At Home in a Wagon

Sedar Ayres Wagon Company creates one-of-a-kind retreats like this Crested Butte fishing camp on wheels

July 23, 2018

Darla Worden,

As a girl growing up in Wyoming, Lynn Sedar played in a sheep wagon—a little bread-loaf-shaped wagon created for sheepherders on the plains. Years later, this childhood experience informed Sedar’s work when she began to create unique wagons for clients—like this Fishing Camp she built for a Crested Butte, Colorado, family.

The wagon is large enough for a custom-sized bed (between king and queen), with large handcrafted drawers for storage beneath the bed. In the corner, an antique sink from a Pullman car has been installed, ready to hook up to a garden hose outside to provide running water.

When Sedar reunited with her teenage sweetheart, Andy Ayres—a craftsman who has built everything from exquisite custom homes to earth-rammed structures—it was a match made in heaven in more ways than one. They combined their skills to form the Sedar Ayres Wagon Company, building charming diminutive rolling getaways used as guest rooms, libraries, retreats, fishing camps and garden sheds.

“I probably drive him nuts with my ideas,” Sedar says. “But he always tries to accommodate them, no matter how crazy they may seem.”

The “Fishing Camp” wagon by the Sedar Ayres Wagon Company is positioned to take in views of Gothic Mountain and Crested Butte.

Case in point is the beautiful cupola Ayers built for this wagon, a whimsical touch that provides practical ventilation, adorned with glass Japanese fishing floats. He installed the beautiful antique window above the bed—a focal point for the wagon—that Sedar had carried around for years in search of the perfect home. She also designed the row of three transom windows that Ayres elegantly crafted—and that provide additional ventilation.

The roof is constructed with oak bows,white canvas stretched over them, and layered with wool blankets before the copper roof was placed on top.

The Crested Butte family is delighted with the finished product. “I love the way it sits in relationship to the mountains Gothic and Crested Butte; the orientation of it just makes me smile,” the wagon’s owner says. “I have a teepee, and it keeps my teepee company. I just love it as a piece of sculpture sitting in the yard.”

Although the wagon is completely wired for electricity so its owners can plug in a teapot and brew a cup of tea, it’s a “Wi-Fi-free zone,” the owner explains. “It’s a great place to be away and read a real book, awesome for naps, or just open the door and stare out at the mountains. It’s the happiest spot.”