“We’re not really adventure people,” says Caroline Burke, but only after she and her husband, Riley Haakon, have been explaining for almost an hour how they’ve been hauling a vintage trailer across the U.S. and down dusty Baja roads for several months. Once, in Mexico, they wound up serving coffee to a beachful of local families on vacation; in Washington’s San Juan Islands, they almost saw their broken-down truck burn up while it was parked outside a bar that had caught on fire. A pause, and then Caroline clarifies: “I can count the number of hikes we’ve done in the past two years on one hand.”

Okay, so not outdoorsy types, but prone to adventure, say. A year and a half ago, they were feeling burned out near the end of a nine-month road trip in an Airstream they had spent months renovating, but they still couldn’t help but peruse listings for other project trailers. Then they saw their dream model for sale in Arkansas, an Argosy built in 1975. “Caroline said, ‘Do you wanna do another one?’ I was like, no,” Riley remembers, laughing. “But we bought it, and this is it.”

Today, the Argosy, glowing with a paint job Caroline and Riley managed to apply in a 40-mile-an-hour windstorm—in December, in Massachusetts—is parked in California’s Carpinteria State Beach campground. The weather is temperate, slightly overcast, and windless. The couple’s two cats, Pancake and Ophelia, and dog, Cowboy, who’s dressed the part in a red bandana, laze on the bed, which is surrounded by windows, a hallmark of this brand of trailer.

“Anything that’s white is original, and anything that’s wood is us,” Riley explains about the updates he DIY’d. The couple collaborated on the Airstream, but Riley, who is transitioning out of advertising with aims of turning an amateur passion for design into a profession, was left to his whims by Caroline this go-round: “I was like, ‘You’re going to architecture school. You do whatever you want.’”

“We’ve encountered so much kindness in our travels, which has been a huge learning experience. We’ve looked for opportunities to pass that along.”
—Riley Haakon, owner and designer

The existing cabinets worked, so they stayed, but wanting an open plan for more flexibility, Riley removed partitions that divided the trailer in half. “I was really afraid to have a bed in the front,” says Caroline. “I was like, ‘We’re gonna be hosting…but we don’t host.’” Caroline, a full-time editor and writer, is with her computer where one of two twin beds used to be, now a continuous surface that serves as a desk or a place to prep meals.

Riley’s biggest experiment was the flooring. A mesmerizing mosaic of wood squares made of old- and new-growth timber, it defies the dogma that tiling does not belong in a moving vehicle. “I had just been nerding out over end grain, to Caroline’s chagrin,” says Riley. Says Caroline, “I did not think it was gonna work out.”

But things always seem to for this couple and often in unexpected ways. Riley explains how, about two years ago, he and Caroline were at Agate Beach in Oregon on a walk—we won’t call it a hike—when they shared a moment with an otter, a moment so magical it convinced him to put off grad school for a year so they could keep wandering. Now, when an answer to a question doesn’t readily present itself, they “chase the otter god,” he says, which is what they’ve been doing ever since. Wherever it leads them next, it likely won’t be boring.

Project Credits:

Designer: Riley Haakon

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A Roaming Couple Recalibrate a 1975 Argosy for Creative Work and Off-Grid Bliss