I love the notion of naming a teardrop trailer, especially seeing as they are small and personal and each one particular to the owner. But for the longest time I didn’t have a name for mine that resonated. Until a very serendipitous happening let me know without question I had finally found the right one.

First Naming Attempt

The first attempt at naming my teardrop trailer took place near the start of my first full camping season in 2022. Due to COVID production delays I had received it not until mid-autumn the year prior, so had only a couple brief outings under my belt, but eager to make good use of it as the camping season dawned.

Over the winter I had been reading about Nordic rune stones and came up with the idea of naming the trailer Wunjo. This rune (illustrated) is associated with joy, personal happiness, independence. When this rune comes up for you it can even indicate happy solo vacations according to the book A Little Bit of Runes (2018, Sterling Publishing) by Cassandra Eason.

Can You Name It Before You Know It?

Those attributes sure sounded like a perfect match for a little teardrop camper (aka my introvert escape pod) and I stuck with the name Wunjo through 2022 and into the next season. Except it didn’t really stick. Though it might have been appropriately meaningful, it didn’t feel like the right name, not my name, and gradually fell off the radar.

For one thing, Wunjo just sounded like a weird name… not really a word that fits into everyday parlance… that and my interest in runes was perhaps just a passing fancy during winter and not something that resonated deeply with me. But most of all, I don’t think it helped that I named my teardrop before I had barely had any experiences with it. So I just left it to sit and figured at some point the right name would emerge.

Aha! The Name Arises

Fast-forward to New Years Day 2026. I am reflecting on the previous year, including its many great teardrop camping adventures, and feeling aware, almost neglectful, that my beloved camper was still nameless after now four full seasons and 19,000km.

So I pondered: What has been my very best, most unique, and particularly special teardrop camping experience? Blog readers will know from other posts how much I have enjoyed some particular parks, but if I were to choose my #1 experience so far it is surely the impromptu boondocking in autumn 2023.

That experience came about, completely unplanned, as a result of ambling my way through a day in Algoma country, taking lesser-used roads, stopping to explore here and there along the way. And it occurred to me it was a bit like the existence of a Bear, which is an animal that has long had personal significance to me, just bumbling along in a quiet solitary way, exploring, foraging, napping. A teardrop trailer, at least up here in Canada, even “hibernates”!

I was considering calling the trailer The Bear, though that didn’t sound quite right, but then I took my pup Luna out for her final evening pee, looked up at the glimmering stars on that clear winter night and it came to me: Ursa. Latin for bear, as used in Ursa Major the constellation which is part of the Big Dipper (not itself a constellation but an “asterism”).

Just in Case I Still Wasn’t Sure

But here’s an uncanny twist to this story. I went into my photo folder to look up some pics from that boondocking stop and can you guess what I saw on my trailer? Yes indeed, no joke, it was a Bear sticker—I recall I had purchased a couple of them while poking about in some gift shop along Hwy 17 that morning before leaving that main tourist-way in favour of the backroads and eventually happening upon the boondocking site. And in fact it was while at that site for 3 days that I applied the stickers to the trailer.

All of this context forgotten until I saw the photo. And now zero doubt I had found the right name for my faithful teardrop camper. I christen thee URSA.