In every camper’s life, there is a time when you decide to upgrade gear. It can be a new tent or new chairs or a new rug. But sometimes, it is something REALLY big. Like a new camper.

When we bought the T@B 320S, what we really wanted was a Barefoot Caravan. But they weren’t being manufactured yet in the US. NuCamp had licensed the rights to make them here, but they hadn’t finished prototyping the new model when the pandemic hit. We bought our T@B knowing that at some point, we’d want to upgrade and get a Barefoot. But we also knew that new trailers take a couple of years to work out the kinks. So it was expected that we would keep the T@B for a bit until what we wanted was ready for primetime.

The last couple of years have been hard for us and our camping. We both developed Long Covid and post exertional malaise (PEM), which have made it hard to have as much energy as we had before to get out and explore. We can still camp, but we need to do it closer to home. And we need to do it in a way that is a bit easier and a little more like glamping than before.

That is part of why this year we decided it might be a good time to switch up the trailer game. The layout of the Barefoot looks like it will just be easier for us to maneuver in the camper. The storage looks like it will be more useful and faster to get to what we need. We started looking to see when 2025 models would be released and we compared the features of the 2024 and the 2025. It seemed like there was really only one change between the two. It also seemed like there weren’t many 2025s out in the world yet.

We reached out to the dealer close by who we had hoped to work with and he didn’t know if or when new models might be released. We inventoried every Barefoot on a lot across the country. We started to wonder if they were holding out releasing the 2025s until the 2023 and 2024 inventory was all gone. Or if NuCamp was just so busy with making versions of their new T@B 360 that they had backburnered the Barefoot. We started talking to folks online and reading and watching everything we could find about the Barefoot. We watched a factory tour of NuCamp and confirmed that they seemed to be running all their production lines with other models. We looked at satellite images and dates to see what was on lots and where.

It became suddenly clear that we’d only get a Barefoot this spring if we wanted to go with a 2024 model. It was also clear that there wasn’t going to be much difference for 2025 and that there were a limited number of 2024 models in the right color out there now. So we quickly started to try to figure out who to buy from. Lots of folks online recommended Mark Wahlberg RV in Ohio. They were fantastic! Super helpful and easy to work with. Within days, we had put a deposit on the camper and within a week we had done all the paperwork and bought it. This week they will be delivering our new camper and taking our old one away as a trade-in.

We are really excited for this new adventure and can’t wait to see our new baby! (and we’ve decided that we’re not going to call it a “trailer”. we are going to honor her british roots and call her a “caravan”!)