If you've ever had a sense of excitement and pointed out a vintage trailer - perhaps with a vintage car pulling it - to a companion on the road, then you would love a Tin Can Tourists (TCT) trailer rally. Imagine pulling into a lovely, shady campground nestled in a grove of old trees that is filled with brightly painted and decorated campers. It is an experience for which it is hard to find words. A 'tad on the giddy side' comes to minds. It definitely makes you happy and life just seems good.
By Wednesday morning at 10:00 a.m. I had our StarCraft pop-up ready to go. All I had to do was wait for the professor (Pamela) to get out of class around noon, and we were on the road by 12:35. We decided to take our 25 year old 10' StarCraft pop-up (opens to 18 ft) for two reasons. Firstly, Willie (our 1985 18 foot Fleetwood Wilderness) isn't quite ready to show and Wilma (our nickname for the pop-up) costs a great deal less to pull. Besides, Wilma is our going south, warm weather, no bears, camp on the beach trailer. When you open all the windows it's like being outside. Great for southern climes. The only draw back for Pamela is that there is no bathroom. (But I do have a nice potty chair.)
We travelled to Dublin, GA on Wednesday, arriving there about 11:00 p.m. Pamela's friend, Mary, who couldn't leave Nashville until later, pulled in about 1 a.m. We spent the night in the parking area of a Pilot truck stop. The truck engines were a rather soothing background. Pop-ups are not conducive for sleeping at truck stops or rest areas because you must unhitch and open them. So we slept in the back of the van with two dogs and two bicycles. If you can sleep under those conditions, you can sleep anywhere.
I swear the sun rises earlier in truck stops and by 6 a.m. we were the only vehicles in the lot. We had breakfast at a nearby Cracker Barrel. Pamela claims that I have had a significant influence on her. She didn't find the greasy comfort-food very pleasant or comforting, but we were soon on our way and arrived at the Tybee Island campground around 11:00 a.m. It was a site I'd never seen.
The campground, nestled in a grove of old gnarly live oak and cedars, was filled with brightly colored and decorated trailers. Some of them had been pulled there by an antique vehicle. So far I haven't encountered a trailer made after 1980, and most of them are a lot older. Wilma was definitely the youngster of the group. Except for the beautiful gleaming tandem-axile Air Streams, most of the trailers are small - 20 feet or less. This is probably because the early travel trailers were designed to be pulled by a car, not a truck as they are today. Some have been restored to original specs while others have, like muscle cars, been blinged to reflect the owner.
I have seen a few people around who are my age but the majority are younger. It does seem, however, there is no dominant age. An aweful lot are hippie want-to-bes. That's to be expected and also a compliment. People who love this type of freedom, the communal sense of the campground and no-one's-a-stranger atttitude are either old hippies like me or qualify as honorary hippies. You don't pass someone's trailer without speaking and, as often as not, they will soon be showing you inside their trailer and telling you about their families, where they found their trailer and what it took to restore it. If you need something the community, who never met you before you pulled in, will rally around.
Thursday evening there was a potluck picnic on the beach. There was a large group sitting around talking and joking, and sharing their food as though they'd know each other for years. By the time we left we were all good friends. We share more than just the love of old trailers. We share an attitude toward life and the out-of-doors that made this encounter so refreshing, enjoyable and down right exciting.
