Hi all, I've posted a couple of times in the past week or so but haven't done an introduction yet ~ we wanted to wait until our new egg was home first. We are the proud new owners of a 2009
Escape 19!
We are: a mom and dad in our 40s, a teen, a tween, and two German Shepherd dogs. We live in the inland valley, between Los Angeles and Palm Springs.
We started our trailer camping with a tiny used pop-up, then quickly moved to a bigger pop-up (port potty added, no bathroom), and then finally a huge, high-side pop-up (complete with hard-sided wet bathroom as well as an oven). We
sold that nearly four years ago and gave up family camping for awhile (dad and the boys still did the tent camping thing).
We've always liked the FGRVs, so other than looking online at some vintage canned ham trailers we stuck to molded
fiberglass. Weekend before last we got the chance to see a 13'
Scamp Deluxe, a
Perris Pacer, and a
Trillium 4500 (all for sale) and a 17'
Casita Spirit Deluxe (referral program). That evening the posting for the used
Escape popped up and we decided to take a look even though we had previously eliminated it as being too heavy for our TV after talking to the folks at
Escape.
We really wanted to avoid the whole step-up phenomenon of trailer buying if possible (see above pop-up progression), so we were looking for a permanent bed if possible, that the bed be bigger that what comes in the standard
Scamp or the smaller Casitas, a dinette that could always be left up, a bathroom, plus space for four to sleep if the weather is poor (otherwise tween and teen can sleep in a tent). On other words, we wanted a trailer that we could use now and still want to be using in another decade or two. The
Casita would have come close, but didn't have the permanent bed.
The couple we bought the Escape from couldn't have been nicer; it was a smooth transaction. We feel really fortunate to have had a trailer that we were really interested in come on the market fairly close to home right when we were looking. Of course, there are many great trailers out there and I'm pretty sure we could have made a 16'
Scamp Deluxe or a 17'
Casita work for us. The 13 footers were a little too small (imagining rainy days with four humans and two big dogs stuck in a trailer), and the vintage
Trillium had that front bathroom design and simply needed more work that we wanted to put into it.
Of course, we did decide to get a TV; it was a little ironic to be trading in our second car, a gas sipping Corolla, for a Tacoma truck, on a weekend when gasoline topped $4.25 a gallon in our area.
Thanks to everyone who has every posted here at
Fiberglass TV; the forums and classified were invaluable to us as we did our research!
Mike and Kimberly
. And yes, while fuel prices seem to be rising, the memories you make with your family will last a lifetime.
1992 Scamp Side bath
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