Campout #2 England Reunion

For those of you that have been waiting for a campout blog here it is. It is not the first campout by any means but it is the first one I remembered to take a camera. Taking the camera is one thing, but remembering to use it is another. Unfortunately I missed many of the family that attended. All of our children, spouses and grand children attended the campout and we should have had such great pictures to show you, but alas I didn't think to get the camera out of the trailer. We had a great time and enjoyed the family a lot. Unfortunately most of the family had gone because of cold weather prior to taking pictures. Here we are with three of our Grand children, Jacom, the tall good looking oneMe and Louise, Eliza, and Adelaide.

This picture is of our camping area. What a great site for a campout. Unfortunately I didn't have the camera when the Moose walked into camp. This picture has Teresa our daughter and Melissa who is married to our Son Joseph, and Evan who is married to our Daughter Holly.

Here is a night shot of the teardrop trailer. You can see we were setting up in a wind storm and never did get the tent set up correctly. The trailer was better than we ever imagined it would be and we slept warmer than we expected.

This picture has our daughters Holly and Teresa and our daughter in Law Melissa. It takes a lot of work to feed a large group and they worked their heads off to get it done. Our Older Daughter Mandi didn't get here until late as she was at a training event in Seattle. The Teardrop kitchen really came in handy for cooking, storage, and clean up. Having the little dressing and bathroom tent was a great up grade from our last trip.

Here are three of our six beautiful grand daughters. Adelaide out in fromt just took the broom from Eliza in the back. The Blonde in the middle is Mandi's youngest Micklee.

Some great shots of the camp ground and the Teardrop. We want to thank the Wilkinson's for letting us use this great camp. Louise was doing a little last minute pick up around the camp. It was really nice to have the lights in the kitchen. It gave us all the lighting we needed to work. I'm not sure if we got out the flash lights at all.

Teardrop trailer construction 19

WE ARE DONE! Well not quite, but we are done enough to start using the trailer. We are going to register it tomorrow so we can start pulling it around. It will be nice to be able to bring it home from the shop and work on little things in the evenings.We installed the gas lifts this weekend. I guess it is better to be lucky than smart. Hit the installation perfectly the first try. Not bad for not having any instructions. We bought these from a company that had gone out of business and was liquidating inventory. They work great. We lift the lid about 12" and the lid slowly opens the rest of the way. It is easy to put down without any effort at all. They work better than we ever dreamed.

As you can tell we had to replace the leather straps on our trunk. The black genuine leather straps broke after the first weekend. We discovered in the small print that the genuine leather had some man made fibers. What it really had was a microscopic leather veneer with cardboard interior. We didn't buy "made in China" the second time. We also installed some sash locks to pull the lid down tight and keep it secure.

This is a side view showing how the trailer looks with the trunk complete.

We installed a lid stay so we could access the box without holding the lid up by hand. We also put in the battery tie downs so the battery doesn't bounce all over the place. This picture seems a little strange in it's color because the flash is bouncing.

Side view of the completed trailer.

This picture shows the fold down stabilizers. There are four, one for each corner. They will make it nice when the wind blows so you are not rocking all over the place.

This picture shows the undercarriage after it was all sealed with rubberized coating. We used this product so it would be easy to recoat when neccessary.

We have a few minor things to complete yet. Our punch list is as follows:

Complete the plumbing hook up to the pump.

Add a light in the trunk lid.

Insulate the ice chest in the front trunk

Complete the oven insulation and slide out

Clean the overspray off the roof vent

Putty, seal and weatherstrip the door frames

Not much to do as you can tell. A good morning for the both of us and we will have everything done.

Well for those who have been following our build, we hope to see you on the road somewhere. We will be happy to give you a closer view. We will be adding to this blog as we add things to the trailer and hope to put up blogs about our trips.

PS. We did get the trailer licensed on Monday. We pulled it over to purgatory flats and had it inspected. It was great on the road. It was funny how much smaller the trailer looked on the back of the truck. Got a few comments from people along the way. Quite frankly it is exciting to have the trailer this far along. It creates new enthusiasm to finish the minor details.