Starling Travel

The negative of having a teardrop trailer (and most tent trailers) is that you have to use the bathrooms and showers at the campground. The cold and windy trek in the middle of the night to empty a nagging bladder is a far different experience than just stumbling out of bed and using the bathroom in a behemoth trailer. I’ve even been known to hold my water until I’m nearly bursting just to avoid that freezing walk.

Then again, a benefit of having a teardrop trailer is that you have to use the bathrooms at the campground. Take, for example, my encounter with Sherri Parsons. I was getting ready in the bathroom when she walked in and the awkwardness of the situation made my mouth take over.

“Were you guys cold last night?” I asked uncomfortably. The wind in Cheyenne was over 30 mph and was bone-chillingly cold.

“No. We stayed in one of the cabins. It was warm.” She answered with friendly voice.

“We have a heater in our teardrop, so we weren’t cold at all. I was surprised this morning when I opened the door. I kind of thought it had warmed up.” I laughed.

“I’m glad I didn’t have to do my midnight potty run. I slept all the way through ’til six this morning.” She replied.

I knew how she felt. I am always so grateful when I don’t have to leave the security and warmth of my trailer (or tent) to use the facilities in the middle of the night. Her first sentence finally hit me. She was sleeping in that cabin near us with the cool motorcycle. I asked, “You’re in the cabin? Are you the 50 States in 50 Weeks guys?”

She smiled. “Yeah, but the wind was so bad last night that I couldn’t deal with the tent flapping, so we got a cabin. Both of us are so cheap that we didn’t really want to do it, but I’m sick of being cold. It snowed on us in Denver.”

I replied, “I totally understand. That’s the whole reason we got the teardrop. We’re from Utah and those mountain nights get cold.” We both laughed and I asked, “So, did you get sponsors for this trip?”

She shook her head, “No. We’re just doing this on our own and he’s blogging every day.”

I shrugged. “That’s cool. You can earn money from advertising on your site as long as you keep blogging.”

She smiled wickedly. “Yeah, we’ve earned TWENTY dollars so far.”

We both laughed and lamented the slow burn of blogging for a living. I finished with my makeup and we separated.

Before we left, I knocked on their cabin door and asked to take their picture and link to them on my own blog. Both Kevin and Sherri came out and talked to Mike and me. I realized later that Kevin and Mike had already talked together about the teardrop trailer, comparing weights. They are hauling a tiny tent trailer.

Kevin and Sherri are from Las Vegas and are doing this for their mid-life hurrah. We talked about how hard it is to do an epic trip like this and he showed us the route they’ve taken so far.

After looking at their website for this journey (50 States in 50 Weeks), I’ve been entertained and even a little jealous. When Mike and I traveled through Nebraska, we really wanted to see Carhendge in Alliance, but it would have added three hours to our already long day of driving. Kevin and Sherri were more adventurous and saw it in all its glory: 50 States Day 27: Minden to Alliance, NE.

Meeting Kevin and Sherri was a wonderful highlight of our epic journey (more on that later).

And just think. We never would have met them if either of us had a bathroom in our respective trailers.