsy population who own crazier and newer and more expensive camper vans than ours. Do we look back to the days of our youth and start tent camping again? Sleeping on the ground, again? Or maybe we’ll get a truck and build out the back of it for sleeping and storage. Maybe we’ll get a super small and light trailer we can tow with a smaller car. Maybe we’ll talk about this forever and never truly launch #brian&jen2.0 because of decision-making burnout.
I feel like I owe a quickie on the version updates of #brian&jen2.0.
Last fall we bought the red Toyota Tacoma, #brian&jen version 2.1. We did what I thought we might— we put a cap on the back and built a platform and ordered the most amazing 6 inch mattress to sleep on. We also purchased a tent to enclose the back with the window up and the tailgate down so we had enough leg room to lay down. This set up feels very much like regular old camping and is perfect for weekends. It even worked pretty well for our 10 days in WY this spring.
This summer we began planning a fall trip to KY to climb at the Red River Gorge. No, we do not plan to go off-roading! As we thought about what KY is probably like in October, we thought about rain. It’s going to rain; rain is a given in KY in October. You can climb in the rain at The Red because much of the rock is so steep. But I wondered if we wanted to be stuck hanging out at the campground when we weren’t climbing in just the truck and not having a dry space to cook. I decided I did not want to be stuck in the truck when it rains. There was money left over from the insurance pay-out from the van. We revisited the super light trailer idea from previous brain-storming sessions.
Brian, who is better at researching things on the internet than I am, got to looking. Very quickly he found a local couple who was selling their used tiny trailer, called the Taxa Tiger Moth. On “paper,” this trailer didn’t sound that appealing to me. The Tiger Moth is basically a place to sit that folds down to a place to sleep with a cooking galley on the outside. This older model doesn’t even have a table inside. I wanted something that had a little more space inside. I wanted to cook inside. I really wanted a little Scamp, which is a different kind of mini-trailer with a kitchen and a bed and a place to sit inside. Scamps are very cute. The Tiger Moth kind of looks like a trailer you’d tow a 4x4 in.
Since the Tiger Moth was local, we decided that we’d go ahead and look at it. Brian was interested in this one because of the low price it was being sold for and didn’t really want to look any further. Everything else was much more expensive and heavier.
The Tiger Moth was a pleasant surprise. The couple had it all set up for us in their driveway. It’s all the things I said it is, plus more. There is a good-sized awning that rolls off the back and shelters the cooking galley. There is lighting under the awning so you can cook with more than a head lamp when it’s dark. The couple had also purchased a tent that connects to the awning which completely encloses the area. It’s as close to being inside to cook as you can get without actually being inside. The tent has a floor too, so if it’s rainy, you aren’t just standing around in the mud. The enclosed area is big enough for us to have our chairs to sit in and even enough space to hold other sundry things like a cooler and our luggage, if we want. We could also have people over!
It’s a place to hang out! It’s a place to cook! On sight, I was convinced, and we decided to buy it and picked it up the following weekend. Done.
I consider the Tiger Moth #brian&jen2.1.1. Brian disagrees. He thinks it’s just part of #brian&jen2.1. Whatever. I’m the author, so I win. We took it to The New in WV a couple weeks ago to shake it down. We camped in it for two nights. It’s almost perfect. It’s exactly what we need, for now. Now that we’ve been taking more trips. Now that we’ve been venturing out further from home for longer periods of time since we started empty nesting more than a year ago. It’s been a slow emerging. It took us longer than I thought it would to want to leave home without our boys, to take the kind of trip we’d need a trailer for. We’re feeling less grief being out there on our own.
And so begins #jen&brian2.1.1…. We leave this weekend for 2 weeks in KY, for the great first testing of the Tiger Moth, and of ourselves climbing at The Red for longer than we ever have before.
THERE IS SO MUCH POTENTIAL HERE!
so inspirational!
happy trails!