TWINS' WEEK PART 2: Two Crazy About Foxes |
| Angela White | Thursday, 22 October, 2009 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Mike Barrow and Steve Singhose take their "twin" Arctic Foxes to Kalaloch State Park, Vancouver Island, and beyond. When it comes to truck camping, they're crazy about foxes.  For Part 2 of our Twins' Week we talked with Mike Barrow and Steve Singhose of Washington State. What we learned is how easily one truck camper can lead to another. Please be careful with this truck camping hobby. It's highly contagious!
We begin our Fox and Fox story with Mike Barrow. He explains that he was just minding his own business at his kid's swim meet when he caught truck camping fever. TCM: Tell us the story about how you got into truck camping. Mike: We started camping with a pretty large pop-up tent camper when we lived in Oakland, California. The pop-up tent camper was really nice, but you had to crank it into position and put everything away when you traveled. Now we live in Sequim, Washington at the foot of the Olympic Mountains. Before we moved here, we bought a thirty-two foot travel trailer. There are lots of great places to camp here in Washington, but not many campsites would allow our big travel trailer. We met the Singhoses at a swim meet in Moses Lake, Washington. They were camping in their Arctic Fox 1150 truck camper. I said, “Can I check it out?”. Right away I noticed it was much more stable in comparison to our ultra-lite thirty-two foot travel trailer and had every convenience we had. And even though it was smaller, it was very comfortable and cozy. Edi, Dani, and I had another opportunity to check Steve and Elizabeth’s truck camper out while we were at Kalaloch National Park Service campground in the Olympic National Park on the coast. At one point, we had six people sitting in the camper. The adults were in the dinette and the kids were sitting on the carpeted ledge or the bed listening to their iPods. We thought, “Wow, there is a lot of room in here! If you can accommodate four to six people as you’re entertaining in the evening, that’s kind of cool.” There are only three people in my family so we wanted to downsize and simplify so that we could go camping off the beaten path. With a larger travel trailer, we had to find larger RV parking. It was more like parking lot camping. We wanted to get off-road away from all the generators and the crowds.
TCM: So when did you make the big switch to a truck camper? Mike: By December 2008 we had located an Arctic Fox camper in California. On the drive to California to get the camper, I got the airbags and some accessories installed on our Dodge one-ton dually. Since we bought the camper in December, we’ve been out camping twelve times. Our Arctic Fox camper fits just about anywhere, can literally go anywhere, and can camp anywhere. TCM: How did you come up with the name, “Dueling Foxes”? Mike: Maybe I was thinking of dueling banjos and dueling foxes came to mind. Steve has a 2004 Arctic Fox. He has a dry bath and we have a wet bath. Steve and I have work parties where we work on our campers together. We talk and compare notes on what we’ve learned about our campers. You can do a lot of maintenance yourself like caulking and sealing the roof. It’s not hard, it just takes a bit of work. TCM: Has your truck camper been good to have at the swim meets? Mike: Yes. We find a campground near the swim meet, and in less than ten minutes, we can have the jacks up, hit the road, and we’re at the swim meet. Some are two day events and some are overnight. We like to camp so that we can keep the costs down. We don’t have to go to restaurants and we have a place to go take a break during the swim meet. Plus, it brings the camping element into the whole weekend, which makes it a fun adventure instead of just running there and running back.
TCM: What was your trip out to the Northwood Manufacturing factory like? Mike: We combined visiting the factory with a camping trip. We had unknowingly bought a used unit that had water damage because it had not been properly maintained. I pleasantly found out that Northwood’s service department works on used rigs and are very service oriented. We dropped off our camper at Northwood in LaGrande with Dave Mann. Before they did anything, they told us how much it would cost. They also peeled off the front and the side where the problem was. We soon learned the virtues of proper maintenance with a truck camper. Northwood did a marvelous job. They even put new graphics on our camper and cleaned it up. We can’t sing their praises well enough. They are awesome. For the week they worked on our camper, we tent camped an hour and a half from the factory at Lake Wallowa. We took our bikes and rented a boat. All the while Northwood kept calling and getting my approval before anything was done. When we got home, I couldn’t find the wood cutting board that goes in the sink. My wife can always find things when I can’t and even she couldn’t find it. So I put an email in to Dave Mann figuring that Northwood might have it. They couldn’t find ours, so they just sent us a new one. How cool is that! One of the things we want to do in the future is go to the owners event Northwood puts together in June in La Grande, Oregon. It’s on the Northwood RV Owners Association website, www.afnash.com.
TCM: Is there anything you’d like to add to your interview? Mike: My truck and camper will not fit in my garage because the door opening is only 11' tall. I built a camper dolly so my camper now lives in my shop when its not in use. I use my tractor to move the camper in and out of the shop. I researched dolly wheels that would handle 1600 pounds each. It’s on a plywood frame and I put a hitch on that people use to pull cars behind RVs so that all I have to do is push it in and pull it out. Hey, that might be a good future article. It was a lot of research and I think my prototype is pretty cool. TCM: That’s fantastic. We are seeing more and more people store their campers in their garages. Definitely a good way to maintain your camper for many years to come. Thanks Mike. Mike: You’re welcome.
Steve Singhose claims that he didn't intend to convert Mike into a truck camper. And next he'll try to tell us that it rains a lot in Washington State. Likely story. TCM: How did you meet Mike and his family? Steve: We met because our kids are both in the Port Angeles Swim Club. This time of year we are going to swim meets and taking our truck campers with us. If a swim meet isn’t here in town, they’re at least two hours away. Rather than wake up early and drive, we go the night before and camp near by. TCM: What was your reaction when the Barrows bought an Arctic Fox? Steve: It wasn’t our intention to convert them. I think it all started one night at Kalaloch. We had the Barrows over to our rig for dinner. I knew Mike was shopping for a camper and they were very interested that our rig could work. The travel trailer they had was working for them, but they could see the improved utility in a camper. Mike was particularly pleased with how our Arctic Fox had survived our trip to Alaska. He made a midnight trip to California to pick up his Arctic Fox. I was kind of proud that I had sold another Arctic Fox. Now we’ll pull into a campground or restaurant and people say, “Hey, you guys have the same rigs”. I’ve always had a lot of people admire my Arctic Fox. Now that two are traveling together, people tend to come up to us more often. We seem to meet a lot of people. TCM: Tell us about some trips that you’ve been out with your Arctic Foxes together. Steve: We drove up to Vancouver Island for last spring break. We also went to Mount Washington and spent three nights. Then we went to Flatlands for a couple nights and an air museum. We’re going to Glacier National Park in late July or early August. Later this month we have conflicting activities of clam tide out at Kalaloch on the same weekend at a swim meet. The Barrows have never dig for Razor clams. They are a unique clam, and quite tasty. They are a challenge to dig because they can move six inches a minute. Once you disturb them, they move. It seems like they can dig about as fast as you can. TCM: How much planning goes into your caravan trips with the Barrows? Steve: We really don’t plan much at all. We talk on the radio from time to time. We aren’t trying to get to a specific location by a certain time. If it’s getting close to four or five o’clock, we’ll find a place to camp. We try to stop at roadside viewpoints and enjoy the scenery. We take in historic sites and switch off who was leading. We stop at visitor centers when we cross state lines. We found out about Farragut State Park when we crossed into Idaho.
TCM: So let’s go back to when you got into truck camping. Tell us the story about how you got into truck camping. Steve: I grew up camping. My folks had a tow behind and we camped often as a family. For four years we made plans to make a trip up the Alaska highway. We went to RV shows and a truck camper made sense. We bought our Arctic Fox in October of 2006. It’s a 2005 Arctic Fox 1140 with a dry bath. The truck is a 2000 Ford F350 dually with a Powerstroke diesel engine. After we bought our camper, we went to Alaska with one of my cousins, uncle, and aunt. They had a twenty-seven foot Nash trailer. My uncle had cousins in Alaska so he wanted to see Alaska. TCM: How did your Alaska trip go? Steve: There were a couple of experiences in Alaska where I was glad we were in a truck camper. There was this one spot by a lake where we had lunch with a lake. My aunt, uncle, and cousin were in the lead and went into a tight spot. It took a lot of backing up to get them out. After that we used our two way radios. If the spot looked suspicious, we would go down first with our truck camper to see if there was enough room to turn around. When we would go to a campground, the campground would have to look for a spot to put them. They would see our truck camper and tell us we could go anywhere. TCM: Where else do you camp with your truck camper? Steve: We go on weekend trips to Olympic National Park or Kalaloch National Park Service campground in Olympic National Park. I love Kalaloch because I went there often as a kid. It’s a two hour drive for us. We’re really blessed here in the Northwest with our climate in the winter. It really doesn’t get cold like it does in other places in the country. It’s easy to go out truck camping, even in the dead of winter. It just might rain or be windy. TCM: How do you deal with the rain and wind while camping? Steve: We always travel with tarps, ropes, and bungee cords to stay dry. If you go through a campground here you’ll see blue tarps, silver tarps, brown tarps, ropes around trees, and counterbalance bucket systems to keep things in place. Tarp technology can be quite intriguing. TCM: Is there anything I didn’t ask you that you’d like included with your interview? Steve: With both of us having Arctic Fox campers, we can compare our systems. Right before Memorial Day weekend the Mike developed a plumbing leak. Since we both own Arctic Foxes, both campers use the same parts and we were able to pick up what they needed. We shared our expertise and tools and got things fixed. That’s one positive of owning the same camper. TCM: Maybe we'll get out to Washington state this summer with our Arctic Fox and become triplets!
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