Vintage Airstreams, glamping tents and market research

People keep asking where we’re at with the Inn Town Campground construction and the official answer is that we are “at the stage of finalizing the site and building design in anticipation of getting construction drawings for permits.  We hope to break ground in May,” says Dan.

So while there really aren’t any pretty pictures of the meetings and the conversation with various contractors and city employees, I thought it would be fun to show you some photos of a recent research trip we did in Santa Barbara.

 While in town for a wedding we took the opportunity to visit the uber-cool Auto Camp, a collection of 5 beautifully renovated vintage Airstreams.  I love that their marketing material refers to Autocamp as “inspired urban camping in vintage airstream suites.”  While the Inn Town Campground isn’t going to rent out renovated vintage trailers, it was great to get an up close look at a model that is obviously working in Santa Barbara.  Each one of their trailers comes complete with a beach cruiser bicycle; I think the Inn Town Campground might have to have some mountain bikes on hand for the Nevada City terrain.

Later that afternoon we stopped in to get a tour of Hoffman Architects, the company that designed and rents the Airstreams at Auto Camp.  Sam, our tour guide, enthusiastically showed us around the yard where we got to meet a fleet of vintage trailers in various stages of redesigns.  Some were taken all the chassis and ribs, while others were just getting a few modifications and repairs.  Their work is top of the line and if you ever see some amazing Airstream renovations check out their gallery of work.

While we’re obviously interested in Airstreams (click here for the gallery of photos of Dan’s office), we also took the opportunity to drive up to El Capitan Canyon, the glamping campground that specializes in canvas tents and cabins.  Their glamping tents are a great example of how to “rough it” with a lot of comforts of home.  Their general store was filled with a huge range of goodies and we were intrigued by the cook your own meal kits you can order.

We also got the opportunity to meet up with our architect Chris Cottrell, from Native Son Design, about the final design work for our buildings.And to complete our camping research we booked an Airbnb of a new Airstream, which was so fun to be able to hang out and pretend we’re like the variety of folks I so admire on Instagram who live in their Airstreams full time (yes Kerri, I’m looking at you).  Spending the weekend in a new Airstream was a fun to do a “test drive” without having to actually drive anywhere.  It was a great opportunity to do some market research and connect with the folks doing some awesome things in California.