Mysterious and elusive...

Not far from where I live, there is a person that collects trailers.  He stores them at an old drive-in theater, and they are highly visible to passersby.  I've never stopped to look, but NoJuan on Flickr stole a picture of the entrance to the drive-in...

And here are the trailers!

He moves them around now and then.  It also looks like the collection is thinning out, but I don't have photographic evidence of that.  I'd love to go look around there, but I hear he's pretty private about his stash.  Fair enough.

I found this older picture I took a couple of years ago.

Where did all the little trailers go?

Hopefully to good and loving homes.

Trailer art

Sometimes you find little trailers in the most unusual places!  I was waiting in line to pay for our Durango tabs, and this cute little thing was on display in the licensing office.

I'm happy to report that I didn't have to wait too long, despite the number of people ahead of me in line.  I always forget to bring a book or magazine!  Argh.

I have a bunch of old license plates - I suppose I could do something artistic with them.  Currently they just lurk around the garden.

Music!

Well look at this will you!  I was just poking around on Youtube, and you know how one thing quickly leads to another...

Right?  You do know how that works?

No matter.  This video by Buck 65 has a TRAILER in it! Ha.  I really like Buck 65 (which would explain why I watched the video in the first place).

Enjoy.

Hidden treasures

I was poking through my ridiculously large collection of photos on Flickr, and came across this one...

Oh hello!  I was more interested in the car when I took this photo, but look at that cute little trailer!  I've no clue what it is.  I took this picture in 2010 at a funky junk yard with a bunch of old cars and other vehicles.  Michael and I stopped one day and walked around - it was a bit eerie to say the least.  We never saw any people, but there was a strange house and people obviously lived there.  Today the yard has been cleared out quite a bit... I wonder if this little trailer is still there?

Goodbye, weekend...

Well, here we are again as Sunday night winds down.  It was a fairly quiet weekend here, much appreciated after a few weekends and weeks of craziness.  We drove no further than the shop where we buy most of our meat now, the 3 Sisters Farm shop.  Twice.  Saturday we went to stock up on meat for the next couple of weeks, and then we returned home to a message that they had pig liver for us.  For Michael, that is.  I'll be eating salmon that night!  He's very excited, and we drove back down there today to pick up the pig liver.  For Michael, not me.

Even the girl at the farm store gave us funny looks when we came in to pick up our special order.  Ha!

Anyhow, yesterday on the way home Michael exlaimed "Fly agaric!"

SCREEEEEEEEEEECH!!!

Oh wow.  I've never seen these little devils in the bright red flesh.

I'm so excited!

But they aren't trailers, are they?  Maybe I should get a little teardrop and paint it like one of these.  That would be cute!  If I were inclined to give our trailer a theme (I'm not), fungus would be high on the list.  Along with clowns, or creepy dolls.  Fortunately for all of you, I'm not inclined to give our trailer a theme.

I did see a cute trailer while out on the dog walk today.  It passed us as we were walking, and I managed to catch the name as it drove by.

Ummm... what was it again?  It was a long walk, and I had to call 911 to report a guy passed out (dead?) on the sidewalk.  We didn't get too close, but it was obvious he needed some sort of assistance.  I see all sorts walking the dog around town these days.

I wracked my brain when I got home, and all I could remember is that it started with a "C" - I think.  I checked a couple of trailer manufacturer lists, and the name that jumped out was Cardinal.  I'm sure that was it!  I don't have a picture of the actual trailer that drove by, but it looked a lot like this ~

That little point in the back is a dead give-a-way.

Cute little thing, isn't it?

Art!

Our dear friend Christine did  a great rendition of our trailer today!  She also did a couple of others - and will be happy to do a custom job or YOUR trailer if you want!

Or a tiki.  Or a Sasquatch.  Or kitchen towels and potholders.  Shameless promotion?  Of course.  She's an artist that deserves support.

That's a nice one!

So is that!

Check out more of her art HERE!

Enjoy...

Eye candy

Today was a big day - I hosted an author brunch event for teen summer reading winners, and in the afternoon we had a panel even open to the public.  It all went really well, but last night I slept poorly - waking often and having strange dreams.  Needless to say I'm a bit on the tired side tonight.  And my feet hurt!

I've decided to post a bit of eye candy tonight.  As you might guess, the logical step beyond a vintage trailer is to of course add a vintage towing vehicle!  Or vice versa, if you're somebody who started with the cars.  It's going to be a good long while before we can add a car, but it's fun to look!

Why not start with this lovely procession of cars and trailers passing by?  They could almost pass for a picture from the past, if it weren't for those two modern lurkers in the rear!

Ooooh, look at this pair!  A 1956 Chevy and a Serro Scotty trailer.

Here's a cute little trailer and a nice truck!

And our last photo for the evening - a Studebaker pickup and a 1961 Winnebago trailer.  The best thing about this photo?  They're CAMPING.  In a campground!

Oh.  Now that I look at the other pictures along with it, it's still a trailer rally of some sort.  But they're CAMPING!

Enjoy the sights... see you soon!

Who knew?

You may or may not know that I'm a Librarian - and now that I've stated it you can't not know.  Unless you're late to the blog and never see this post.  No doubt I'll mention it again for the latecomers.

ANYHOW... working in a public library can be something of a trip at times.  And I'm not talking camping trip!  We get all sorts coming through our doors - all ages, and many variations of mental stability.  Some are easier to deal with than others, and there's one patron in particular who I really like but who has some severe mental issues that really seem to have taken a turn for the worse lately.  Full on paranoid schizophrenia.

This has to do with trailers, I swear it!

This afternoon she called while I was on the desk, and she had a question about the cover of a book she had checked out earlier.  The bar code we put on the book covered some words, and she wanted to know what they said.  I looked it up online and

OH MY GOD LOOK AT THOSE TRAILERS!!!!

The patron was particularly interested in what it said there at the top and exactly which words were capitalized.

Patron:  "and are the W's in Willy Wonka both capitalized?"

Me:  "yes, both W's are capitalized, the "m" in meets is not, but the "T" and "M" in The Matrix -

OH MY GOD LOOK AT THOSE TRAILERS!!!!

They do bear a suspicious resemblance to this...

Sort of.

I've been meaning to read that book.  It's just moved a few more notches up towards the top of my stack.  I want to find out what's up with those trailers on the cover.

Tuesday Treasures

1967.

It was a good year, so I hear.  The summer of love and all.  I was only two, so I don't have much in the way of memories of that year.  I probably had a favorite teddy bear, and played with some toys.

But lots of people were making memories with their trailers.  It was the year our trailer was built, and plenty of people were out and about having fun with trailers of their own.


Hook 'em up and hit the road!

Leona had a good time in 1967.  She got out, saw some mountains, and stood near some snow.

 

Leona's trailer, parked in front of her house presumably!  Is that an airplane shadow?


And how about some camping in sunglasses style?

How did they fit all of those people into that trailer?!!!!

Whirlwind!

What's this?  I've been writing this blog for one month already?  ONE MONTH?!  Last week felt like one year, how could this be?

I demand answers.

How on earth did I decide I was tired of sleeping on the ground when camping and that I wanted a vintage trailer, convince Michael, search Craigslist, find the wrong trailer and not go look at it (twice), find the right trailer, look at it, enlist the help of my wonderful dad, buy it, run around fixing the electrics on our car, buy a hitch, bring the trailer home in a rainstorm with hazard lights instead of tail lights, cancel the first trip we planned, and plan a different trip ~

IN ONE MONTH?

When did I sleep?

Not to mention work and pick beans from the garden?

I should also mention I joined and unjoined vintage trailer Facebook groups, read books, blogs, and various websites about vintage trailers, and somehow still managed to walk our dog three times a day.

ACT NOW, MAKE DECISIONS LATER!

I can't wait to take the trailer out on our first trip next week.  We still have a few things to do to get ready, but for the most part we're ready to roll.  I've been very particular about posting to the blog every day, but when we go on vacation that won't be the case.  It's vacation, after all, and for me that means shutting down the technology and touching dirt.  I do take a lot of pictures, so I'll be able to report back when we return.  I'm looking forward to writing about where we go in our trailer - that's what we bought it for after all!

Book Review - Trailerama

Trailerama - Phil Noyes


If you're looking for a book to satisfy your lust for visual images of vintage trailers, then this is it!  Noyes has pulled together an impressive collection of ephemera related to these old beauties, and organized it in a manner that even a librarian could love!  I sat for an hour or so and paged through this book, enjoying every image and the sparse but pointed commentary.  Trailerama is an interesting peek into the world of life in a mobile home - small or large.

Advertisements and old photos combine to create this nostalgic look at the culture surrounding trailer life.  A lot has changed over the years, but the love for a little mobile home away from home hasn't diminished.  We still yearn for the chance to get out and see more of the world around us, and this glimpse of the trailer lifestyle will inspire even the most immobile to head for their nearest state park, trailer in tow.

It's all about hitting the road and having a good time.

Eye Candy

I'm not going to lie - if money was no object, I'd rush right out and find my own Holiday House trailer.  I love the big window!  The beautiful aluminum features, so striking when polished!

The Holiday House trailers are rare indeed.  There are so few of them that I keep running across the same pictures no matter where I go online.

Oooooh.... aaaaaahhhhhhhh...

The Holiday House trailers were built by the employees of Harry and David (the fruit people!) during the off-season as a means to  retain skilled employees in the off season.

Fruit.  Trailers.

An obvious connection!

Tuesday Trash

Tuesday already?

I was sitting in a meeting this afternoon, and we were discussing a blog I'm scheduled to write a couple of posts for this week.  All of a sudden I thought to myself - TUESDAY!  Trash day!  Time to bring out the decay.

So many trailers have been abandoned, just left to rot where they are.  Sad, yet beautiful in their own way.  Slowly crumbling to little bits of nothing - once loved, now lost.  Each has a story to tell, but we'll never hear those stories since the owners have long gone on to other things.  We're just left with images of human ingenuity, crumbling slowly as the seasons pass - wind, rain, searing heat and snow eating away at the edges until integrity fails and collapse occurs...

Beautiful.

Home at last

I'm in a bit of shock at the moment, but it seems that we actually managed to get our new trailer home!  The trip wasn't without a bit of stress - something I'm getting used to these days.

The electrics on our Durango were rewired and working fine, and when we hooked up the trailer everything worked - sort of.  If you held the connection just so.  Every light worked, but  unfortunately the connection was just a bit dodgy and my guess is the first pebble we drove over knocked it loose.  What it left NOT working were the taillights - of course.

Did I mention it was pouring rain today?

Figures.  The one thing that shortens daylight and otherwise makes driving a bit stressful decided to show up the first time I towed a trailer.  Thanks rain, at least you're watering my garden!

Anyhow, we got the trailer hooked up and ready to roll - and headed for our first stop just a mile or so away.  The Shell station, to add air to the tires and check the lights.

Oh.

The lights.  The lights that we got to work just fine when we were sitting in one spot, but which decided to stop working the minute we ran over a pebble.  See!  They're working!

And then they stopped.  Probably two seconds after we started driving.  We knew this was probably the case, but we started for home - it was still light and we wanted to get home as quickly as we could!

We also forgot to put the temporary towing mirrors on (too excited), so I didn't have the best visibility.  We drove quite a ways, but it kept getting darker and darker and eventually somebody flashed us to let us know out lights were out.  We made it to our exit from I-5, and stopped on the shoulder to try and straighten things out.  It was raining, and quickly became clear that the only way to keep the lights on was for Michael to hold the connection in place.  Since it wouldn't be acceptable for him to ride on the hitch, we had to come up with another solution.

HAZARD LIGHTS!

We drove the rest of the way home (as it got darker, and darker) with the hazard lights on.  The brake lights worked too, and so did the turn signals (as long as the hazards weren't on).  Michael coached me on when to switch the hazards on and off, and provided general driving tips.  He's really good with things like that.

And it was still raining like mad.

We finally pulled into our front yard, and I was able to sigh a HUGE sigh of relief.  Michael will be able to fix the electric connection easily.

I'm exhausted.

THREE WEEKS UNTIL WE LEAVE FOR YELLOWSTONE.