This year is unique in SO many ways.

We started the year thinking about an epic trip to the West Coast, renting a super souped up travel van and driving around seeing the big trees of Sequoia and Yosemite with our little dog. We had been to Yosemite camping years ago and were ready to do it again in something a little more comfortable than sleeping bags on the ground in a rented tent.

But we got overwhelmed with the planning that was going to be needed. We decided to put that trip off to next year and plan instead on a good long 2+ weeks at Acadia and maybe a jaunt over to Nova Scotia, to relive some of our favorite moments (and only our favorite moments!) from my sabbatical back in 2010. Having blocked out the reservations for our favorite site at our favorite campground, we were feeling pretty good about the plan and booked a couple of other weekends to pad out the summer with fun trips.

Then covid-19 hit and we went into isolation and quarantine and thought we’d figure it out when it was all over. A couple of months in and it became clear that getting out and about wouldn’t be soon, no matter how people were itching to be done with the lockdown. We decided to open up our little camper and discovered some minor water damage in the corners that we knew needed to be fixed before it could be used. And the more we thought about it, the more we felt like even if we could fix those issues quickly, we wouldn’t feel safe camping this way in 2020 with my immune problems and us needing public facilities.

It felt really weird being spring and not having a camper to use in our driveway. We’d gotten so used to popping out to the camper to have a nap or to read or write or to have “trailer movie night” at home. It felt like something was missing in our lives and we realized that for us, camping and teardrop life wasn’t just the trips we made, but also how we used the camper between trips. It was always there and ready to go if we wanted to. It had the gear we needed if we had to escape or if the power went out or if we wanted to pretend we were camping at home. We hadn’t realized what a big part of our lives and our summer living the camper was until we couldn’t use it because it needed repairs.

Fairly quickly we solved the problem by finally taking the leap and getting the T@B we’d been thinking might be the next kind of camper that would be right for us. It made sense in the midst of covid-19 to have something with a wetbath and self-contained. It felt a little crazy to do it as things were still not open and it was unclear how we might be able to use it this year, but we were super happy to have made that jump when we saw the limited inventory at trailer dealers everywhere a couple of weeks later. We got the camper we wanted and that will serve us really well for many years.

So what about camping this year? Well, we still don’t know. The camper is in our driveway and we are enjoying learning about all the systems and features and figuring out tricks for how to pack our gear and adjust what we need for this new style of camping. We’re using it a lot–for trailer movie nights and as a writing room, it is a great place to take calls or just curl up for a nap. Maybe when the campgrounds around here start to open up a bit, we’ll consider going to a nearby state park for a few days or if things improve, we’ll head up to the Adirondacks for a week of socially distant camping. It is all up in the air at this point because all the plans we made last winter now need to be cancelled. Whatever we end up doing, we’ll enjoy our time teardrop camping!