A little history about this tiny trailer

It starts with a whim

So, this story begins on a rather cold day in early February 2020. On a whim, and feeling the need to escape the house after being penned up most of the Winter, we decided to make the journey from York to Altoona, PA on a 20 degree day to visit Ansley RV. There was no plan. We had not been considering buying an RV. In fact, I was kicking around the idea of finding another old boat to go sailing again. But there we were… making a 2-1/2 hour journey up the mountains to go and see an RV… just for the fun of it.

I’m not sure what I was expecting to find when we arrived, but was amazed at the amount of people on the lot perusing RV’s. I mean… who were these crazy people after all. It was Pennsylvania in the Winter. It was 20 degrees out and there was a fresh 3 inches of snow covering everything. But there they were.

And RV’s were everywhere. Anything from tiny trailers to 45-foot diesel pusher motorcoaches, there had to be at least 200+ RV’s to choose from. Pulling on the lot, it was impossible to miss those silver Airstreams sitting among the other makes and models, and we went right for them.

We started with the smallest ones and only looked at two 16-footers. From towing a boat once upon a time ago, I knew I was limited in what I could pull with my existing Jeep Grand Cherokee and wasn’t about to invest in the upgrade to a pickup truck based on a whim trip. The Bambi 16RB is small, but the layout is super efficient and we were hooked.

An hour later it was a done deal. The team at Ansley made the process for newbies extremely easy and walked us through what to expect when we would return in 4 weeks to take delivery.

Taking delivery

Between seeing the tiny trailer for the first time and picking it up 4 weeks later, we did the research that we probably should have done earlier. We attended an RV Show in Maryland and booked a bunch of random campgrounds that looked cool. We started to buy camping “stuff” and researched, and booked, more campgrounds. We found a spot in a storage facility to park the trailer. We even named it. Turns out that Airstream has this naming registry and you can officially register and name your trailer. We decided to call her AlLi and received a certificate and official engraved naming plate that you mount on the trailer. It was exciting and new and we were ready to go!

Delivery day was March 7, 2020 and back up the mountain we went to get our trailer. And yes, it was below freezing… again. It is PA in the Winter after all.

Our pickup was super easy and the team at Ansley walked us through all of the systems to get us started. They installed a sway bar system and a brake controller on the Jeep, hitched us up, and in under 2 hours we were headed home with our new toy.

A global what?

Five days after getting the trailer home, the world went in to shutdown mode due to Covid-19. The sites we had bookings for in April and May started cancelling. It was disappointing of course, but made total sense given the state of the world. As the weather started to get warmer, we would go to the trailer in its storage spot and feel fortunate that we could just sit in it with the windows open.

Then in mid-May we got lucky. A couple of PA counties started rolling back their restrictions and campsites were opening. In a quick search, we discovered a campground that was a 2-hour drive away with available waterfront spots. We booked a site and 5 days later we were on our way there.

A total gem

Penn’s Creek Campground was exactly what we needed for our first time out. The site was easy to get in to, had full hook-ups and LOTS of space between the sites. We quickly discovered that camping was probably the best solution for social distancing ever invented. The hosts were exceptional and brought our firewood right to our site with a tractor and went out of their way to make a couple of newbies feel welcome.

But what made the experience truly amazing was the relaxation part. Just watching the creek flow by. Staring at the stars while sitting next to the fire. It was a forced decompression that we both needed. Camping was definitely for us and we were excited for more trips.