The Build
I spent my first summer of college building my dream teardrop camping trailer. The months of preparation for the build were full of naive excitement and over ambition. I tracked down the cheapest utility trailer Facebook Marketplace had to offer and began cutting it down to size. The steel frame went up relatively quickly. Using a MIG welder, angle iron and a great deal of sweat, I welded the “skeleton” of the camper. The fabrication took place in an airplane hangar during one of the hottest Oklahoma summers on record. The welding, cutting and grinding further heated the shop to temperatures over 115 degrees Fahrenheit. To make matters worse, a week into the build I had my wisdom teeth removed. I was back to work a day after the surgery and immediately blew all my stitches. The next 400 hours of work on the camper were full of bloody drool, heat stroke and insomnia. The camper build taught me more about engineering and design than any class I had yet taken. Learning how to problem solve and work past a burnout is a fundamental skill that I am grateful to have learned. Despite the challenges, the camper build allowed me to spend invaluable time with my dad. A mechanical engineer himself, he and I deeply enjoyed our time together and there is no way that I could’ve done it without him. At long last, I applied the final coat of paint and hit the road before it had fully dried. What followed was an epic pilgrimage across the country, a youthful right of passage.
The Journey
I departed on a late summer evening with my trusty dog, Lola. Around 2:00 am, we stopped for the night in a patch of desert close to Black Mesa, Oklahoma. Dark green storm clouds had gathered above me during my drive and they erupted into a lightning storm the moment I closed the door of the camper. The feeling of sleeping in my camper for the first time amidst a lightning storm is beyond words. After countless hours of work, laying in the comfort of the camper’s cabin while listening to the storm churn outside provoked one of the deepest and most restful sleeps I have yet experienced. Upon waking, I cooked blueberry pancakes and bacon in the camper’s kitchen. Back on the road, Lola and I traveled onward. In Colorado we enjoyed a meal with old friends and made camp at the base of the rockies. In Utah, we camped in the desert and witnessed a breathtaking thunderstorm-sunset. In Nevada, I followed old mining trails through a mountain range and made camp on the highest peak I could find. All was well until I attempted to unhitch the camper. Unhitched, the camper began to roll down the side of the peak with Lola and most of my gear inside of it. In a desperate effort, I managed to shove the camper’s hitch hard enough to steer it away from the slope. After a very close call, all was well and we returned to the highway the next morning. I later learned that I had camped in the infamous “Pumpernickel Valley”, home to dozens of unsolved murders and disappearances over the last twenty years. Lola and I pressed on through California and at long last reached the Pacific Ocean. As I dove into the clear California waters it was clear that all of my work had paid off. It was a feeling of pure, refreshing ecstasy. Lola and I continued up the coast through the Redwoods and into Southern Oregon. We discovered secret beaches, dream surf and wild blackberries. At last, I reached the northern most point of my journey, a quiet beach that I’d often visited as a child. This journey was truly a right of passage and marked the beginning of my engineer-adventurer travel.