Some of my favorite places are not easy to get to. Places that are beautiful and quiet. These places are the reason I got my Jeep. I also like camping, but there are limits to where I can camp, and to how comfortable I can be there. An adventure trailer, that is, a trailer that can be towed off-road that has an entire campsite within it. You can take it to the beautiful and quiet places and spend the night.
So, as you can tell, I want an adventure trailer. There are plenty of adventure trailers available to purchase, but for the most part they have two problems:
- They are not exactly set up the way I want.
- They are very expensive.
A couple of years ago I needed a regular trailer. A haul junk around kind of trailer. While looking for one I, on a lark, looked up old military trailers. Maybe I can have some fun with this. Here is what I found:
Say hello to my M101A2 military trailer. Canvas top, 5ft x 8ft bed. One ton of carrying capacity. And, damn cool looking for a trailer.
Old military trailers make excellent starting points for adventure trailers. They are designed to go anywhere, usually fairly cheap to acquire, and nearly indestructible. I'm going to make it the start of my custom adventure trailer. One with all the amenities a geek would need while out in the wild. Here are my goals for this trailer:
- Sleeps at least two in the trailer.
- Able to keep supplies for a week of travel.
- Provide water storage and the ability to access it from a bath tent and from a kitchen area.
- Provide battery powered electricity for lights and re-charge phones, cameras and tablets.
- Solar power to charge battery.
- Have an assembled kitchen area.
- Make all of this modular enough that it all can be removed from the trailer.
Quite a lot of requirements, don't you think? It is very doable, though. If it works I'll have exactly the trailer I want, and the maker in me will go nuts. Keep a watch here as I go through it.
Jon.