Casita in Spanish means little house. Casita travel trailers are made in Rice, Texas just north of Corsicana.
“They work very well and have all the things you need for travel,” says Gary Humphreys of Del Rio. “They have a bathroom, shower, kitchen, table and a bed. It’s a nice little deal. This new one I’ve got, it’s a sixteen-footer and I’ve already worn out a set of tires on it.”
Gary has been lots of places in his Casita.
“I’ve been all the way to Canada and over on the east coast. We’ve been all over. I think I wore out four sets of tires on my first one.”
Once when he was in San Francisco he pulled his Casita down Lombard Street, which is narrow and has lots of curves. Drivers have to be careful and take it slow.
“Those turns are on a pretty steep slope. There’s a sign that says no trailers but we pulled that little Casita and it whipped around there and we got out on the other end and pulled off. I don’t know how many people went down that hill with a trailer but we’re sure one of them.”
Gary recently paid a visit to the factory in Rice. He noticed some of them had aluminum wheels.
“They told me they’re sending those to Japan.”
Gary knows about the prices on the little fiberglass trailers.
“The first one I bought was a thirteen-footer and I paid forty-two hundred dollars for it. That was in 1994. I sold it twenty years late for fifty-eight hundred. That first one didn’t have a toilet but we stayed in campgrounds so didn’t need one. Four or five years ago I bought this sixteen-foot model and it was eighteen thousand and it has a complete bathroom and an air conditioner. We stay pretty comfortable in it. I heard the other day they’re running up to about thirty thousand. There’s a lot of them on the road now but when I got my first one you’d see one occasionally. The number of owners kept growing and kept growing and now they have rallies all over the country. We just came back from the Davis Mountains State Park in Fort Davis where they had forty-nine of them.”
Bandera has a big rally in the spring that brings in 150 Casitas or more.
“It’s always a lot of fun. There’s horseshoe pitching, dominoes, bingo and there’s a band at night along with a catered barbeque dinner. We’ve made a lot of good friends from all over the United States at these rallies. Everybody is always looking at each other’s trailer to see what’s new or different. We’re always looking for new ideas to make them better.”