How Two Happy Campers evolved into full-time travel with their Four Wheel Camper

Known online as Two Happy Campers, we’re Mark & Michele, photographers and full-time nomads for the past five years.  Our story starts back in 2012 when we bought our Four Wheel Camper Hawk shell.  We fell hard and fast in love with our camper that year and living on the road full-time quickly became a dream that we couldn’t shake.  While we didn’t waste any time chasing that dream, it took a lot of trial and error to strike the perfect balance between comfort and adventure.

At the time we had the belief that there was no way we would want to try and downsize from a house to just the truck camper for full-time living.  Thus began our goldilocks experience with pairing different size trailers with the FWC.  In 2013 we tried our first attempt at full-time RV living with a 30’ travel trailer.  We didn’t know what we didn’t know and the four month long attempt was a bust.  At that time it didn’t make sense to us to have the FWC plus a long, cumbersome, and expensive trailer.  There was no way we were parting with our FWC so the trailer had to go. 

In 2017 we followed the lead of the wise and well-traveled @mali.mish family and bought a 17’ Casita travel trailer to pair with our FWC for another shot at full-time travel.  This time the two rigs complimented each other well with the Hawk shell being our sleeping quarters and the Casita being our living and cooking area.  We enjoyed this setup for a year before a job offer landed us back in a house.

In 2020, while the world was turned upside down, we were eager to return to life on the road.  This time we bought a 21’ toy hauler style travel trailer.  Our biggest qualm about RVs is how cave-like they feel inside.  The toy hauler offered the perfect indoor/outdoor living space that we craved thanks to the ability to open up the entire rear wall of the trailer.  

For our third stint of full-time RV travel we knew a lot more than we did back in 2013 and this time we struck the perfect balance between our two rigs.  In the summer, when our photography business is running in high gear the travel trailer allows all the space we need to work comfortably as well as the tank capacity to stay at campsites for the allotted fourteen days.  Once our business shifts into slow season we put the trailer in storage, move into the FWC, and hit the road for months of off-the-beaten path exploration around Mexico.  The ability to alternate between a trailer, with all the comforts of home, and the FWC, which gives us the ability to go anywhere, has proven to be our perfect combination for nomadic living.  RVing and overlanding are two very different ways to travel and we love both.  I wrote in detail about the difference in this RVing vs overlanding article on our blog.

In 2012 when we bought our Four Wheel Camper I simply thought we were elevating our camping game.  I never could have guessed that it was about to change our lives entirely.  It’s hard to believe our Hawk is now thirteen years old. After over a decade of priceless memories I continue to stand by the fact that it’s the best money we’ve ever spent.

Mark & I love sharing our experiences and insights in hopes of inspiring others to pursue an outdoor-centric lifestyle.  We’re currently blogging daily about all the ups, downs, and unexpected adventures had while traveling around Mexico at twohappycampers.com  We’d love to see you there!