Candies among Cookie Cutters

Maybe 90% of the RVs we see are the same brown/white or grey/white standard campers with slides. They have different model names on them, but there are only a handful of manufacturers out there, and to me they’re all basically the same.

I call them Brown RVs (my sister used to say that brown is the worst color; I don’t know what her criteria were but I’m beginning to agree).

I know a few are super-nice inside, and most are larger than ours. But to me their outside homogeneity reduces them to just “Brown RVs.”

Oh, before I get to RVs: you know how excited I was that Tracy found our cool Quick-Set tent by Clam?  Apparently, every other camper up north had the same idea.  There were three other tents like ours in one small campground recently, all showing off the three different colors this thing comes in (brown, camo brown, green/brown).

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Here in Arkansas, Oklahoma, and Texas we’re not seeing them, but lots of neighbors in our campgrounds are asking about ours. Sometimes I feel like I’m in suburbia, seriously.

Type of RVs

Okay, every now and then an odd RV will pop up.

We always comment on the vintage trailers that look like the Frolic, but check out this one. We found it in Hancock, Michigan.

I wish I’d gotten pictures of all sides: it has plastic flamingoes glued on, plus sayings like, “All wrong turns can become adventures.”  Normally I hate those kinds of inspiration sayings, but these were painted on so lovingly.  Why can’t we park next to someone like that?

Or, maybe I would regret that …

I do wish the huge class A bus with a Steal your Face on the spare-tire cover had stayed near us for more than two nights—we might have actually introduced ourselves to them!

Here are a couple of small tear-drop types that make us look like we’re living in a mansion.

We also point out to each other the Scamps and the Casitas: tiny fiberglass trailers that are built with just the one horizontal seam in the middle.

They’re a bit like economical Airstreams. But check this one out (try to see past the red post in the way):

I thought it was a DYI model, maybe with the top part added by the owner, but turns out Scamp makes them like this. It’s cool in that it’s still lightweight on one axle, but you have to have a fifth-wheel towing hitch on your truck to pull it, so what’s the benefit, I wonder?

This one has an 18-wheeler truck and chassis with some kind of homemade trailer, for off-road camping. (Tracy will know what they call this: I’ll update when he reads the blog and tells me). These guys were towing ATVs.

And here’s a picture of that ice-fishing trailer I mentioned back in Michigan. Surely a trap door opens in the floor for access to the ice.  Maybe they let their dogs pee in it in the mornings and then close it up. Ha!  

Here’s a brown RV that’s been painted by the owner, perhaps. Verdict?

This converted school bus is parked next to us in Texas right now. I’d give my eye teeth to see inside.

Then of course there are Airstreams, like the one parked near us in the top photo. They’re so rare that I bet we see one a month, maybe. In Madison there were three (including us) camped in one campground, and I tried my darnedest to get a shot of all three at once but couldn’t. I think there’s something about Airstreams that makes them resist being compared to others of their kind. Anti-camouflage?

You guys stay safe, and give ‘em hell.