Foamie the First

Because this is probably what you’re actually here for: PICTURES!

In summer/fall 2017 I embarked on a project. It was totally doable, I thought. Two months, hopefully. Three months, max. Five months later, it was almost completely done, and several months after that, in January 2018, I finished off a few lingering pieces preventing me from getting on the road and headed off toward the south and the warmer temperatures I hoped to find there.

Foamie the First is a teardrop camper trailer — specifically a variant called a “squardrop”. It’s 4’x8′ and features a bed in the main cabin and a galley in the fold-up back hatch. I have an electrical system with a deep cycle battery mostly situated on the tongue, and various other bits and bobs. It’s basically like a thousand other teardrops you’ll see all over the place online.

Except that it’s made out of foam and canvas, and was built by someone who is not only a complete amateur, but also pretty much the opposite of gifted in the craftsmanship skills department. It’s a lot stronger than you’d think, going by the materials, and people have been making these and taking them out on the road for the better part of a decade now.

I travelled on the road with Foamie for 3 months, hitting 12 states in the south east before calling it a trip. My plan was originally to go for longer, but the dog I adopted just before leaving, my beloved Donna Noble, turned out not to enjoy traveling in something that small, and eventually the stress of trying to accommodate her stress made me decide to stay stable for a while. When I finally called it quits I was in Tennessee, which is a big part of what led me to move to Asheville, NC. It was the closest place to me at the time that I had considered settling down in for a bit. I treasured my time in Asheville, where I lived for two years–the second of which was spent in a DIY Geodesic Dome Tiny Home that I absolutely would never have built if I hadn’t had the experience of building Foamie. Sometime in the next couple of years, I hope to build a larger foamie trailer that I can travel in more comfortably and manage Donna’s neuroses in better. It is tentatively named “Foamie 2: Slide Out Boogaloo.”

Sometimes things don’t go as planned, but I’m deeply grateful for the time I got to spend building and traveling in Foamie the First, as well as all the lessons and new skills it taught me.