Delayed Gratification: Travel Trailer 2.0

To meet Bobbie (Travel Trailer 1.0) and read about our adventures on the road with him, click here.

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We’ve had Bobbie for over a decade now.  Taylor Coach®—the manufacturer—was selling him for a customer who had bought him new in 2007 and loved him, but wanted to upgrade to a bigger model. Together, the husband and I have taken Bobbie on nine road trips, traveling thousands of miles through 19 states. We’ve had loads of fun with him and, so far, only one near-disaster. He has been the perfect companion for us for many years, but we’ve always known that one day—most likely in retirement—we’d upgrade to a bigger model.

Not this 13,500-pound, two-story monstrosity. Just obscene. Source: forestriverinc.com

Not much bigger, mind you.  We’re not blind to the environmental impact towing can have—not to mention the need for a great big gas-guzzling truck as one of our daily commute vehicles. The only trait Bobbie has that we want to improve upon is the sleeping situation.  Currently, our bed and our dinette are one.  During the day it’s a four-person eating area, and at night it’s our two-person love nest—errr—sleeping area.  Though it’s a clever use of space, the Transformer™-like conversion needed to go from Slumberbee to Optimus Dine and back again each day has become an annoyance.  One of us kicks the other person out of our 12-foot trailer while the other lifts, shifts, grunts and groans, slides, tucks, pushes and pulls. Then there’s the issue of storing all the bedding when it’s in “dinette” mode. Taylor Coach® does a fabulous job coaxing storage space out of their models, but in a 12-footer, there are only so many places for stuff to go.

I wish I could tell you that retirement is upon us.  Alas, it’s many years away. But the good news is that we’ve decided not to wait for that major life event to realize our shared dream. We’ve long known that if we wanted a new unit from the small, congenial, family-owned manufacturer from whom we got Bobbie, we’d need to wait close to a year between ordering and taking possession.  Things being what they are at the moment (that is to say, given the current supply chain problems and the pandemic-borne desire of everyone on earth to suddenly get a travel trailer), we wondered aloud whether that wait time might be doubled.

In fact, it’s nearly quadrupled.

So here we are.  It’s early 2022, our model has been decided upon, our length (17 feet) finalized, the layout configured and reconfigured, features and amenities settled on, and the deposit check sent.

And now we wait.

Photo by Ju00c9SHOOTS on Pexels.com

Fall, 2025 is the estimated build-date of our new Bobbie (which we’ve already dubbed Bobbie 2.0). I’ve endured long waits before—who hasn’t? But three and a half years? That’ll be a record for me, and it’s not going to be easy.

In the meantime, we’ve got one trip planned with Bobbie for this summer, and as excited as I am about it, I just know that after all this dreaming and drooling, planning and plotting, ogling and Googling, not to mention watching endless Youtube Taylor Coach® videos, our current trailer—our once perfect little companion—is going to seem woefully cramped and inadequate.

Ours will look a lot like this, but with a different color scheme. And yes, we are going full-on June and Ward Cleaver with separate twin beds. Source: https://taylorcoach.com/youtube

I’m also trying to remind myself of the old adage “Good things come to those who wait” because what else am I going to do? On the plus side, when we do finally make the nearly 1000-mile drive to meet and adopt our newest Bobbie, we’ll be that much closer to retirement.

So, if you’re in the market for a used previously-loved, road-tested, well-cared-for 12-foot travel trailer (that’s tip-to-tip, by the way—the actual interior length is nine feet) and you don’t mind performing conversion feats each morning and evening, start saving, cuz’ the market is hot and we’re expecting to make a killing on it.  And welcome to the Delayed Gratification Club, because you can come pick it up in 2025.