The fifth member of the family
COLLETTA [ /kol'let.ta/ ] From Latin collecta, meaning to collect, gather, or bring together. Also the namesake of Colletta di Castelbianco, an ancient Italian village where we once dreamed of retiring, until we asked ourselves: Why wait?
Why "Colletta"?
The name came from a place we'd never been. Colletta di Castelbianco is a tiny medieval village perched in the hills of Liguria, Italy. We stumbled across it during one of those late-night rabbit holes. A stone village that had been carefully restored, where artists and dreamers lived in community, surrounded by olive trees and terraced gardens and the kind of silence that makes you breathe differently.
We couldn't afford to move to an Italian hilltop village. But we could name our home after the feeling it gave us: the sense that life could be different, slower, built around what actually matters.
So Colletta it was. Colletta and Co. The "Co." being us, the messy, imperfect family along for the ride.
The Purchase
Found at Vintage Airstream Restorations in Heber, Utah, in 2019. They'd pulled her out of the Arizona desert after 30+ years of sitting. Sun-bleached aluminum, flat tires, the desert baked into every surface. James drove up on a Saturday morning and called from the lot. "She's rough," he said. "But she's got good bones."
The Design
Before we picked up a single tool, we spent months designing Colletta on paper and in 3D. James modeled the entire interior in SketchUp, trying to answer the question that would define every decision that followed: how do you fit a family of four into 31 feet and make it feel like home?
The renderings were optimistic. Clean lines, warm wood tones, a kitchen that looked like it belonged in a magazine. We planned for a full galley along the street side, a dinette that could convert to Calvin's bed, a rear bedroom with actual privacy, and a bathroom that didn't require contortion to use. On screen, it all fit perfectly. Every cabinet had a purpose. Every inch was accounted for.
We also planned for things that seemed essential at the time: a fold-down desk for James's work, a reading nook with built-in shelving, under-floor storage for tools and outdoor gear. The solar and electrical system was designed for full off-grid capability from day one. James sketched wiring diagrams at the kitchen table until Carol told him to stop bringing graph paper to dinner.
Some of those early plans survived the build exactly as designed. Others didn't survive first contact with reality. The desk became a shelf. The reading nook became Millie's crib nook. The under-floor storage turned out to be shallower than the renderings suggested. But the bones of the design held. The layout that looked right in 3D felt right in person, and that's not something you can take for granted at this scale.
The Build
A year of late nights, YouTube tutorials, and more trips to Home Depot than any human should endure. James rebuilt the electrical system from scratch: 940W of solar, 800Ah of lithium, and a Victron inverter sized to run AC off-grid. He wired in the connectivity stack that would keep us online from national forests and BLM land. Carol designed the interior layout, fitting a family of four into 31 feet of aluminum. The countertop was the wrong size the first time. The flooring buckled twice. Calvin drew on the freshly painted walls with permanent marker. But slowly, painfully, beautifully, she came together.
The Finished Product
The Life
We left Salt Lake City in December 2020 with a five-year-old, a nine-month-old, and no plan beyond "south." The first month we parked in a Walmart lot in Nephi, Utah, and I remember lying in bed listening to the truck engines idle outside and thinking: this is either the bravest or the dumbest thing we've ever done.
It turned out to be both. And also the best.
Living in Colletta means waking up in a new place whenever you want to. It means coffee with a view that changes every week. It means the kids doing school at a picnic table in a national park, or on the couch while rain hammers the aluminum roof. It means 200 square feet of space for four people, which sounds impossible until you realize how little you actually need when the whole world is your backyard.
It also means the water heater failing in February. It means learning which rest stops have decent WiFi. It means Calvin and Millie fighting over who gets the window seat at the dinette, every single morning, for five years. It means finding a laundromat as a backup when the Splendide decides to take a day off. It means learning that "off-grid" sometimes just means "no cell service and also no idea where the next dump station is."
We've parked her on beaches and in deserts, in friends' driveways and national forest roads, in the shadow of the Tetons and in the parking lot of a Cracker Barrel in Alabama. She's been through hurricanes, heat waves, and one memorable night in Alaska when a bear tried to open the storage compartment. (He didn't get in. The latch held. James still checks it twice every night.)
Colletta has been our kitchen, our classroom, our office, our bedroom, our living room, and our sanctuary. Somewhere along the way James turned her into a smart home, with cameras, automated climate control, and a Raspberry Pi running the whole show from behind a cabinet panel. She's been the place where Calvin learned to read, where Millie took her first steps, where James and I figured out how to work together without killing each other. She's 31 feet of aluminum and she contains our entire life.
She's parked in Scotland now. We bought a cottage, started a renovation, and Colletta sits in storage waiting for whatever comes next. All fifty states and five years later, she's not retired. She's just resting. The road isn't done with us yet, and we're not done with her.