Never quit improving

My little camping trailer / bug out trailer has undergone some major changes and improvements in the last few months and now i have finally realized the vision I saw when I first drug it from under the weeds and debris many months ago. 

The bearings have all been repack and the bottom has been undercoated, its been completely rewired and new safety tow chains installed.  But the biggest and most dramatic change has been i finally got around to a much needed paint job.  The original white paint was sun bleached and weather beaten, it was so chalky it would come off on your jeans when loading and unloading.  It was just dead paint.  It was time for it to go.

After working out all the details and getting the propane storage tubes installed, and drilling and mounting the attachment system for roof top bag, not to mention researching a bunch of different ones to find the right solution for the curved top, she was finally ready.

My original plan was to go black, but when i saw Rustoleum's line of camouflage paints, I was inspired.  I sanded it down to rough up the surface, and shot a coats of their self etching primer.  Then laid down two coats of the Camo army green.  I cut out a dozen camo blob shapes from cardboard boxes, keeping both the shape and the outline.  Then over the course of two weeks I layered on both shapes and outlines using the rest of the Camo paint line varying the distance and intensity to fade some out, to blend some shapes together, and to overlap.   

I also picked out a few plants and sprigs and layer then on then dusted over them with paint to reverse shadow their leaf pattern.  The whole focus is to make it look like anything other then a trailer at a distance, and since "God doesn't paint in straight lines", I paid close attention to the corners.  I wrapped darks colors around them and at the bottom to break up the sharp visible edges and fool the eye with shadows. 

A quick wet sand, and then two coats of matte clear and she is all set for the summer camping season. So is it invisible? Not hardly, but it sure looks a lot more fun, and if I pulled it into a wooded area and placed it at the tree line then toss a Camouflage net over, is it a heck of a lot less noticeable then the big white box it use to be? ABSOLUTELY!

Now originally it had about 33 Cubic foot of internal storage space.  Quite a lot when you consider I keep all my camping and survival gear inside and ready, so this essentially IS my bug out solution.  Some people grab a bug out bag, I hook this baby to the back of my F150. But the addition of the tubes added the capacity to carry 16 one pound propane tanks outside of the main compartment.  If I were warming up a tent in winter camping, thats 30 day worth of fuel.   When the tanks were inside they took up about 2 cubic feet of space, but now their new location allowed me to reclaim that for other gear.  

The roof top travel bag is the Rola carrier with 12 Cubic feet of space.  Its positioned high, so i'll only put sleeping bags and other light/soft gear inside it keep the center of gravity low on the total load.  Again, I was able to reclaim the internal space for heavier gear.

Now, i'm slowly reorganizing my camping and survival gear to pre-stage much of what I need at the ready, and every time I pull it out for a weekend trip, I find a place for improvement.