Glamping in a Droplet Trailer

We recently had the opportunity to borrow a Droplet Trailer for a long weekend of camping – in our own backyard!

Disclosure – we were gifted this experience so we could share our opinion.

As early as April, Vivi and I start sleeping under the stars in a tent. We’re not roughing it, we have a fantastic mattress that was built for the back of our van (an old Astrovan we’ve retrofitted for road trips), and we’re camping in our yard so we still have access to our own bathrooms and kitchen. We sleep under a fluffy duvet, with the pillows from our own bed. Our tent is just bugscreen on top, so at night it looks like there’s nothing above us but stars, it’s magical.

My parents have spent years glamping in a huge Prevost bus RV, driving all over the US building homes with Habitat for Humanity, and over the years Vivi and I have had several opportunities to travel with them in the bus. They also owned a Bigfoot camper which was a lot of fun to travel in. I’ve wanted something fun and manageable for the two of us to road trip in, and I’ve been intrigued by the teardrop style trailer, but most of them look like tiny saunas and I’m vaguely claustrophobic, so I was looking for something that didn’t feel like I was tucked into a coffin.

Camp in style in this streamlined Canadian-built Droplet trailer.

Just over a year ago, we attended a Travel and Adventure Show in Vancouver and we got to have a close look at the Droplet Trailer. At first glance Vivi and I were smitten. It has a modern, Scandinavian vibe, and from the perspective of a former professional yachtie, it is a very well designed small space. I got in touch with Pascal, the CEO of the company, and asked if we could borrow one. We picked it up on a Thursday afternoon and returned it on Monday morning, which gave us plenty of time to get a feel for it.

The Droplet features a queen sized bed, with enough headroom to sit up and read under built in, battery operated LED lights. It is cozy, yet doesn’t feel snug because of the huge windows and doors. All windows are tinted and have shades for privacy. A quiet solar powered fan hums on the roof, and a bug screened hatch opens up to allow a breeze so you don’t wake up covered in condensation. The bedroom also has shelving and stowage cupboards. We downloaded movies to an iPad and set it up on the shelf for entertainment before bed.

The back of the trailer opens up to reveal a sheltered right-sized kitchen for short camping trips. Cook on the two burner gas stove, stow your perishables in the battery operated cooler, and wash up in the manual pump sink. The spacious laminated counter top has plenty of room for food prep. They have thought of everything

A locking trunk near the trailer hitch contains the rechargeable battery that powers the kitchen, as well as the lights, outlets and usb charging ports inside the cabin. There’s an extension cord to plug the trailer into shore power, and a charging cable if you choose to pull the battery out and charge it at home. The trunk also had two folding chairs in it, and doormats for both doors.

The Droplet is Perfect for a Single Mom

This trailer is so easy to maneuver and tow that anyone can do it. I don’t have a ton of experience towing. In Mexico I hauled our dirt bike trailer occasionally when X2 was injured. Before borrowing the droplet I had a trailer hauling refresher with my Dad, and took the trailer he uses for dump runs to a WalMart parking lot and practiced backing into parking spots. The amazing thing about the Droplet is that if you get frustrated trying to back it precisely into a spot, just unhook it and push it where you want it to go. There’s a third wheel that drops down by the hitch, and there are handles built into the body of the trailer so you can pull or push it easily.

We spent 4 nights in the Droplet, moving it to different campsites on our property. We slept really well on the comfortable memory foam mattress with fresh air and forest noises breezing in through the top hatch.

Ideally we would have tested it out at one of our many fantastic campgrounds in BC, but at the time of writing this, the province is still under lockdown. On this topic, I believe camping is going to enjoy a big bump in popularity because it’s a way to travel in a mostly self contained way. The only source of exposure would be the restrooms at the campsites, and if you travel with antiseptic sprays and wipes you can mitigate the risk.

We loved every minute of our long weekend of camping in the Droplet, and we were sad to return it to the factory in Burnaby. We’re already looking ahead at our calendar to book a rental this summer, and crunching the numbers to see if we could swing buying one.