In the summer of 2023, Betty McCord Studzinski caravanned to Alaska from her home in Georgetown, north of Austin, with 12 other RVers. The majority made the trek in large 45-foot motor homes, but her recreational vehicle was the smallest of the bunch: a 17-foot Texas-made travel trailer perfect for her and Tonka, her bulldog.
“They were breaking down here and there,” says Studzinski, 78. “We had no issues at all.” She and Tonka covered 11,000 miles on that trip. Her favorite part was the wildlife. “They were everywhere,” she says. “And the scenery was just breathtaking.”
Studzinski has seen 49 states and many national parks with her Casita trailer in tow and has no plans to slow down. This year, she’s planning a trip to Maine and the Maritime Provinces of Canada.
Texas was the top destination for shipments of new RVs in 2023, according to the RV Industry Association, but our state also produces its very own travel rigs. Casita, Capri Camper and Sportsmobile are niche manufacturers compared to the corporate behemoths, and each of these companies has a waitlist for every RV that they build right here in Texas. The folks who buy these vehicles are loyal, and for them, it means buying into an ethos of community, since they don’t have to go through a dealership.
Betty McCord Studzinski and her bulldog, Tonka, with their home away from home at Lake Georgetown.
Eric W. Pohl
Brandon Weaver has decades of camping experience.
Courtesy Katie Perkins
Each of the companies’ RVs take unique forms. Sportsmobile’s converted vans are like turtle shells—you live and drive in your home. Casita makes small, fiberglass egg-shaped trailers that you tote behind you. And Capri makes the classic truck camper for pickups.
An RVIA study found that RV ownership has increased 62% over the past 20 years, with nearly a quarter of owners aged 18–34. These are a few of the intrepid travelers who love their Texas-built homes on wheels.
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Larry Pancake is a professional saddle bronc rider and music and rodeo promoter from Amarillo.
“I started rodeoing when I was 12,” he says. “My seventh grade PE teacher taught me to rope.” The Capri camper is a mainstay for professional cowboys like him. The campers are so iconic in Western culture, several have been featured in the TV series Yellowstone.
And they’ve been custom-made in Texas since 1969. In 2003, the company set up manufacturing in the tiny town of Bluff Dale, southwest of Fort Worth. They offer four models to top every size of pickup, with retro styling on the outside and modern amenities inside.
“When I was a kid growing up in the ’70s, you had made it big time if you had a Chevy Camper Special with a Capri camper on it,” Larry Pancake says.
Courtesy Larry Pancake
Pancake calls his outfit the Bronc Stomper.
Courtesy Larry Pancake
Pancake has owned four Capri campers, and his current one sits atop a 1997 Freightliner chassis. He spends about 150 days a year in it, hunting elk in New Mexico, riding broncs and promoting events across the U.S. The interior is decorated with a neon flamingo and a Welcome to Las Vegas sign.
“Anytime I leave the house, I’m in my Capri. I don’t rent hotel rooms,” Pancake says. “I like having my own space.”
His favorite feature is his Capri’s blackout shades that keep the interior completely dark in the daytime and under streetlamps. At big rodeos, there are sometimes hours between rotations. “I can watch a movie or take a nap,” Pancake says. “The blackout shades are huge.”
He also had Capri build a dream rig from his childhood rodeo days. The Bronc Stomper is a 1977 Chevrolet C20 Camper Special with a Capri camper on it. It’s a show truck he uses to promote his National Finals Rodeo events in Las Vegas.
“When I was a kid growing up in the ’70s, you had made it big time if you had a Chevy Camper Special with a Capri camper on it,” Pancake says. “You either pulled horses with it or rode bulls. That’s what the elite rodeo rig was.”
Pancake also outfitted a Freightliner with a Capri camper, and he uses the big rig to haul his smaller truck.
Courtesy Larry Pancake
Turtle
Charles Borskey set up shop in El Paso in 1961, converting Volkswagen and Ford vans. In the following decades, his company added innovations like “penthouse” tops (expandable roofs for sleeping) and four-wheel-drive conversions. In 1984, Borskey moved Sportsmobile to Austin.
I built my first van in 2005 with Sportsmobile, a four-wheel-drive Ford Econoline. The interior was sparse, with a compact cabinet, microwave, TV and a small “garage” area in the back for my mountain bike.
These days, the company offers standardized floor plans but also has an infinite selection of custom options to build your Goldilocks van. I chose the minimalist approach and christened my go-anywhere machine the Travel-All.
My first excursion was a shakedown trip to the Big Bend. The penthouse top, which raises above the van’s roof, withstood a blustery windstorm in Terlingua, and the four-wheel-drive chassis had no problem navigating the rough and rocky Black Gap Road in the backcountry of Big Bend National Park.
I deemed the Travel-All ready for a remote expedition in Colorado and drove it deep into the Rio Grande National Forest, inching down an impossibly steep Jeep trail to a campsite along the rushing headwaters of the Rio Grande. I spent four glorious days in absolute solitude next to a Texas river born in Colorado.
The author’s Sportsmobile. He said it eats highway miles the way he eats breakfast tacos—with glee and fervor.
Courtesy Brandon Weaver
I quickly outgrew the Travel-All’s sparse interior, so back to Sportsmobile I went.
In 2007, a few years after Mercedes-Benz introduced their sleek Sprinter van to the American market, I ordered one from Sportsmobile, one of the first certified outfitters in the U.S., and christened it Bruce. Unlike the Travel-All, it ate highway miles like I consume breakfast tacos—with glee and fervor.
I drove it all over the Western states, from Carmel-by-the-Sea, on the coast of central California, to the Grand Canyon, where my wife and I honeymooned in it with our trusty beagle, Pizza. In the 2000s, the Mercedes Sprinter van was uncommon, but now they’re ubiquitous. Ford and Dodge offer their own Euro-styled vans, and Sportsmobile does conversions on those as well out of their facility in North Austin.
Tote
Studzinski, the avid RVer from Georgetown, has owned just about every type of home on wheels—from a pop-up tent trailer to a massive motor home.
“I never could find the right size for me,” Studzinski says. “I thought being a single female, traveling alone, with just a dog, I needed an engine-driven vehicle.” That way if she felt unsafe camping, she could go from her bed to the driver’s seat without exiting the rig.
Studzinski’s compact camper includes rooftop solar panels and four 100-amp-hour batteries.
Eric W. Pohl
Studzinski likes to boondock (camp off-grid, without hookups), but when all you have is one vehicle, you’re likely to lose your spot if you leave briefly and drive to a trailhead or into town. So she started looking at trailers and settled on Casita.
The tough little fiberglass trailers have been built in Texas since 1983. Their current manufacturing plant is in Rice, south of Dallas, where they produce five models that are 17 feet long. The molded two-piece fiberglass design is built more like a boat than an RV. When a hailstorm damaged Studzinski’s home, her Casita, which sits uncovered outside, sustained no damage.
She purchased her Spirit Deluxe model in 2019 and had it outfitted with 325 watts of rooftop solar panels and four 100-amp-hour batteries. She bought a Subaru and promptly loaded up Tonka and went to Big Bend National Park, where she camped in the Chisos Basin campground.
The sites are small, but her little fiberglass “egg” fit perfectly, and with all her solar power, she could run her fridge with ease. Finding her perfect RV has fueled more wanderlust for Studzinski.
“I hardly ever go back to a place I’ve been before,” she says. “There are so many other places on my list that I want to see.”
