Our Epsilon is a 2022 Airstream Globetrotter 23FB Twin. Double axles and twenty-four feet, she becomes forty-six feet of rig once Smaug (our 2025 Ram 2500 Diesel Laramie) is connected. She’s the execution of our inspiration — life being a sum of small adventures. She’s where we live when we’re not at home, and after Alaska and a good deal of North America since, she’s earned a page of her own.
People typically ask two questions about a trailer this size. Isn’t it small? And how long can you stay out in it? The answers are connected.
The trailer
Twenty-three feet nine inches on the outside, eight feet wide, and ten feet tall with air conditioner and lift. Seven feet seven of interior width and six feet seven and a half of headroom — which is to say you stand up straight in it. She’s definitely on the small side, but not even close compared to a Caravel or Bambi.
The twin bed layout is her superpower! The layout runs front to back: twins up front, galley and dinette through the middle, and a full-width bathroom across the entire rear — toilet and shower both. That rear bath is the whole argument for the 23FB. In a trailer this size most floorplans give you a wet closet or restroom you back into sideways; this one gives you its own room. The beds stay beds, too — no nightly conversion, no wrestling cushions at eleven o’clock because you lingered over the fire. And don’t forget, with the bathroom door open, the walkway clears 22′ and that’s priceless for room to maneuver. Those assets provide much more comfort than another three feet of length would.
Barcelona Blue
Airstream offered the 2022 Globetrotter in four interior décors. Ours is Barcelona Blue, paired with the light Natural Elm cabinetry. The blue is deeper than a photograph suggests — it reads dark in morning and light toward afternoon. Seating and the upholstered bedroom accent wall are done in HITCH fabric, a finely woven material with a metallic tip print that Airstream uses only on the Globetrotter. The galley counter is white Corian, which bounces light around a narrow space in a way a dark counter never could. The floor is seamless woven vinyl, waterproof under the rug runners Colleen must have; very forgiving of wet boots.
She has an adequate Nova*Kool refrigerator, but we honestly desire something a little bigger. It’s all electric and with the rest of our setup it does just fine.
She’s held up well. Four years in, through Alaskan dust and roads and some serious storms!
Living off the grid
Four days comfortably. Five if we are careful. And what stops us cold is not what most people guess.
It’s not power. Two hundred amp-hours of lithium, two hundred seventy watts of solar on the roof, and an Onan propane generator on the frame underneath mean electricity is effectively a solved problem.
It’s not fresh water either. Thirty-nine gallons goes further than you would think when you are paying attention to it.
It’s the grey tank. Thirty gallons, and every shower and every sink of dishes goes into it. The black tank holds eighteen and lasts considerably longer, which surprises everyone. Grey fills at roughly twice the rate, and when it’s full you are done — you can ration drinking water, you can run the generator, but you can’t make thirty gallons of dishwater disappear.
So the boondocking limit is a plumbing question, not a power question. Knowing this changes how you plan. We arrive at a dry campground with the fresh tank full and both waste tanks empty, and we leave when the grey says so.
What she carries
| Fresh water | 39 gallons |
| Grey water | 30 gallons — the real limit |
| Black water | 18 gallons |
| Propane | 2 × 30 lb cylinders |
| Battery | 200 Ah lithium |
| Solar | 270 W rooftop |
What makes it possible
Epsilon left the factory as a well-built trailer. What allows longer dry camping is an electrical system installed by Airstream Nuts and Bolts in Dadeville, Alabama — a Victron inverter and charger, lithium batteries, a system monitor we can read from an iPad, and a DC-to-DC charger that tops the batteries off from the truck while we drive. Mopeka sensors on the propane cylinders report to the same Victron display, so tank levels are a reading rather than a guess. There is a surge protector between the trailer and every campground pedestal, which is not glamorous but has almost certainly saved us an expensive repair at some point we will never know about.
The propane generator lives on the frame underneath and runs quietly enough to be neighborly within posted hours. A soft-start on the air conditioner lets it come up on the inverter or the generator rather than demanding shore power. The factory water heater was replaced with a Truma AquaGo Comfort, which gives hot water on demand instead of six gallons and a wait. Realistically, the water comes hot in about a minute the way we use it (not keeping the Truma running all the time).
StarLink handles the internet, which is how our webpage gets updates from places with no cell signal at all. It also feeds the Apple TV (in place of the factory Sony Blu-ray player) — movie nights and favorite TV series no longer depend on which discs made the packing list.
The Specific Mods
Much of what we’ve changed came from AirKrafters, Sean Bledsoe’s brainchild, who make beautifully engineered things for Airstreams. The rest arrived piece by piece, as living in her told us what to change.
- jenRAK generator rack — attached to the A-frame underneath, in the spot where the spare tire originally rode — literally beneath the front bedroom, with the exhaust pumping out to the driver side.
- tyRAK spare tire carrier — the spare moved back, behind the rear axle. The two racks trading places is what made room for the generator without turning the tongue into a scrapyard.
- Six erPOD ceiling vents — spun aluminum nozzles that replace the flat factory air conditioning registers. Each one aims a full three hundred sixty degrees and closes independently. The difference in air actually reaching the bed is not subtle.
- dorMAT storage door protectors — foam liners on the inside of the exterior compartment doors, so that loading gear stops leaving marks on the aluminum.
- Three-inch axle lift — fitted as part of the generator installation. It raises her about three inches, which matters for ground clearance on rough campground roads and matters just as much for remembering that the low bridge you cleared last year is now closer than it was.
- Master Applied Coatings (MAC) — a proprietary, permanent coating over the aluminum, applied at MAC’s shop co-located with Vinnie’s East Coast in Tallahassee. Hydrophobic, never needs reapplying, and it means the shine is no longer a maintenance chore.
- Premium mattresses from Airstream Supply Co. — the factory mattresses are gone, and the twin beds now sleep the way beds at home do.
- Custom wood dinette table — replacing the factory table with real wood custom designed smaller with rounded corners, which changes how the middle of the trailer feels every time you sit down at it.
- August smart lock on the deadbolt — the door unlocks from a phone, which means no more hunting for keys in the dark with an armload of laundry, and no wondering from the truck whether we locked up.
What comes next
Three things are on the list. Nearest: a new bedside table and under-bed drawers from Two Pillow Honey, arriving in the spring. The night table adds a drawer — which means Colleen’s things and Steve’s things finally get places of their own. Then interior-switched clearance and marker lights, so that Epsilon can join Airstreams Aglow at a rally without being hitched to the truck. And eventually a front lounge rebuilt in the style of the 2027 International — the one change we keep coming back to.
None of it is urgent. She does what we ask of her.
Every campground judgment on Epsilon Stays is made against this rig — twenty-four feet of trailer, forty-six feet combined. If a site fits us, we say so. If it doesn’t, we say that too.
