Sometimes you want to get away from it all.
But that can be tough when your getaway home attracts attention.
A couple of people whose trailers have been featured recently in The Columbian shared variations on that story.
It happens to her at least once during every camping trip with her silver Airstream, said Deanna Wohlgemuth.
“Every single time,” she said. “They have the same love of the outdoors and old trailers as me, so I’ve learned to embrace it rather than be annoyed by it. They’ve always got their own story to share.”
Mick Robins camps in a trailer inspired by a sheep-herders wagon. He said he can’t even stop at a gas station without attracting attention.
At one camp site, “I was eating my lunch and someone stuck their face in the window and was peering all around and didn’t even see me,” Robins said. “That was kind of weird.”
Wohlgemuth recalled one of her earliest encounters with someone really into what she called “baked potato trailers.” She had just made some coffee and was on the phone with her mom.
“I noticed someone walking around the trailer, getting down on his hands and knees, looking under it. Then he knocks on my door.
‘Don’t hang up!’
“I whispered into the phone, ‘Oh my gawd, mom: Some man has been walking around the trailer and now he’s at the door. Don’t hang up until I know I’m safe!’ “
She opened the door just a crack, put on her too-tired-to-talk face, and the stranger exclaims: “Wow! What a great little Airstream! What is she, a ’65, ’66? I have one I’m working on. Man! I just love these things!
“Are you on your way to a rally? Do you mind if I have a look inside?” he asked.
“I started to say I’m still in my pajamas … I’m on the phone with my mom … but then I just said, ‘Sure, I just put coffee on. Would you like a cup?’ I let mom know I was fine, and that the stranger was just interested in the trailer.
“That was when I realized that if you want to camp and get away from it all, you probably shouldn’t get an old Airstream,” Wohlgemuth said. “No one ever asked for a tour while I was roughing it in a tent,”
Off Beat lets members of The Columbian news team step back from our newspaper beats to write the story behind the story, fill in the story or just tell a story.
