The Scamp 5th Wheel: The Small, Small Trailer
Tonight, in early May of 2012, I sit in a trailer the width of a pickup truck at 6200' on the icy shores of Lake Tahoe at Nevada Beach, Nevada, as a camp host. There are no slide outs, and there is no TV, no Internet, and no radio.
In September of 2011, two friends - Gary and Colleen - and Linda and I drove up to southern Oregon, to inspect the potential purchase of a 2009 Scamp 5th Wheel trailer that I had found on the Internet. We drove back into the hills to a secluded, gravel road that veered left off of the winding, narrow, asphalt path and climbed up a steep hill that fell off to one side. A cloud of dust shrouded everything behind us. Ominous and threatening signs with rusted bullet holes lined the road. One said, "The guard dog can make it to the fence in 3 seconds flat. Can you?"
We crested over the mountain and descended slowly into a valley where a lone house surrounded by old sheds sat at the end of the lane down in a hole. It was about a mile in. If it had been night, I would not have come. Fierce dogs circled the truck like water in a hot tub, waiting for the first piece of meat that came out of a door. A 75 year old woman who seemed to fear nothing emerged from the house because the dogs would have ripped the arms off of anyone who made a false move. With her assurance, I stepped out of the truck. Her 63 year old husband who looked like a handlebar-mustached Buck Owens from HeeHaw soon came rolling down that same road with a billow of dirt in his wake like it was Oklahoma in the 1930‘s.
With the preliminary introductions over, the owner revealed the key that opened the Scamp we gathered around. In I went. A Scamp trailer is virtually the same thing as a Casita trailer, an egg-shaped, fiberglass enclosure about 16 or 17 feet long, which includes the rear bumper to the tip of the hitch. Casita means "Little House." And that is what it is. Little. Very Little. People buy them because they are easy to tow, and it is a quick motel room for the night. Because campgrounds in some states unbelievably cost nearly $40 per day, many of these Scamp and Casita people take free accommodations overnight in a Walmart parking lot with an army of other freeloaders who will yank a robe over their pajamas in the morning and waddle into Walmart like they just came downstairs from the bathroom and into their kitchens. They call up a donut and a senior coffee, get a free handshake from some old guy at the door who looks like Santa Claus, and have their pictures secretly taken by some guy who posts them on the Internet under the title "Walmartians."
A Casita and Scamp are fully self-contained. But, let me re-emphasize, They are VERY compact. On Internet forums, people are always asking how long others have been able to last in one of those things. I met a woman up in the hills of California who was a full-time RVer and had been living in a 13 foot Casita (bumper to tip of hitch) with two German Shepherds for years. I am sure there was something very wrong with her. Gary and Colleen had just bought a brand new Casita in Texas and spent a month in it coming home. They came out that thing in the morning like their pants were on fire and never returned till fatigue forced them back inside. Then they collapsed on top of each other onto a pad where the breakfast table had been that morning like two dogs on a porch. But to hear them tell it, it was like heaven.
The Scamp 5th Wheel, on the other hand, is the same thing as a Casita with a 5th wheel extension that houses the "bedroom" separately. It is 19 feet long from bow to stern, but it looks cavernous compared to a Casita trailer. At one point in time, Scamp and Casita had been connected, but for some reason they split up. Each family member went his own way. One sauntered off to Texas and called his company Casita; the other stayed in Minnesota and kept the name Scamp. The people in Minnesota contrived a 5th wheel. The people in Texas didn't.
I stepped into this Deluxe model of the Scamp 5th Wheel and was amazed at how complete and spacious (to my yet untrained eye and inexperience) this 2,000 pound trailer was. Beautiful birch cabinetry lined the interior. It was decked with a kitchen sink, refrigerator, freezer, furnace, A/C, microwave, pantry, clothes closet, shower, bathroom sink, and toilet. It was also brand new. Almost. This odd couple had taken it out of the box at the factory in Minnesota in 2009, dragged it back to Oregon, parked it here on the movie set of Deliverance, and had never moved it another inch up to the day I drove into this river and whirlpool of dogs that kept annoyingly Googling me for more information by sniffing my crotch once I ventured from the truck. I pondered why this Scamp sat there unattended for two years.. At the moment, it had no significance. I had just found a leak-proof egg camper (See Tents and Campers:http://www.articlesbase.com/camping-articles/tents-and-campers-5381698.html) that looked brand new for a very good price. Why it had never been budged again was part of my destiny.
For some peculiar reason, gun-totin' Buck Owens, who was a post-traumatic stress syndrome Viet Nam veteran, and his undaunted wife were also willing to drag this Scamp off Wolverton mountain and down to my house 180 miles away for FREE. I wondered about that too. Whatever. Before he could reconsider the sale price and kick in the post-traumatic stress syndrome by taking up his machine gun and giving some German attack command to his wolves, I high-tailed it out of there like Burt Reynolds after he had put an arrow through one of the good old boys down near Waycross, Georgia. Within days, I stared at the Scamp in my driveway.
We had now gone through the preliminary steps to a major purchase. Months before, we made theDecision To Buy. I had done due diligence through the Search and Discovery mode. As Buck Owens floored his truck and turned the corner on nearly one wheel, I was about to take the next step: The Journey to Enlightenment, which is the stage I am now in here at Nevada Beach. Let me give you an idea of what I am talking about as I rest here in the pines with five and a half months ahead of me to live in this DELUXE version of the Scamp 5th wheel egg camper.
When I spring from the hay in the morning, I go and fall into my seat at the dining booth where my head is one foot from the rear window. I sit because If I am standing, I am in someone's way, and I will hear grievance. If I do not hit that seat before someone starts washing her hair, then I will remain standing because, otherwise, it will be impossible to wedge myself into the seat. Someone always has to light as soon as possible. If you want to stand again, someone has to sit down.
While SITTING at this dining table, I can do an amazing number of things that other people cannot do. For example. I can turn on 40% of the eight lights within the trailer. I can also WASH and DRY the dishes. I can take utensils from the silverware drawer, reach three additional drawers andthe lower pantry. I can withdraw cups from a cupboard, medication from the medicine cabinet, games from another cupboard, and make toast. I can turn on and open the hatch to the roof utility fan and crank open the escape hatch out of the top. I can do electrical work by resetting tripped switches and changing fuses in the circuit box, and I can adjust the thermostat. I can open two sets of drapes and open and close 38% of all the windows in the Scamp. As well, I can turn on the water pump. I can do this, mind you, without moving my backside a single inch.
Now...if I move ONE FOOT, I can do all the above PLUS make coffee, reach the upper pantry, grab books from the library, open all the drawers in the kitchen, light the stove, cook breakfast, hand Linda all of her clothes, reach every electrical outlet in the trailer, open the refrigerator and freezer, dispense food and drink, and throw open wide the door to the microwave. All this without rising to my feet from a position of repose.
If I should lean too far backwards while in the chair, I will land in the shower with my head over the drain and be looking up at the bottom of the toilet bowl. But in this position I would be able to open the closet and grab all my clothes and shoes, push open the exit door, and reach two other cabinets under the stairs that lead to the bedroom. Yes, I can do all the above by moving just one foot and then falling to the rear.
Now let's talk about the "bedroom." The bedroom is the only place I cannot reach by moving one foot from the dining table. The first night I entered the "bedroom", I got locked in the stairway. My shoulders would not go straight in. The entrance way that leads up the steps into the cave that is the bedroom is 16 1/4 inches wide. That leaves me about one half inch on each side of my hips. To get into bed, I have to do a half twist and screw my way up into the loft. When I first saw this passage way into this hole, it looked as cozy as the cardboard refrigerator box I used to to drag into my house when I was a kid and eat dinner from while it was planted in front of the Crosley 12" wide-screen TV. I had absolutely no concept that going up this tunnel would be like going down into the Savage mine shaft on the Comstock Lode. It would soon turn on me. But this explains one reason why Buck Owens and his wife never moved the Scamp an iota after arriving with it in Oregon two years before. The old lady had a hip girth that makes me think that while they hauled this thing back to Oregon from Minnesota, she had to be sleeping in the truck. I even wonder if she could have gotten through the entrance door. So Buck Owens was sitting up in here by himself.
The cave-like bedroom is supposed to be a queen sized mattress in the section that rides over the bed of the truck. It is tight, and there are no sides to the bed loft in which one can stand. In fact, there is no such thing as standing in the bedroom. You kneel or sit. Linda would set fire to this thing for one reason alone: making the bed is like standing on a carpet while trying to straighten it. You have to be sitting on the bed while you are removing, adding, or straightening the bed covers. Try that some time. You should hear her when that situation occurs.
When sleeping, Linda can lie full length, but I have to get into a fetal position or else lie on a bias to stretch out. If there were no screens on the two windows on each side, I would sleep with my feet outside the trailer. Our first outing was in a field at a hot air balloon festival with Gary and Colleen facing our door in their Casita. On that first night I went to sleep up in that chamber, I suddenly came to life from a dead slumber. My eyes flipped open like that lady who fell asleep inside that cave in the old 1956, black and white Sci-Fi movie, Invasion of the Body Snatchers, after Kevin McCarthy had tried to keep her awake. It was pitch black up in that cavity, and I had the strong impression that I was aboard the USS Thresher at the bottom of the Atlantic. The close quarters of this hole I was sleeping in were crushing in on me. Terror gripped me with a cold sweat and desperation to get air. I reached up to see if I was entombed. The total darkness in that space was empty. Since I couldn't see a thing and was pinned up against a wall like it was a coffin, the claustrophobic horses that were charging in provoked panic. I screamed "I gotta get the ... "I'm comin' outa here."
As Linda rustled awake with the moving sheets, I tore the covers off as if a viper was hissing and striking blindly in my direction. Down those three steps through that 16 inch wide gauntlet I bounded like it was a slippery slide with my backside bouncing like a bowling ball on each of those hardwood steps. I grabbed the door handle of the Scamp, shoved it open, and with desperation I rammed my head into the open air. Or tried to. If this had been a cartoon, I would have heard a "CLANG", as if Foghorn Leghorn had done a face-plant into an anvil, because I cracked my head directly into the top side of the door frame, which was only 60 inches high. I am over 73 inches high. Everything in this Scamp is on the scale of a Hobbit House. At 5'2", Linda moves in and out of here like a bunny in a burrow. But I am constantly screaming and pasting on salve and bandaids as I bang my skull on cranks, wooden frames, door entrances, sharp corners, and the A/C. I have to walk through this thing as if I have a hump. But my only concern that night was standing straight up and breathing fresh, wide open air which I began inhaling deeply as I stood there in the California night without any clothes on, framed by the doorway, and holding my head. And, yes, I sleep naked. Especially in close quarters like that sarcophagus out of which I had come. In addition, I tend to turn like a lathe during the night, and a shirt or pajamas wrap around me like a wash rag around a drill bit. Colleen usually gets up early. But there was no sign of her, thank the Lord.
Since then, the only way I have been able to deal with the confines of that claustrophobic catacomb is to sleep with my head in the staircase. It is like having my face in an air vent of a West Virginia coal mine after a collapse.
But there is more.
People who camp in RVs often speak of "dry camping." This means you head out into the woods with your rolling house, and when you get to your destination, there are no hook-ups. That is, no electricity, no water, no Internet or cable are available. You had better be fully self-contained, self-powered, and have capacity in your tanks for the utilities you crave. Depending on how long you remain in this dry state of camping, you will need battery power, or a generator, water, and maybe propane gas. If you have large storage tanks for water, you can go for a while. Some of these rigs have 50-100 gallon fresh water tanks. The Scamp has a 12 gallon water tank. Your terminus point is just hours ahead. I took the Scamp to Phoenix in March of 2012 where there were NO hookups for eight days. I set a new personal record for not having a shower or bath of any kind. Eight days. Think about that....alright then, don't think about it. When I finally got to facilities in Tuscon, it took a while to remove everything that was caked to me.
I have completed one week. We have five months and one week to go.
In September of 2011, two friends - Gary and Colleen - and Linda and I drove up to southern Oregon, to inspect the potential purchase of a 2009 Scamp 5th Wheel trailer that I had found on the Internet. We drove back into the hills to a secluded, gravel road that veered left off of the winding, narrow, asphalt path and climbed up a steep hill that fell off to one side. A cloud of dust shrouded everything behind us. Ominous and threatening signs with rusted bullet holes lined the road. One said, "The guard dog can make it to the fence in 3 seconds flat. Can you?"
We crested over the mountain and descended slowly into a valley where a lone house surrounded by old sheds sat at the end of the lane down in a hole. It was about a mile in. If it had been night, I would not have come. Fierce dogs circled the truck like water in a hot tub, waiting for the first piece of meat that came out of a door. A 75 year old woman who seemed to fear nothing emerged from the house because the dogs would have ripped the arms off of anyone who made a false move. With her assurance, I stepped out of the truck. Her 63 year old husband who looked like a handlebar-mustached Buck Owens from HeeHaw soon came rolling down that same road with a billow of dirt in his wake like it was Oklahoma in the 1930‘s.
With the preliminary introductions over, the owner revealed the key that opened the Scamp we gathered around. In I went. A Scamp trailer is virtually the same thing as a Casita trailer, an egg-shaped, fiberglass enclosure about 16 or 17 feet long, which includes the rear bumper to the tip of the hitch. Casita means "Little House." And that is what it is. Little. Very Little. People buy them because they are easy to tow, and it is a quick motel room for the night. Because campgrounds in some states unbelievably cost nearly $40 per day, many of these Scamp and Casita people take free accommodations overnight in a Walmart parking lot with an army of other freeloaders who will yank a robe over their pajamas in the morning and waddle into Walmart like they just came downstairs from the bathroom and into their kitchens. They call up a donut and a senior coffee, get a free handshake from some old guy at the door who looks like Santa Claus, and have their pictures secretly taken by some guy who posts them on the Internet under the title "Walmartians."
A Casita and Scamp are fully self-contained. But, let me re-emphasize, They are VERY compact. On Internet forums, people are always asking how long others have been able to last in one of those things. I met a woman up in the hills of California who was a full-time RVer and had been living in a 13 foot Casita (bumper to tip of hitch) with two German Shepherds for years. I am sure there was something very wrong with her. Gary and Colleen had just bought a brand new Casita in Texas and spent a month in it coming home. They came out that thing in the morning like their pants were on fire and never returned till fatigue forced them back inside. Then they collapsed on top of each other onto a pad where the breakfast table had been that morning like two dogs on a porch. But to hear them tell it, it was like heaven.
The Scamp 5th Wheel, on the other hand, is the same thing as a Casita with a 5th wheel extension that houses the "bedroom" separately. It is 19 feet long from bow to stern, but it looks cavernous compared to a Casita trailer. At one point in time, Scamp and Casita had been connected, but for some reason they split up. Each family member went his own way. One sauntered off to Texas and called his company Casita; the other stayed in Minnesota and kept the name Scamp. The people in Minnesota contrived a 5th wheel. The people in Texas didn't.
I stepped into this Deluxe model of the Scamp 5th Wheel and was amazed at how complete and spacious (to my yet untrained eye and inexperience) this 2,000 pound trailer was. Beautiful birch cabinetry lined the interior. It was decked with a kitchen sink, refrigerator, freezer, furnace, A/C, microwave, pantry, clothes closet, shower, bathroom sink, and toilet. It was also brand new. Almost. This odd couple had taken it out of the box at the factory in Minnesota in 2009, dragged it back to Oregon, parked it here on the movie set of Deliverance, and had never moved it another inch up to the day I drove into this river and whirlpool of dogs that kept annoyingly Googling me for more information by sniffing my crotch once I ventured from the truck. I pondered why this Scamp sat there unattended for two years.. At the moment, it had no significance. I had just found a leak-proof egg camper (See Tents and Campers:http://www.articlesbase.com/camping-articles/tents-and-campers-5381698.html) that looked brand new for a very good price. Why it had never been budged again was part of my destiny.
For some peculiar reason, gun-totin' Buck Owens, who was a post-traumatic stress syndrome Viet Nam veteran, and his undaunted wife were also willing to drag this Scamp off Wolverton mountain and down to my house 180 miles away for FREE. I wondered about that too. Whatever. Before he could reconsider the sale price and kick in the post-traumatic stress syndrome by taking up his machine gun and giving some German attack command to his wolves, I high-tailed it out of there like Burt Reynolds after he had put an arrow through one of the good old boys down near Waycross, Georgia. Within days, I stared at the Scamp in my driveway.
We had now gone through the preliminary steps to a major purchase. Months before, we made theDecision To Buy. I had done due diligence through the Search and Discovery mode. As Buck Owens floored his truck and turned the corner on nearly one wheel, I was about to take the next step: The Journey to Enlightenment, which is the stage I am now in here at Nevada Beach. Let me give you an idea of what I am talking about as I rest here in the pines with five and a half months ahead of me to live in this DELUXE version of the Scamp 5th wheel egg camper.
When I spring from the hay in the morning, I go and fall into my seat at the dining booth where my head is one foot from the rear window. I sit because If I am standing, I am in someone's way, and I will hear grievance. If I do not hit that seat before someone starts washing her hair, then I will remain standing because, otherwise, it will be impossible to wedge myself into the seat. Someone always has to light as soon as possible. If you want to stand again, someone has to sit down.
While SITTING at this dining table, I can do an amazing number of things that other people cannot do. For example. I can turn on 40% of the eight lights within the trailer. I can also WASH and DRY the dishes. I can take utensils from the silverware drawer, reach three additional drawers andthe lower pantry. I can withdraw cups from a cupboard, medication from the medicine cabinet, games from another cupboard, and make toast. I can turn on and open the hatch to the roof utility fan and crank open the escape hatch out of the top. I can do electrical work by resetting tripped switches and changing fuses in the circuit box, and I can adjust the thermostat. I can open two sets of drapes and open and close 38% of all the windows in the Scamp. As well, I can turn on the water pump. I can do this, mind you, without moving my backside a single inch.
Now...if I move ONE FOOT, I can do all the above PLUS make coffee, reach the upper pantry, grab books from the library, open all the drawers in the kitchen, light the stove, cook breakfast, hand Linda all of her clothes, reach every electrical outlet in the trailer, open the refrigerator and freezer, dispense food and drink, and throw open wide the door to the microwave. All this without rising to my feet from a position of repose.
If I should lean too far backwards while in the chair, I will land in the shower with my head over the drain and be looking up at the bottom of the toilet bowl. But in this position I would be able to open the closet and grab all my clothes and shoes, push open the exit door, and reach two other cabinets under the stairs that lead to the bedroom. Yes, I can do all the above by moving just one foot and then falling to the rear.
Now let's talk about the "bedroom." The bedroom is the only place I cannot reach by moving one foot from the dining table. The first night I entered the "bedroom", I got locked in the stairway. My shoulders would not go straight in. The entrance way that leads up the steps into the cave that is the bedroom is 16 1/4 inches wide. That leaves me about one half inch on each side of my hips. To get into bed, I have to do a half twist and screw my way up into the loft. When I first saw this passage way into this hole, it looked as cozy as the cardboard refrigerator box I used to to drag into my house when I was a kid and eat dinner from while it was planted in front of the Crosley 12" wide-screen TV. I had absolutely no concept that going up this tunnel would be like going down into the Savage mine shaft on the Comstock Lode. It would soon turn on me. But this explains one reason why Buck Owens and his wife never moved the Scamp an iota after arriving with it in Oregon two years before. The old lady had a hip girth that makes me think that while they hauled this thing back to Oregon from Minnesota, she had to be sleeping in the truck. I even wonder if she could have gotten through the entrance door. So Buck Owens was sitting up in here by himself.
The cave-like bedroom is supposed to be a queen sized mattress in the section that rides over the bed of the truck. It is tight, and there are no sides to the bed loft in which one can stand. In fact, there is no such thing as standing in the bedroom. You kneel or sit. Linda would set fire to this thing for one reason alone: making the bed is like standing on a carpet while trying to straighten it. You have to be sitting on the bed while you are removing, adding, or straightening the bed covers. Try that some time. You should hear her when that situation occurs.
When sleeping, Linda can lie full length, but I have to get into a fetal position or else lie on a bias to stretch out. If there were no screens on the two windows on each side, I would sleep with my feet outside the trailer. Our first outing was in a field at a hot air balloon festival with Gary and Colleen facing our door in their Casita. On that first night I went to sleep up in that chamber, I suddenly came to life from a dead slumber. My eyes flipped open like that lady who fell asleep inside that cave in the old 1956, black and white Sci-Fi movie, Invasion of the Body Snatchers, after Kevin McCarthy had tried to keep her awake. It was pitch black up in that cavity, and I had the strong impression that I was aboard the USS Thresher at the bottom of the Atlantic. The close quarters of this hole I was sleeping in were crushing in on me. Terror gripped me with a cold sweat and desperation to get air. I reached up to see if I was entombed. The total darkness in that space was empty. Since I couldn't see a thing and was pinned up against a wall like it was a coffin, the claustrophobic horses that were charging in provoked panic. I screamed "I gotta get the ... "I'm comin' outa here."
As Linda rustled awake with the moving sheets, I tore the covers off as if a viper was hissing and striking blindly in my direction. Down those three steps through that 16 inch wide gauntlet I bounded like it was a slippery slide with my backside bouncing like a bowling ball on each of those hardwood steps. I grabbed the door handle of the Scamp, shoved it open, and with desperation I rammed my head into the open air. Or tried to. If this had been a cartoon, I would have heard a "CLANG", as if Foghorn Leghorn had done a face-plant into an anvil, because I cracked my head directly into the top side of the door frame, which was only 60 inches high. I am over 73 inches high. Everything in this Scamp is on the scale of a Hobbit House. At 5'2", Linda moves in and out of here like a bunny in a burrow. But I am constantly screaming and pasting on salve and bandaids as I bang my skull on cranks, wooden frames, door entrances, sharp corners, and the A/C. I have to walk through this thing as if I have a hump. But my only concern that night was standing straight up and breathing fresh, wide open air which I began inhaling deeply as I stood there in the California night without any clothes on, framed by the doorway, and holding my head. And, yes, I sleep naked. Especially in close quarters like that sarcophagus out of which I had come. In addition, I tend to turn like a lathe during the night, and a shirt or pajamas wrap around me like a wash rag around a drill bit. Colleen usually gets up early. But there was no sign of her, thank the Lord.
Since then, the only way I have been able to deal with the confines of that claustrophobic catacomb is to sleep with my head in the staircase. It is like having my face in an air vent of a West Virginia coal mine after a collapse.
But there is more.
People who camp in RVs often speak of "dry camping." This means you head out into the woods with your rolling house, and when you get to your destination, there are no hook-ups. That is, no electricity, no water, no Internet or cable are available. You had better be fully self-contained, self-powered, and have capacity in your tanks for the utilities you crave. Depending on how long you remain in this dry state of camping, you will need battery power, or a generator, water, and maybe propane gas. If you have large storage tanks for water, you can go for a while. Some of these rigs have 50-100 gallon fresh water tanks. The Scamp has a 12 gallon water tank. Your terminus point is just hours ahead. I took the Scamp to Phoenix in March of 2012 where there were NO hookups for eight days. I set a new personal record for not having a shower or bath of any kind. Eight days. Think about that....alright then, don't think about it. When I finally got to facilities in Tuscon, it took a while to remove everything that was caked to me.
I have completed one week. We have five months and one week to go.