Any Campers in the Mix?

The shell is fiberglass lined with a not-fire retardant Ensolite insulation, about 1/4" thick. It can be painted, but I'm going to source out other foam that is rated for fire safety and won't grow mold. The floor is also plywood sheets, fiberglassed for strength.
Some of the cabinets are made with fiberglass and other cheap wood veneer supported with thicker pieces of plywood. It's light weight and not meant to stand up to hard abuse, but I'll be ripping those out. I'll keep them for the design, the curves will be tricky to duplicate I'd imagine.

I do believe I spent one night in that shangri-la. On my way back from Ontario many moons ago. Very nice area. I will do my best to make it back there. I had never had or heard of smores before and campers beside us, from Wisconsin, shared the gloriousness that is chocolate, marshmallow and graham crackers. Good times.

a good friend in public school was an only child, at some point his parents decided to ask another of our classmates to go camping with them, it became apparent that the kid was a good friend but a horrible camper, as luck would have it he moved and the next year i got asked, went for quite a few summers to Killarney Provincial Park in northern Ontario
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killarney_Provincial_Park

it was great fun, his parents slept in a van that his carpenter father had converted for them (it had a small icebox and gas stove behind the drivers seat, small cabinet behind the passengers seat, benches on each side with storage underneath, the benches pulled out to form a bed for the parents, there was also a fold out table in the back) and my buddy and i tented, we mostly cooked outside, canoed, hiked, fished all the good stuff

one thing about Killarney there are lots of wild blueberries on the mountains, we'd pick those, bring them back to the campsite and my friends mother would make corn bread with blueberries in an improvised oven (a huge cast iron dutch oven, using canning jar lids to hold the foil bread pans up off the bottom of the dutch oven), good stuff

we even camped one time when we went to Toronto, camped out side the city and used the van for getting around (of course this was in the days before seatbelt laws as my friend and i just sat or lay on the benches while the vehicle was in motion)

There were six kids in my family, and my mother and father both loved the outdoors and to travel - so I grew up camping to the point that I can remember the names of state parks we'd visit over and over again.

Our favorites were:
French Creek State Park in Pennsylvania
Cheesequake State Park in New Jersey

These two were within an hour or two of our house, so sometimes my father would come home on a Friday and they'd decide to take us for the weekend - just to get outside.

At French Creek State Park, there was a rope swing into the water - that was awesome.

On longer trips, we'd head up to Canada. My dad loved the Maritime Provinces, he'd find these primitive camp grounds where'd you'd follow these logging roads into the woods for miles - so you had to stock up on whatever you needed before you drove in. Many, many times we pumped water - chopped our own wood - dug our own holes for you know what.

We camped all the way from Prince Edward Island down to Mexico. Another place we'd go alot was Cedars of Lebanon State Park outside of Nashville Tennesee as we drove from New Jersey to Texas every summer to see the kinfolk and Nashville was about half-way. My parents both loved country music so we'd always stop there and drive over to Opreyland for a day and then my father would sleep a day before he got back in the car to continue driving to San Antonio.

We had a pop-up trailer which the girls slept in - and then my two brothers had a pup tent and my parents had a big tent with cots and room for the food. We also had a screen house to put over the picnic table so we didn't have to get eaten by mosquitos as we ate.
My dad had the whole thing down to a science, he was a master packer.

He and my mother bought a Winnebago when he retired and he drove that thing from New Jersey to Alaska - them camping all the way.

I also loved to camp with my kids. We drove from Maine to Yellowstone - camping our way across the states on the way out and across Canada on the way back.

My favorite place to camp on that trip was Badlands National Park and the Black Hills in South Dakota. We went on a midnight, full moon hike in the badlands - I'll never forget that. I'll also never forget how beautiful the Black Hills were. We were only supposed to stay overnight there - but ended up staying two extra nights because it was so beautiful.

Camping as a kid was the best. Killarney sounds lovely, I would kill (just kidding) to see it in the fall. Must be gorgeous, aside from the spiny water flea.. lol
I camped once in downtown Van, right across from Stanley park. That was kind of an odd experience. Not the nicest campground right under the Lions Gate Bridge. But I've camped in other spots in and around Vancouver. During Expo, we camped in Port Moody, right at the end of the Burrard Inlet. There was bear scare and then we heard the shots.. That was a sad day, but I fell in love with the area and when I moved to Van, that is where we settled.

You should check out this paint, which is fairly pricey but it claims to have insulative properties and it can be used to redo the outside of the trailer. They tell me that UPS does all their trucks with this product.

They have fire retardant paints too. Maybe the product that was recommended to paint inside and out also has fire retardant. The product can be tinted for inside.

http://www.eaglecoatings.net/content/sitemap.htm

Look for SuperTherm and read all about it. It's about $1.00 per square foot.

I've never been to the Maritimes. It's on my bucket list. My brother's getting married in NFLD this summer, but I just can't make it. I'm still upset about this. But one day..
I've heard about the Black hills. I would love to check out that area too. I'm also told the Baja in Mexico is to die for. So many places, not enough time or cash. The freakin' story of my life.
I alway kinda felt sorry for kids who never got the chance to roll into the back country and enjoy it. I'm hoping once the rig is done my kids will borrow it and do a little exploring of their backyard. It's a big beautiful world out there.

Cool, thanks, I will definitely check it out. I will still have to use foam on the inside. Fibreglass trailer tend to drip moisture if nothing is there to soak it up. No fun camping in an internal rain cloud..

I know weve got some piucs somewhere. They were film so Ill have ta scan em when I get em.
Dont stretch it cause the frame is secure and the glas shell wont adhere together without significant weight from wood frames.
You could stretch an AIrstream but I wouldnt recc one of these.
The taking everything out and starting from a hollo shell that you resand and either paint with a "tip and roll" (sorta like we do for boats, or spray with some acrylic or lacquer for really funky graphics .
I always wanted to put some wooden sides on ours to make it look like a "woody" but that was just too much waste of time when I really mneeded to get new flooring, cabinets etc.
The issue about the shower, and outside shower with a frame for a wrap around curtain serves well and you can have one of the little on demand gas heaters . A hot shower is always needed. Of course, for rough camping, we only had a porta potty with a curtain kit that we got from some RV store.

THE only problem I recall was that the wheels were way too small (13'0. yours look sorta like ours. hat would make it wobble in tow. SO I got some stabilizers for small cargo trailers and that steadied it right up. You cant tow these at 80MPH becuse if a tire ever blows youll flip the damn thing.

Write to CAMPERS world.com they have all kinds of after market stuff for refurbing an old camper.

You are right about these things being little"Greenhouses" With evenn 2 people, the inside will get all steamy and condense water in cool days. There are "duotherm " fan kits that you can install in the ceiling with a little crank out cover flap or a permanent wind shield. These can be made to suck humid air out or suck cool air in. They asre rather inexpensive and can be wired up at 24V systems which are probably what all your internal lights are already.

Prince Edward Island is magical - so green. The bay of Fundy - New Brunswick and down into Maine - all of that area is so beautiful.

My bucket list includes the Candian Provinces from Sasketchewan and west. I've been to those east of that. The year we ended up in Yellowstone, the original plan was the Grand Canyon, but there was a heat wave down there and people were actually dying, so camping didn't seem such a great idea that far south, so we stayed north and ended up in Yellowstone - it turned out good.

But I'd still like to do the four corners - where New Mexico, Colorado, Utah and Arizona meet and then go over and up the coast of California, (yeah the Baja - ever since I was a teenager reading Steinbeck - I've wanted to do that and then when I saw the west coast of Mexico - that just intensified the yearning).
Anyway - I've been to coastal Oregon and Washington State, but never to over into Idaho or up to Vancouver and over to Banff. I think I just need to do a driving/camping trip starting in Alaska and just drive down that western coast all the way into South America.
That'd be on my camping bucket list.

As far as I'm concerned there's nothing better than being outside.

We met a couple who'd rigged a computer fan in their top vent. It worked great.

A few years ago, we bought a tent and all the equipment - the first time out we had how I would word it - an adventure - think rain....

since then we camped several times - almost last minute to check the weather first. A couple of times in Maine and a couple of times in New Hampshire at different camp sites. Its great for the kids and the doggie loves it too. So much fun.

I have a couple of threads on my camping experiences - especially the first one that you would think would have turned us off from camping - but not us hardy New Englanders. I will see if I can find the threads and include the links.

We tried this with two teenagers until it rained and rained and rained. Ended up getting a reasonable room (suite actually) at the university (where we dried out our tents over the tub).

here ya go....
http://able2know.org/topic/133936-1

Somebody on the Bolerama site has done this -- I'm sure I've seen pictures. Table/bed a permanent double bed and small table under the front window with two seats (would have removed the middle of the fibreglass bench). It looks like a great idea.

Yeah - sometimes that's just what you have to do. We once started out in Asheville, North Carolina in July and the plan was to go down the eastern seaboard through Charleston, South Carolina, down to Savannah Georgia, and then continuing south to St. Augustine Florida and on down to the Florida keys and then back up the west coast of Florida, and basically follow the Appalachian trail back through Georgia and home to Asheville.

Well, round about St. Augustine - we started renting hotel rooms and did so until we got back to the mountains in Georgia.

We'd never been to Florida in July and we had no idea how hot it got there that time of year. Still - it was a beautiful trip.

Is there just the fiberglass of the outside shell showing on the inside. You could get a do it yourself box of foam and spray it on the surface after you rivet some wood backing, backed by 1/4 inch foam to the shell. The glue and shoot 1/4" or even 1/8" plywood to the wood supports and then caulk the joints and paint this SuperTherm right over the whole shebang.

You don't ever want an insulation to soak up any moisture, Ceili. That will lead to mold problems and in a tight environment like that, possibly serious health issues. Many of these paints have stuff within the paint to stop mildew, and mold. Ask if this paint has a mildewcide in it.

Talk to the president of the company, Doug Pierce[sp??]. They did the Richmond, BC arena which, I believe, was having these sorts of problems. If this stuff works like it's supposed to, I'm still skeptical on it, then that may not be a problem. There was also an arena in Quebec, I think that had the same or similar problems.

I'm planning on lifting the axel a couple of inches. I know this can be done and then I'll add 15 inch wheels.
I'll check out Campers world too. I've seen a couple of modification that stretched a 17 foot boler, but I'm not sure if I've got the mojo to attempt it or not.

I'm looking into solar power further down the line, but I will have the whole thing wired for battery power. My brother has a small generator I can use till I can scrape up the cash for a solar system and some deep cell or gel batteries.