since i installed hearthfire last i have very few problems so far, but the one thing i have noticed in two different locations now is that the kahjiit trading caravan camps seem completely devoid of any kahjiit. it has happened at dawnstar and solitude for me. does any one else have this issue and does anyone know of a fix?

This is not uncommon in base game to, if you fast travel or use the carriage the game might mess up here. Then populating the area it calculate that you should get the camp but miss out the Khajiits You can get both Khajiits without camp just standing there, however this is more plausible if they just arrived.

i have to say, i have always run the vanilla version of the game and never used any mods or console commands and only have dawnguard & hearthfire installed and i have never seen this issue before today, and this is on the original charachter im still playing with since the week skyrim was released.