For today, let’s check out some outdoorsy images of vintage rides in camping action. The images mix camping grounds and parks, with most shots heavily featuring the family ride. There’s a good deal of variety in location and vehicles, all comprising a good deal of fins and open spaces. Some of CC’s favorite themes.
CC readers know this is a variation on a series of galleries devoted to cars and trailers, for which you’ll find links at the bottom.
Related CC reading:
Vintage Snapshots: Old Rides And Trailers Gallery – The Art Of Hauling Stuff With Panache
Vintage Snapshots: Old Rides And Trailers Gallery – The Art Of Hauling Stuff, Part 2
Vintage Snapshots: Old Rides And Trailers, Winter Edition
More Vintage Snapshot Galleries Here
Photo #8:
Hope the Falcon has a V8 under the hood. A straight 6 and manual would be a challenge to pull a trailer, especially a convertible.
Photo #6:
Isn’t that one of those purpose built Dodge RVs from the late 60’s in the background. I remember seeing these on the interstate as a child.
My eyes immediately went to that hard-working Falcon! It might be from the years before the V8 was even offered—but someone here will know that for sure, I figure.
I hadn’t thought about the tenting “platforms” on the beach (photo #7), but that makes great sense.
Hooray for all the two-wheel-drive cars (not all of them full-size) doing the towing!
The 260 was available that year (1963), but as mentioned, no badging means it’s most likely an I6. Probably why they have a second one – can’t imagine one would carry an entire family and the trailer.
It’s a six, lacking the ample-size V8 badge on the front fender. Lots of sixes pulled trailers back then. Folks even pulled small trailers with 36 hp VWs.
Yes, I think so too – the Dodge-powered/marketed Travco motor home. The biggest Dodge wagon of them all!
Thanks for the clue: Dodge Travco
https://www.curbsideclassic.com/curbside-classics-american/curbside-classic-travco-motorhome-the-granddaddy-of-the-motorhome-name-and-genre/
Love the Olds with the color matched trailer, too bad the car isn’t two tone as well.
That is a fairly large trailer for that poor little Falcon. Interesting way that they mounted the add-on trailer mirrors, doesn’t seem that they stick out that much wider than the car which is significantly narrower than the trailer.
My guess is that they raised them while in the campground, so folks would bump into them. It makes no sense otherwise.
Agree on the Olds! That is my favorite model year. I love how it matches the trailer. I actually like that it is not 2 toned.
What’s your best guess as to what was purchased first, the car or the trailer?
The cars in this group are fun to see. So are the very beautiful camping areas.
It wouldn’t surprise me if the buyer got the camper’s lower portion painted to match his new car.
I love the ”Cottage Tent” in the 1st. picture .
We had one like it in the late 1950’s .
-Nate
I remember smelling sun-baked, waxed canvas, combined with the scent of coffee and bacon. Yet I feel the chilly pine scented mountain air leaking through with the sunshine. I’m snuggled in a wool blanket upon a wooden-framed cot and I have to pee. My grandpa with his whisker stubble and pipe, calling me out to experience another morning in camp. Wool sox on my sleepy feet and my tummy growling, I flip open the tent flap and squint, taking in a new outdoor adventure. I’m six years old and camping for the first time.
We’ve spent one day at this shady forest camp. Damp clothes, towels and swim trunks hang langorously over the thick soft white clothes line, threatening to fall off onto the pine needle covered ground. The hard brown pine needles stab through my socks and I need to carefully remove them when I pulled on my Red Ball Jets, still wet from wearing them in the mountain stream running behind our camp.
Grandpa has driven me up in his old Plymouth wagon. It was a 1959 Suburban. I rode in the way-back, my favorite place. The tail gate window was rolled down and Grandpa drove slowly to keep the gravel dust from covering his car’s brown copper finish. He usually drove Fords, but we were exploring in his old wagon since Grandma wanted the yellow car. Grandpa’s car smelled of Bugler pipe tobacco and unfiltered Camels which he enjoyed while his pipes dried out. The ashtray in the dashboard usually carried a pipe or two. I didn’t like the smell, and that is why I preferred riding in the far back of the Plymouth. Grandpa had a hunting dog I called “Dawny”, a brown liver-spotted Springer Spaniel. We didn’t bring her, but the wagon held lots of the hair she shed in the creases of the vinyl seats.
He taught me how to fish for rainbow trout. We used “red hots” for bait and we’d stop after catching five. I used a bamboo pole and just dangled the hook behind the fallen rocks in the creek where there might be a catch. I had no problem pulling out a few, but wasn’t certain how to pull the fish off the hook at first. The rest of the time, I waded in the ice cold water and built rocky dams to direct the smaller currents around imaginary rock houses. The water was ice cold and crystal clear and the sunshine sparkled on the ripples.
At camp, I’d start a fire using the dried pine needles for kindling and scrounging up the fallen limbs located thoughout the forest. Grandpa showed me how to fry up bacon after cleaning the fish, pulling the crispy bacon out of the pan, then laying the fish fillet, skin side down, for a few minutes to cook our fresh catch. Nothing fancy. It was absolutely delicious.
So when I saw the first photo of the old Plymouth next to the tent. I enjoyed recalling these memories. Impossible to believe that they are from so long ago.
What and evocative piece of writing! I felt I was experiencing all that through your 6 year old eyes. Bravo!
The Studebaker in photo #2 has such an expressive “face” (almost like a cartoon car getting ready to say something). The classic curl of smoke from the nearby cabin is always good.
One of my older relatives had a Rambler wagon much like the one in photo #5. His was red but it met with an untimely end.
Great shots! I’m somehow drawn to that Mercury woodie wagon with the Airstream.
Now if only I had a picture of me and my dad when we went on that fateful (not in a very good way) camping trip in his ’65 Opel Kadett. I was 12 and had to do everything: set up the tent and his cot (i slept on the ground), make a fire and cook. His coolie, in other words.
I think I’d prefer the Rambler cross country for my camping trip. Unless I was late for family camping, in which case I’ll take the Road Runner.
Nice thing about camping out in a Rambler was their reclining front seats.
We had a Rambler of that vintage (actually 2 wagons, a ’61 and a ’63) but that’s before we started camping in the later 60’s in Dad’s ’65 F85 wagon.
Not sure why he bought the ’63 so soon after the ’61 (he’s gone so can’t ask him) but I vaguely remember him mentioning the ’61 being in a sandstorm, maybe on our trip back from California (we’d moved there in ’59, back in ’61) to the East coast (so yes, we drove it pretty much “cross country” once), I think he bought the ’63 in Pittsburgh to where we’d moved. It didn’t last long, got totalled in front of our motel, we were in the process of moving from Catonsville Md to Burlington Vt and had just vacated our home in Catonsville, some guy waved my Dad to cross in front of him but the guy in the other lane didn’t share this idea.
We rented a pop-top Apache our first trip, then Dad bought a “Camp ‘O Tel” car top camper we had maybe 6 years until he bought a new ’73 Viking pop top camper. Stopped camping cold turkey when we moved to Texas, color us spoiled but most of the year it was too hot to sleep well in a tent or pop top, so they were sold 42 years ago.
VANILLA DUDE wins the essayist award! Thank you for your depiction. I was camping after the war when my grandparents reverted to it from renting a cottage on Lake George in the Adirondacks. I was four years old. These were beautiful family times. Your explanation of the pine needles is accurate. I miss those days. In 1951, my grandparents bought a two-story log cabin in The Town of Luzerne, NY and the life in the summer continued. As for the “ears” on that Falcon convertible, WOW! What a brave adventuress family!
I am tempted by the 59 Plymouth and the 53 Stude in the first two photos, but my absolute fave is the big metallic beige 60 Mercury wagon in the background behind the white Rambler Classic in the third photo from the end.
The flying mirrors on the Falcon are a brilliant idea. Should have been more common!
Good God, I will agree with that. My parents had a 1960 Falcon with the 144 cubic inch engine and a two speed automatic transmission. OMG! It could barely spin gravel. Years later my first car was a 1961 Comet (which was slightly longer and heavier than a comparable Falcon) with the same engine and a three speed manual transmission. It wasn’t much better than the Falcon. Of course it was considerably lighter than it was when it was new as it was severely rusted!
This would have had the 170 at that point. I’ve seen them built up; namely, a highly-modified 1963 comet around my area. But I’m rather content with the 289 in my late-64 comet.
The Studebaker with the water bag hanging from the bumper brings back memories! Our blue ’58 Rambler American sedan did a vacation camping trip starting in Seattle in 1967 with a water bag on the front bumper. The rear seat was taken out and my sister and I sat on the big canvas tent back there. A homemade roof rack carried everything else. Round trip through Idaho and on to Yellowstone, Crater’s of the Moon and back home. The water bag came in handy when the radiator played its whistlin’ tune. It held together but not really sure how, lol.
Another salute to VanillaDude for sharing his memories. I only camped a few times with the Boy Scouts, not my favorite thing. Now I stop and enjoy the view, then continue to my lodgings where I can enjoy a comfortable night’s sleep.
The canoe “atop” the “Pontiac” reminds me of a friend of my brothers. He had a “almost always up there” , small boast on his “70 Chevy Impala”.
In those days, no one ever took it. h’mm.
Vanilla Dude paints a wonderful picture! Thanks for letting me live in that moment a just a bit. We didn’t camp, but on road trips with another family in our ‘68 Fairlane wagon, us kids got to sit in the “way back” – as I also called it.
Great pics as always!