The Great American Road Trip. Day 12. MN-ND. Scamping in Erie.

This baby sure makes herself comfortable really fast.

We actually wouldn't even have ever thought about getting a travel trailer if it weren't for this little one.  I have always been fine with tent camping, or sleeping in the back of the car, but after having a baby the idea of tent camping seemed like a burden, since only one of us can pack, set up, unpack.  But with the travel trailer its all set up for us so I feel like we will go a lot more often.  

Plus hotels are super pricey over summer and we have the summers off to travel so here we are, with a baby in a tiny travel trailer.

The Ruttgers are such a nice couple.  They started Ruttgers Pine Mountain Camping Resort 19 years ago.  Although they live on the property year round, the resort is only open from April until October, when it isn't too cold.

The common area, with couches, chairs, a pool table, books, and free coffee, is cozy.

The thing about Ruttgers is that it is well known among the Scamp forums so you can pretty much count on meeting other guests that have just picked up their Scamp and are giving it a try before driving to their final destination. 

I think we got pretty lucky with ours, we didn't have any major issues.  Other scampers reported janky doors, leaks, wonky screen doors and windows that weren't sealed properly (and that was just from two Scamp owners!).  Unfortunately, because they cost less than other comparable small trailers, they are known for having issues.  Luckily Scamp is really good about fixing them, even paying for work to be done at other RV shops if issues are determined after leaving the area.  Maybe a better option would be to just take more time on each one, and maybe provide better training, but it isn't my company... 

Maybe Eric should just be on a loud speaker in the factory saying, "measure twice, cut once."

We went to North Pine River Tire to have our tires aligned.  

It cost $7/tire.

Although it looks closed, employees are in there.

Inside, it smelled like where I spent much of my childhood in the 80s, in the Murrieta Machine Shop.  Like a stagnant room filled with old machinery caked in grease with layers of dust and dirt on top.  

It was quite comforting. 

For the first time in my life I am traveling without reservations for a place to stay.  It feels liberating, but strange.  We didn't want to make reservations since we don't know how far we are going to be able to go since now we are working with baby-in-car-towing-a-trailer hours.  We knew we wanted to go to Fargo (the biggest, closest city on the way to Idaho) so we could get situated and buy items that we needed for our trailer.  

I purchased the AllStays app and have found it super helpful when looking for campsites.  We found a campsite, Brewer Lake Campground, about 45 minutes northwest of Fargo, that was highly rated.  It ended up being so awesome we pretty much immediately decided to stay for two nights.

We were the only guests in the entire campground.

Since we were staying for two days we got our new Clam screen room set up so we have two mosquito-free places to hang out.

Love Scamping!

Of course this is from my perspective, I am watching the baby inside a screen room, not getting bit up by swarms of mosquitoes while setting up...