I wish I knew THIS when I STARTED CAMPING in a SMALL CAMPER TRAILER

[Music] so i hope today to help you avoid some of the pitfalls we had with our first three maybe four years owning our small camper trailer i'm not going to share all my aha moments just the ones that took me much too long to put into place and make changes the ones that cost me the most money the most time and the most problems on the road [Music] so i think you're going to relate to this one have you ever ran into the edge of your bed or a table enough to give you a bruise like on your shin and then moments later hit the exact same spot again and you'd feel like why did i do that well that's how i feel with the tongue of my trailer okay so it's dark and i typically have my trailer disconnected from my vehicle but when i'm out boondocking for safety a lot of times i'll keep it connected but my muscle memory remembers it being disconnected so i'll walk around the trailer and bang curse you trailer tongue i don't know how many of you have experienced this but you do this a few times and you are going to add reflective tape to your tongue and then i find you're not always walking around with a flashlight right so not only do you need reflective tape having some nice glow-in-the-dark tape is going to stop you from getting those deep bone bruises like i've had the last three years my intention is not for you to adapt all my lessons learned obviously i hope some will be an aha moment for you but what i really would like is for this conversation to get you thinking about what incremental changes you can make right now to give you a better camping experience down the road because i'm on the subject of darkness i'm going to tell you a scenario i've ran into multiple times so i'm as far as i possibly can be away from home it's the middle of the night and i have to make the long drive back and all of a sudden somebody pulls up next to me and i look in the side of my window and i'm like is he mad at me but all of a sudden i notice he's gesturing towards the back of my vehicle and i kind of pick up the hint i pull over and i find my trailer lights are not working now honestly this has happened on about 50 percent of my trailer so either you have a ground issue or lights go out you know things happen over time it's as simple as picking up a 20 dollar backup light system a trailer light system for your trailer they hook on to your trailer with magnets or you can zip tie them down if you want and then this has a long cord that runs all the way back to your tow vehicle so our trailer lights went out last year so we were able to throw this on able to get back it's just a really nice thing to have so there she is running down there and then it runs all the way up the tongue here and then it comes out here okay guys please bear with the sound the wind is so strong here today i had to shove a lavalier mic under my clothes so you're going to hear a little close noise you realize so if you've watched just a couple of our videos you know we love small camper trailers because they can take you places other campers cannot go and that's what i want to talk to you about i want you to push your small camper trailer when you first get it find its boundaries find its limits because you'll probably be surprised that they can go much further than you expect them to so i have a classic teardrop here i've been taking it through rivers back here this summer going down trails over boulders and i waited three years to do all this because i thought it wasn't capable we needed a snorkel for that one it made it up past the door on the teardrop [Music] is that why you married me and what i found and i see this on many travel trailers i wasn't actually bottoming out my trailer what was happening when i was going in spots with dips and ruts i was bottoming out my trailer tongue [Music] i always thought my trailer was level but just by raising the hitch a tiny bit i no longer bottomed out and rough conditions in those ruts on the trail [Music] okay i keep falling victim to this one have you guys ever bought something just because everybody else is doing it and you don't know that there's really anything else that's the five gallon water jugs for me so every year the spout breaks on me then this air vent goes and i have to duct tape it up i'm just done buying these box store water jugs and i really don't know what else there is you know i'm familiar with jerrycans but if you guys know of a great water jug let us know i'm done you know somebody on here said buy once cry once and i like that i think when it comes to camping sometimes it's worth spending a little more money up front knowing you don't have to ever worry about it again so we started out thinking we'd be adventuring all over and then basically using camp to sleep but we love camp and so what i would say right off the bat don't go with maybe just an awning like we did or even no protection i would just fork out the money right away get something like a clam tent that has side walls for protection if there's rain and sideways wind and then bug meshing because you are going to hit bugs somewhere and that could ruin your trip like quicker than anything and then the other thing i would do make sure it's big enough that it can fit over a standard picnic table that way you don't have to just go through bunches of different tents just get the tent you're going to need in the end which is for us we love instant pop-up bug netting sidewalls and big enough to fit over a picnic table [Music] this one is just going to sound ridiculous and i hope you don't do this but this is a mistake i made so maybe this will help somebody out there because your small camper trailer is so small it's really easy to level it just by moving around and finding level ground and that's what we did for a couple years maybe even i think we've done it all the way up till this year and it was a poor choice and that's because it's actually worth using some sort of man-made leveling gear or you know a piece of wood or something you can crank it up because when you're finding level ground with a small trailer like this again like i said it's easy so you tend to do it a lot of times that means you don't get the best view you don't have the best spot to set up there may be mud close to it that you step into it's not ideal for your side entry tent and your cooking area use that leveling gear and use it right because it's going to give you a much better camping experience even if it does take you know two to five minutes more to set it up it's so much better than just finding the right level ground with your trailer and calling that good enough this is one of those mistakes that just makes me mad how many times have i pulled into a state recreation site or a campground and have to overpay by 10 or 15 because i don't have exact change and why this happens i think i think we're boondockers primarily so i don't see myself camping and paying and so i don't bring small bills i typically have 20s as my smallest in my pocket you can easily fix this by bringing a sack of ones a stack of fives and a stack of tens and even if you are a boondocker you never know when you're going to be forced into a campground or you're going to pull in to you know bike somewhere or hike and there's a five dollar trailhead fee so a really great thing about small camper trailers is that you can move them about by hand but that's also why i've lost a lot of money so i've showed you guys i've went through about one trailer jack a year because i've been dragging them around now i've been giving you all bad advice and saying you know don't drag them by hand lift them up and move them but why do we have small camper trailers i think we have them because we want them to be simple i don't want to be lifting this all the time i do want to be able to roll it out here and so get yourself a nice heavy duty jack like an arc jack that way you're not replacing your jack every couple years and you can move it around at the campsite getting that perfect view and you don't have to lift it all the time i think it's definitely worth a little bit of investment so you've already picked up i am a pretty frugal guy and that's why i love small camper trailers there is a huge cost savings in it but you can take that cost savings even further by being more thoughtful with your trailer so this advice it's not really for the teardrop crowd it's more probably for the scamp owners vintage trailers stand-up trailers and that is find out where your trailer likes its weight so i found some trailers the weight is best in the back most of them is best over the axles some even on the tongue oh man a car just went off the road there it's icy today guys i'm gonna go help him out hold on wow we got him out that dude just had some guardian angels on his side so he went over the lip or over the bank caught his front tie he basically almost rolled over now you would think logically placing your weight over the axles is the best place but i found that's not always the case in our teardrop for example it likes its weight to the back and when your weight is properly situated you're going to get much stronger passing power you're going to get much better gas mileage even and so that's something you don't want to find two years down the road i would rather save all that gas money each year by figuring it out in the first week and in the same lines if we're talking weight don't focus too much when you get your small camper trailer of keeping your gear weight down these campers are pretty small so you can't put too much stuff in them anyways but what we found we were decreasing our quality of life out here by bringing only backpacking gear because we thought the weight needed to be low but even with our four-cylinder car and we threw in all the heavy items into the teardrop not only did it not decrease our gas mileage and cause us towing issues having that extra weight actually kind of dampened the ride and made it ride better out on the road so i would say for the first couple years we had our trailer our biggest waste of time and energy was packing and unpacking i have a whole video dedicating to helping you with your system of getting out quicker and getting home with everything in one piece ready to go for the next trip i'll put that in the description below so i think this one has been scientifically proven this is truth and that is if it is going to rain on your camping trip it's going to rain the night before you go home so what we do we now take down our side entry tent all our chairs everything the night before going to bed and that's because it seems like every time we wake up and it's time to go out everything is covered in water meaning when we get home we have to pop that all up again and dry it out in our garage and that is just a pain in the butt and i'm telling you in the morning having that cover is nice but really if it's raining and you wake up you can use your teardrop to eat in or your car you can find creative ways i would rather be creative than take home wet gear each family must discover what works for them and that's what brings families together out here and that's the beauty of this camping right it isn't something we can fully learn from a book or the internet and each trip we get out it just gets a little bit better and a little bit more simple and all of a sudden you look back at your photos and you realize you've become an outdoor family and what we are learning is our family grows and chases new outdoor adventures our camping needs are changing and this is amazing because it means you never grow tired of camping it's a continual process of growing and learning new things about ourselves every day all right i have a playlist here of the gear we use to make life more simple and enjoyable out here it's all things we've learned on the road so hopefully there'll be things that you can just pick up right away and not have to learn the lessons the hard way and then i have a video here about how we organize our trailer to help you get out quicker more organized more efficient alright we'll see you all in the next episode safe travels everyone

Channel: Playing with Sticks

Views: 310,436

Rating: 4.8984675 out of 5

Keywords: camping, things i wish i knew camping, things i wish i knew before camping, small camper trailer living, teardrop camping, small camper trailer, small travel trailer, teardrop camper, minimalism, travel trailer, camping gear, teardrop trailer, lessons learned, small camper, small campers, scamp trailer, vintage trailer, camping hacks, what you need to know about camping, teardrop camping for beginners, lessons learned camping, playing with sticks, alaska, camper, tiny trailer

Id: 1HrAXCmHC0k

Length: 12min 58sec (778 seconds)

Published: Thu Jan 28 2021