Caravan

Ever since we’ve been in Canada, we’ve been astounded by the caravans that we see travelling down the highways. Even the smallest of them seem to put the Australian vans in mind of toys. The largest ones are quite simply ridiculous. Massive fifth wheel things that one could live in year round and they often have a boat or trailer full of quads off the back of that as well.

Early on I did some research as to the ability to bring a caravan back into Australia, but things seemed to be stymied by the fact that there was this insistence that the van have a door on the left hand side. Over here, they are all on the right. So we quickly ended import dreams and went down the path of the little tent trailer which served us well up until the point that I broke it last year.

That was all fixed though and as the sun came out (brief as it seems to have been) we started to plan this year’s trip. We’re going down to Yellowstone National Park in July along with some Aussie friends from over here. In the back of my mind though, I’ve always wanted to find that elusive van that might have a door on the ‘wrong side’.

When we drove down to Sunshine for our last ski of the year (in May) I finally saw one. To say the state of excitement was heightened, wouldn’t be doing my euphoric state justice. The fact that I saw two, from different manufacturers had me very very excited indeed. Of course when I arrived home and started researching, I could only remember one of the brands and that was the one whose website announced, “we’re getting out of travel trailers”. Bugger. I kept searching. Eventually I ended up back at the US Jayco site (here) and looking at the Jayfeather 213. It has this nifty little door on the left hand side, proposed as a bike storage. Well I don’t know about the bikes, but I can assure you, from everything that I’ve been able to work out, it meets the ‘get it into Australia’ requirement!

So we bought one.

Yep, a bit of looking, a bit of negotiating, some painful payment processing and shazzam … we have a 2007 model sitting in our driveway. On the other side from the tent trailer … which is now for sale.

Know anyone in remote Canada looking for a nifty camper trailer?