Robin

Let’s go back for a moment to that first trailer, the Basecamp, which, by the way, we called Basie (Airstreams are supposed to have names, don’t you know). Basie, not only as a diminutive of the model name, but as in Count Basie since music was such a big part of our lives in Austin. If you’ve been following along, Basie was not quite tall enough inside to accommodate my considerable height. But at the time he was all the Airstream our SUV could pull.

And then came Tiny. Tiny changed everything.

So now we had had a big truck, but we weren’t ready for a big trailer so … another “COVID special.” We traded the Basecamp for a Nest. Quite honestly, this is the trailer we would have started with had we the vehicle to pull it. It was Airstream’s brief foray into fiberglass – they only manufactured it for 2 model years. Quite luxurious for a small trailer, the Nest had features not usually found lower down the Airstream line: a lighted door handle, cedar closet, fabric I-don’t-know-what-you-call-them (valances? fascias?) surrounding the windows, “dancing” LED lights, an on-demand, tankless water heater. My guess is that the aluminum trailers were much more expensive to build, so Airstream decided to take some of the cost savings from the fiberglass shell and gussy up the interior. I could be wrong, of course.

Very cozy and fun and, most importantly, tall enough for me to stand up in.

Robin, interior

We named our Nest Robin for the robin’s egg blue highlights in the interior. We bought a mascot for Robin on a trip to Daingerfield State Park in Daingerfield, TX. His name is Nestor (get it? Nest -> nester -> Nestor) and he’s a little stuffed raccoon. He comes with us on all our camping trips. Why a raccoon? Well, firstly, the park ranger said there were lots of raccoons at Daingerfield and, secondly, at the time we were watching a lot of videos by YouTube's Raccoon Whisperer, James Blackwood.

We still have Robin and we’d like to keep him for as long as we can. Still fun, still cozy, and very easy to just hitch up and go, though a little small for extended trips.