We were both smitten.
My spouse noticed it first. We were sitting on the runway waiting for the airplane to take off when she handed me a section of the newspaper and said: “look at this.” It was an article about the Bowlus and the effort by the Longs to reintroduce the camping trailer. We were both smitten. While we had been taking our children camping ever since they were young, it was tent camping from the trunk of a minivan. We loved camping, but now that our 3 children were nearly launched I had grown a bit tired of all the work involved in breaking down camp. We reached a stage where we would hike and visit parks but stay in a hotel or rent an AirBnB.
Reading about the Bowlus that morning changed all that. We spent the next year reading about campers, 5th Wheels, RV’s as well as signing up for the Bowlus emails. We joined a few discussion boards and read about the problems with many of the campers, we read the discussions about Airstreams, where we even saw a lot of back and forth about the Bowlus, particularly about the price. Many of the articles were critical, even though it was clear that the writer had never seen one nor stayed in one. Writers who took on the assignment from their publications of using the Bowlus wrote glowing reviews, and occasionally we see a response to a critical posting by a few people who owned one.
It was easy, without even having seen it in person, to recognize how special the Bowlus was. The design and the quality of the construction were readily apparent. Helena Mitchell graciously spent several hours with us answering all our questions many of which were probably quite naïve. She explained how to use the camper and discussed some of the adventures she had undertaken, both on her own and with her husband, John.
Despite all our research, we did feel we took somewhat of a big leap of faith and ordered the Bowlus and a fancy new car to pull it, would be the perfect way to celebrate our 35th wedding anniversary. We fully expect that our trailer will outlive us, and we hope it will be inherited by one of our children or grandchildren. We also look forward to the time in which we will be able to take grand-children on short camping trips with us.
Two years hence, we constantly look for opportunities to use our Bowlus. Instead of renting at the beach, we camped near the Delaware shore. When one of my children graduated from graduate school in Cambridge MA, we camped outside of Boston and then spent a long weekend on Cape Cod. We have taken long weekends near our home in Maryland and have taken longer trips to Shenandoah National Park. Last summer we spent time in Acadia National Forest in Maine followed by two weeks in several of the Canadian National Parks in Nova Scotia. We circled the Nova Scotia peninsula and then took a high-speed ferry from Yarmouth NS to Portland ME. This summer another child is graduating from college and we have already booked campsites outside Denver, CO. From there we are planning a trip to Lassen Volcanic National Park in California, and then Lake Tahoe, by way of San Francisco.
We have learned what is important to pack and what is not; how to negotiate the trailer with our 80 lb. dog, and how to handle frozen food. Backing up was the scary part, particularly since the trailer turns on a dime, but by the end of last summer, for the first time, I was able to back up a long and straight driveway, without having to make any adjustments, on the first attempt.
We have two regrets about the Bowlus. First, because we are both still working full time, we do not have the time necessary to take many longer trips. Second, we have not yet found a practical way to undertake trips abroad with our Bowlus.
The truth is, we miss our Bowlus when it has been too long since we last “hit” the road.