WARRENSBURG - Perhaps every family should have its own rustic escape pod.

It's certainly working out well for Judy and Bob Kimmons, who live in the sticks near Warrensburg and have made their pod look like a wood cabin on wheels. It's actually a 1969 Nomad travel trailer, 14 feet long, 9 feet high, its aluminum exterior now painted to look like a weathered cabin, complete with pretend dandelions sprouting from the mock foundations.

The idea is that when they want to go visit friends in Texas or Colorado or wherever, the couple just hitch up the woodsy home away from home and escape the everyday for a care-free jaunt down the open road, modern man's last vestige of frontier.

Judy Kimmons, in love with the boxy shape and quaint layout of the swinging '60s travel trailers, had long sought one. She found hers sitting in a yard near Irving two years ago, and with the fortune-favors-the brave approach she brings to life, walked right up to the startled owners and said she was on a mission to buy their Nomad.

"The lady said 'Well, we paid $300 for it, and we put new carpet in, so we would like to get that money back ¦' " Kimmons recalls. "And I said 'Well, $400?' and she said 'Oh, as much as that?' and I said 'Ok, well, $375?' and we agreed; she talked me down to it."

Going for a country decoration theme just seemed kind of natural, and Kimmons, a talented watercolorist, was soon up and running. She's worked on the project off and on over the last year, with her husband digging in to help with stuff like rewiring and arranging the addition of air-conditioning. "This thing is like an Easy-Bake Oven without it," she said.

Step inside and you alight on a linoleum floor that masquerades as wooden boards leading up to a red and black check chenille-covered twin bed and matching accessories that look like a cozy log cabin layout from Midwest Living. Matching valences cover the windows, and there's a seating area in similar fabric at the other end. Kimmons did a faux birch bark treatment to panels adorning storage cupboards with frames painted in a relaxing forest shade of green.

Interior walls and ceiling are clad in torn-up paper grocery sacks stained with several shades of Kiwi shoe polish and pasted on in such a way they look like rich leather. And don't miss the cupboard handles, another particularly nice touch. These are made of real pine branches, bark and all, painstakingly cut and assembled using old hardware that became a refugee from a kitchen remodel back at the ranch.

The couple's first big trip came in September, when they hitched up the Nomad and zipped 250 miles down the road to visit friends in Cape Girardeau, Mo., turning heads all the way. "It was just toasty in there at night, very comfortable and everything worked fine," Kimmons said.

It's not a style of trailer for the bashful, however. Her husband, just towing it around locally, has found himself "bird-dogged" by drivers fascinated with this mobile token of America's pioneering heritage.

"I was getting a little upset with this one guy in a pickup who was tailgating me something fierce," he said. "But then he pulled up alongside, gave me a big thumbs-up and showed me he was just taking pictures with his camera. I think people have just never seen anything quite like this before."

But company's coming. Husband has now acquired his own 1960s vintage trailer and commissioned dutiful wife to decorate it for him with a Western theme for hunting and adventure trips. The administrator of the Wabash Memorial Hospital Association by day but a frustrated cowboy at heart, Bob Kimmons is so keen on the wild side, he's even paid to go on cattle drives before as recreation. His heavily Western-themed home office boasts a rattlesnake hide on the wall (complete with fatal arrow hole), and a six-gun (unloaded) hangs holstered over the sink as part of bathroom decor.

His wife is pressuring him to retire so there will be more time to pursue their dreams, like taking the grandchildren for Nomadic country jaunts. And then there are the other escape projects to oversee: Plans for this summer call for the establishment of a go-cart track (featuring figure eight and oval sections) on their seven-acre Warrensburg spread so Kimmons and son Robert, 39, can indulge their passion for the sport.

Sitting in her comfortable living room, which offers commanding views of the frosty countryside while a fox terrier named Winnie mauls a talking toy duck that keeps scream-quacking "Aflack," Judy Kimmons says it's all about following your heart's desire.

"And having some fun," she adds.

Tony Reid can be reached at treid@herald-review.com or 421-7977.