Starling Travel

I can’t believe I haven’t written about the Volkswagen Bug MiniHome Motorhome. The plans for it were in the June 1977 issue of Mechanix Illustrated.

You can buy plans for this camper here: (Continue Reading…)

Winnebago just announced the return of the Minnie Winnie motorhome.

• Winnebago Motor Homes – 2014 Minnie Winnie

When I heard about it, I was excited and immediately clicked over, finding this behemoth of a motorhome:

This must be a different meaning of the word, “minnie” than I’m used to. When I think of mini or minnie, I think of this minuscule motorhome from Dethleffs.

Or even this 19′ motorhome for rent from Cruise America.

It has room to sleep three people, a shower and galley, all within a smaller space than some travel trailers.

Heck, even this retro 1967 Winnebago motorhome is only 19 feet.

The smallest “Minnie” Winnie in the 2014 lineup is 25 feet, a full SIX feet bigger than that rental motorhome.

Someone needs to teach Winnebago the definition of the word, “Minnie” before they embarrass themselves any further.

One thing I loved about the teardrop trailer was that I could work on it in my own garage. That is a feature that is shared with a tent trailer. After a trip, I can pull our tent trailer into our garage, lift it up and out and be able to change sheets, unpack clothing and food and do whatever repairs are needed.

Here is a photo of our Jayco Eagle deployed in our garage.

As you can see, when the bunkends are pulled out, the trailer barely fits lengthwise. When the roof is raised, there is less than a foot’s clearance from the trailer roof and the garage door when it’s opened. A similarly sized travel trailer wouldn’t even fit under the garage door, so I wouldn’t be able to store it in my garage. I would have to find a storage facility for it. Not so with the tent trailer.

Before a trip, I can open the trailer up and stock up the cooler, pack our clothes and other gear. I love that I can set things up perfectly before we go on our trip. Knowing that we have packed everything, calms my pre-trip jitters.

If my tent trailer was any bigger, however, I wouldn’t be able to have this luxury. Our box is only 8 feet, so we can fit lengthwise. We don’t have a high-wall camper, so we are short enough to fit under the garage door when it’s open.

This is a feature that I wasn’t expecting when we bought the tent trailer. I had enjoyed renovating our teardrop trailer in our garage and I wasn’t even sure that a tent camper would fit even if it was fully packed up. I’m so grateful that I can pack the camper before a trip and empty it out afterwards in the comfort of my garage.

The dinette table in our tent trailer is HEAVY.

I know why this is the case. It needs to double as the middle support of a bed so our camper can sleep six people.

But we don’t need to sleep six people.

So, I took the table out of the trailer and we haven’t put it back in.

But a nagging part of me thinks that I should bring the table on our travels to put outside, letting it be the focus of our outdoor cooking. And another nagging part of me worries about leaking bunk-ends in the rain with the three of us huddled on couches, wishing we could just turn them into a bed like they were intended.

But then again, that table is so HEAVY! I weighed it on my bathroom scale and it tops out at 16.3 pounds. No wonder I almost throw my shoulder out every time I try to move it!

I looked online and found some options. One of them solves the outdoor kitchen problem. A forum poster on Popup Portal named hsr posted his homemade outdoor galley and it looks much lighter than my table.

• Popup Portal: My Homemade Outdoor Galley

Built this to replace the Cabela’s Deluxe Camp kitchen. It was just too big (especially to store inside the PUP), heavy and had no easy way to level.

The only problem is that when he weighed the two parts of that outdoor galley, they topped out 23.5, which is way lighter than the Cabela’s Deluxe Camp kitchen, but heavier than my dinette table. I could make something simple like my original table, however, that would weigh about ten pounds or so.

And what about the bed and that supposed leaky scenario where we are all huddled into the middle of the camper? I found an option for that as well. Instead of a heavy table, fritz_monroe used a few wood slats to bridge the middle.

• Popup Portal: Dinette bed slats

My kids are getting to the point where they won’t share one of the king sized bed ends. So my daughter has been sleeping on the dinette. However, we like to use the table in the screen room when we are camping. So I needed to come up with a way to support the cushions for her. I didn’t want to use plywood. So I connected a bunch of 1×3 fering strips with nylon webbing. This is what I came up with. The spacing allows the boards to fold up accordion style.

That many strips of boards might be foldable and easy to stow away just in case we need them, but will they weigh less than six pounds? Maybe, but now instead of a simple table, which can go outside for cooking or come inside to make a bed, I now have two kludgy replacements that weigh almost the same as the original table.

I guess that dinette table isn’t so heavy after all…

I really liked this quick video from Chevrolet about how to tow with their pickup, the Silverado.

While I love the backup camera, seeing that they have a switch for tow and hauling mode made me want to look at Chevy’s for my next tow vehicle.

Via: RV Education 101: New technology

Ever since I owned my Barbie Star Traveler, I have fantasized about hanging out on TOP of a motorhome. Right on the box, it showed Barbie and Skipper laying out in the sun on top of the motorhome.

Well, they have finally made a camper that can allow you to do just that: the Kabe Royal Tower.

Click more to see other photos: (Continue Reading…)

I was looking on Pinterest when I found this awesome Toyota car that pops up into a tent.

According to Wikipedia, it was a concept car that was never mass-produced.

The RV-2 was a 2-door wagon concept car shown during the October 1972 Tokyo Motor Show and the April 1973 New York International Auto Show.

Styling was up-to-date with sharply formed edges and large rectangular headlights. The front bumper covered only the corners, allowing the grill to be much more prominent than normal. The roof line terminated behind the large door on each side. Above the rear waistline were a pair of side hinged clam shell doors covering the entire rear section. An integrated roll bar terminated the body work and also formed a place for the clam shell doors to seal. The clam shell doors met each in the middle of the roof with no centre support. When the doors were raised you could stretch a tent between them. Two adults could sleep in the tent section and another two adults could sleep on the front seats, which could fold down flat. Finally, the rear section included a full width tail gate with a wind-down window nestled under the rear roll bar.

A fully working prototype in RHD was shown at the Tokyo Motor Show and reviewed in the August 1973 issue of Penthouse magazine. Toyota also printed a large number of a brochure for the USA market in order to gauge the market reaction. It was generally well received but apparently not enough to put it into production. The brochure included sketches with the steering wheel clearly shown on the left hand side but the photographs of the real vehicle hid the steering wheel – which was on the right hand side.

You can see the brochure after the break… (Continue Reading…)

I was perusing Google images for redneck campers when I came across this blog entry:

• The Journey of the Redneck Express: Classic Campers: Del-Rey Tri-Level Sky Lounge and Kamp King demonstrating the strength of their camper’s construction

It’s about the Del Rey Sky Lounge Truck Camper, which was a feat of engineering.

Built in the mid-Sixties, it was a truck camper with THREE levels. The first level was the kitchen area, the second level was at the fore of the camper with seats so travelers could watch out the front. The third had a bed up and to the middle. Even better, the top popped open so you could enjoy yourself on the roof and the back popped out for more room as well.

I really love the retro look of this camper.

You can see all the photos I’ve found and even a couple of brochures after the break… (Continue Reading…)

After looking at the Playboy Land Yacht Concept by Syd Mead, I was surprised at how simple it looks compared to the RVs of today.

Here is the description from the 1975 Playboy Magazine:

THE OLD CHUCK BERRY SONG No Money Down told about a fantasy Cadillac with a bed in the back, phone, TV, shortwave radio and other optional extras; but the machine Chuck sang about couldn’t touch what’s pictured here and on the following pages. The land yacht we commissioned Detroit designer Syd Mead to create is a six-wheel wonder vehicle that combines many of today’s mechanical innovations with some space-age technology that you can expect to be incorporated into tomorrow’s assembly-line mobile homes. Not only does it contain almost all the same amenities you would ordinarily leave behind when embarking on an extended trip, or just out for a day’s cruise, it can also drive itself — via electronic sensors — while you and a companion relax in the yacht’s luxurious front lounge.

…you’ll see that the yacht’s pointed nose serves two functions: It provides the aerodynamic styling that a machine of this size demands and it allows for the four lounge seats up front to be arranged at a 45-degree angle to the axis of the vehicle, thus saving considering interior space.

When our land yacht is parked, its brain box (front center) can be closed and pivoted to double as a cocktail table. The bath is shown with its door cut away; to its left are the food-prep unit and audio-video center. At rear, you see the open-air skylight with its electronic sun deck partially lowered.

This is the rear lounge — and that bed, gentlemen, measures seven feet by six feet. In the center, below the TV and the movie projector (a screen rolls down over the rear window, foreground), is the bar capsule; it’s lined with crushed velvet, like the phone container to its right.

The nocturnal view — through the rear window — shows the expandable bathroom wall. Atop is the sun deck; when traveling, a bubble of air arches over the space so that the deck can be open. Obviously, the couple pictured here couldn’t care less about all of this.

For night driving, the yacht’s front lighting consists of two swing-down iodine quartz lamps, plus four normal high/low/intermediate lights, which are folded back when off, swinging out against adjustable stops (for proper aiming) when the sliding cover door is activated. In addition, a front-scanning infrared lamp produces a wide-angle fan of radiation, for pickup on the yacht’s console-mounted TV screen. What you see in the monitor is an infrared-filter view of the roadway. This system is an outgrowth of the exotic Air Force fighter-pilot technology, which produces an animated, terrain-characteristic “picture” in front of the pilot, regardless of the weather or visibility conditions.

Rather than being a futuristic take on travel, it appears to be a relic from the Seventies. In fact, it reminds me more of the vehicle from the 1970s children’s show, Ark II, than of a motorhome of the future.

Via: WIL WHEATON dot TUMBLR, endlessme: Via triumphdisaster Ohhhhh…