Archive for Uncategorized
May 25, 2006 at 8:37 pm · Filed under Uncategorized
I have to admit that there’s not much news I can talk about today. Eleanor and Emma are doing their stuff in Vermont but I’ve been so wrapped up in the Airstream dealer meeting that I have hardly had time to even call them. Brett and I are running around trying to get dealers to advertise in the magazine all day.
But Emma doesn’t want to talk to me anyway. She’s having too much fun with her grandparents. When I called yesterday she was washing the car with her grandmother and wouldn’t break away to talk to her old Dad …
I can show you an advance pic of a new Airstream that was shown here at the Dealer Meeting. There are some very cool new floorplans coming out, including a 27-foot FB (rear-door) model, and in smaller length they have introduced the “Ocean Breeze” trim package shown below. It’s a derivation of the popular Quiksilver trailer.
Sorry for the poor quality images. I had to borrow a camera since I left mine back at the trailer.
The new rigs coming out are pretty cool. They’ve updated the Classic into a 27-foot Classic Limited that is quite nice. The 19-foot Custom Bambi by David Winick is here, and that is beautiful. They’ve also added to the International line and added some new colors. And the Base Camps are finally here, looking very slick with tons of neat accessory racks and options.
May 23, 2006 at 10:03 pm · Filed under Uncategorized
Eleanor and Emma flew back to Vermont today, for a round of routine doctor and dentist appointments. Eleanor is going to have some allergy testing done to see if she is a candidate for desensitizing injections, or other treatments. Emma is going to go get spoiled by her grandparents, and get her teeth checked.
Note to prospective full-timers. Always remember to remove the bikes from the roof before you go to the airport! Otherwise, you have to park in the “Economy” lot far far away …
I am staying back in Las Vegas to do some work. This week I’ve got meetings at Caesar’s Palace. Brett has flown in to help out, and he’s crashing in the trailer with me tonight, then we are moving to Caesar’s for the next two nights. Since we won’t need the truck, I’m taking the opportunity to drop off the Armada at the Nissan dealer to have the transmission fluid changed tomorrow morning.
So it will not be a wild week of fun, but it’s all part of the adventure in a way. The working life is part of the traveling life, for us.
May 22, 2006 at 7:56 pm · Filed under Uncategorized
Sadly we have left Zion National Park, but not before one more long play session between Emma and Hope (Doug & Trish’s daughter), and a big gabfest for me as well. Here’s a photo from last night, when Emma and Hope were playing on Emma’s bed and the bunk above it.
Our trailer boasts a small souvenir of our Zion visit. This pretty much sums up our philosophy these past few days…
Now we are in Las Vegas, 150 miles away from Zion. It’s not particularly glamorous here in this asphalt parking lot of a campground, but it is convenient for the business I need to do this week. And it’s cheap to camp in Las Vegas. Full hookups here, with the Good Sam discount, are about $22, and there are even cheaper places to be had.
Eleanor and Emma are flying home tomorrow. I’ll be busy with work for a few days, and then this weekend there will be time to play. I’ll tell you about that later. For now, here’s a quick Sign of The Week, as seen along the road from Zion somewhere in Utah. I don’t know what it’s referring to … and I don’t think I want to know!
May 21, 2006 at 10:50 pm · Filed under Uncategorized
It is decided: Zion is a favorite spot of ours. We’ll be back. Terrific desert weather, greenery, wildlife, beautiful scenery, peace and quiet thanks to the shuttle bus system, and thanks to good cell phone coverage, I can work from here too!
Today we decided to hike the Emerald Pool trails: Lower, Upper, and Middle, in that order. The total hiking distance was about 4 miles, which is average for us and well below Emma’s tolerance level of about six miles. Fabulous hikes! Scenery that you just can’t believe. The photos don’t do justice to the beauty of this place.
The Upper Emerald pool is not emerald-colored at all, but it is a tranquil and lovely spot at the end of a hot hike. Technically, no swimming is allowed, but the sign didn’t say “no wading,” so we did and cooled off nicely.
The Middle Emerald trail offers fantastic views and crosses over the top of the Lower Emerald Trail. Water from the sandstone drips down constantly to make small waterfalls.
There’s a lot to do in Zion besides hiking. For example, you can rent horses for trail rides, which seems like a fine idea. I think they organize these from the Zion Inn, which is midway up the canyon. The Inn looks like a fine place to spend a few days if you don’t have an Airstream. 😉
Bicycling is possible on the riverside Pah’rus Trail for a few miles, and there’s a museum right up from the campground too. In the town of Springdale, just outside the park gates, there is a giant screen movie theater and the usual artsy shopping, restaurants, and outfitters to browse too.
We got back around 3:30 and took the shuttle into Springdale to try the local pizza joint. We’ve been guzzling huge amounts of fluids due to the dry air and high temperatures (well into the 90s again today), so it was nice that the pizza place has a free refill policy. After some browsing in town and at the Visitor Center, we headed back home to the Airstream to shower and settle in …. and then a knock came on the door from surprise visitors Trish and Doug!
Turns out Doug has been following our blog for months, and since they live in nearby Kanab, they decided to look us up while camping in Zion for a couple of nights. They have a Casita 17-footer, which is very similar to the Airstream Caravel we started with two years ago, and they have a lovely 7-year-old daughter named Hope. Emma and Hope took off on their bicycles, and played checkers, and the adults spent the evening talking about everything, until 10:30. What a nice bonus!
Meeting people like Trish and Doug is a big part of the reason we travel like this. They’re wonderful people, full of ideas and enthusiasm, and we’re glad to know them. They’re not the only people we’ve met this weekend, either. Yesterday we met a couple from Essex NY (near our home town) who winter in Tucson AZ, and we plan to look them up later this summer when we are back east. You meet the most interesting people in National Parks. This has been the most enjoyable weekend we’ve had in a while.
May 20, 2006 at 7:36 pm · Filed under Uncategorized
Zion is one of those rare places that is magnificent in many ways, everywhere you turn. This morning we walked from our campsite along the paved bike/hike Pa’rus trail and within a hundred feet spotted some of the wild turkeys that have been reintroduced to the park. Towering red cliffs of red Navajo sandstone surrounded us as we walked through a beautiful field to catch the shuttle bus.
Last night in the ranger talk we learned about how the many arches here (and in Arches National Park, where we were last October), are formed. The red sandstone is porous, and absorbs billions of gallons of rainwater and snowmelt. The water percolates down through the sandstone very slowly, taking centuries to reach a layer of impermeable shale or a fault. There, it emerges from the sandstone, and at that point freeze-thaw cycles cause the sandstone to collapse, leaving arch formations.
The photo above is an embyronic arch being formed along the Riverside Walk trail. Note the water forming a pool at the bottom. If this cliff were thinner, we might have a walk-through arch in a few thousand years, but this is the base of a mountain of sandstone.
Despite pleas from the rangers, warning signs, and the threat of $100 fines, people still feed the animals and the result is that the squirrels will come right up to you and beg for food. This happens with mule deer too, and eventually they bite people and have to be shot. Even our six-year-old knows better than to feed the “cute animals”. I wish more people would pay attention.
The vertical relief in the canyon is just mind-boggling. Like the California redwoods, this is a challenging place to photograph. Above you can see some climbers working their way up a fissure. They were about 500-600 feet up when I took this photo, and only halfway to their goal!
“Weeping rock” is another example of water being squeezed out of the sandstone by an impermeable rock layer. People come up here to stand under a natural alcove where it drips water 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. Spots like this were cool oases in the park as we hiked. The outside temperature was in the 90s, but dipped into the 70s in the shady and damp spots.
Wildlife is everywhere if you look. We noticed most people never slow down long enough to see. We spotted the wild turkeys, lizards, a Western Red Start (a red-bellied bird, I might have the name wrong), a hummingbird (tried to get nectar from one of the graphics on our trailer!), butterflies, canyon wrens, caterpillars, and of course begging squirrels. They have mountain lions here, in theory, but of course we didn’t see any.
The plan was to resume hiking after lunch but nobody seemed to have the energy. We got back at 2:30 and wilted in the heat. The Virgin River, which flows through this canyon, is running about 52 degrees and too fast for swimming. I fell asleep on the bed after lunch, reading an escapist novel by Tom Clancy and when I awoke at 4:30 nobody seemed to want to go anywhere.
It’s been a nice easy day. We’ve been playing checkers and now Emma is helping Eleanor cook dinner. I’ve promised to make popcorn for the movie later tonight. We’re going to skip the ranger talk because the topic looks a bit dull.
Solar report: we were down 44 amps when we woke up this morning, but generated 30 amps by 2:30, and eventually got back all but 10 amps. Not bad, especially considering we also recharged both laptops and camera batteries. If we didn’t have solar, we’d be killing our batteries by tomorrow night. As is, we can stay indefinitely. I like the fact that now everything electrical that we use (cameras, laptops, lights, pumps, Internet box, cell phones, etc) is powered by the sun.
May 17, 2006 at 7:37 pm · Filed under Uncategorized
Last night was beautiful and peaceful, camping under a sky filled with bright stars in the clear desert sky. The two gift shops at the south end of Petrified Forest National Park (just outside the gate) allow overnight parking, and their location is so far from anything that it is quiet all night.
We tested our solar system by using as much as battery power as we wanted last night. By flagrantly using lights, running the laptops off the house batteries, running the water pump a lot (three showers), and running the furnace at night, we managed to consume 55 DC amp-hours of power. This is about the most we’d ever use in a single evening.
This morning, the desert sun began shining early and by 6 a.m. we were generating 3 amps of power. By 8 a.m. we were generating about 8 amps. By noon we hit 12 amps, and by 2 pm, we’d recouped most of the 55 amp-hours we used. (The last 10% or so goes in very slowly because the batteries can’t charge quickly when they are nearing full, regardless of how much power you put in. This is why it’s a waste of gas to try to get your batteries to 100% using a generator.)
We were so excited about working on Emma’s “Junior Ranger” booklet that we all went outside in our pajamas at 7 a.m. to examine the huge chunks of petrified wood that were scattered all around us in the parking lot of the gift shop.
Next stop was the Visitor’s Center at the south end of the park and a short hike through the “Giant Logs” area right behind the Visitor’s Center. While we were there, a couple of friendly lizards posed for us atop the petrified wood.
The next hike was a few miles up the road at Crystal Forest. It was, like all of Petrified Forest National Park, a fascinating site, but Emma was tiring of looking at fossilized trees and so we decided to return to the Airstream for lunch and some cold drinks. Emma completed work for her Junior Ranger badge and shortly thereafter was duly sworn in by Tyra the Ranger. This is her third Junior Ranger badge.
Our goal is still Zion National Park by the weekend, but we decided to make a small detour to Sedona AZ to meet up with Fred and Renee. You might recall we last saw them in Myrtle Beach SC and Charleston SC. They’re on the same westward trek as we are, heading to Oregon for late June. We found them after a harrowing switchback descent from 7000 feet, in the overly-quaint town of Sedona.
Sedona’s main feature, as far as I can tell, is the abundance of towering red rocks which surround the town and the adjacent National Forest. Fred and Renee took us up a rugged dirt road five miles in their Jeep, to see the sunset views.
The views are spectacular, but difficult to capture. I should learn how to make panoramas, for places like this.
Click for larger
We’ve had ice cream and looked at the 180 photos I shot today, and now we’re sacking out. Arizona is a huge and wonderful state with incredible variety, and it seems like every day we spend here completely wears us out from the sheer magnitude of it.
May 7, 2006 at 10:00 pm · Filed under Uncategorized
This morning I received an email from blog reader Steve, who has a bus conversion in progress. I’ve always thought a motorhome conversion from a vintage Greyhound bus would be very cool, so we arranged a meeting at the local Home Depot, and Stan came along, too.
The stats on a bus conversion are incredible. These aluminum bodies are built to last three milllion miles, and diesel engines that go hundreds of thousands of miles between overhauls. 179 gallons of diesel means you can buy fuel in Boston and drive to Chicago with 1/3 of a tank left over.
A 39,000 lb. GVWR means enough carrying capacity for a dozen full-grown moose and a German Shephard, should you be so inclined. The basement storage capacity gives Steve enough room for 100-gallon holding tanks, a mountain bike, and practically an entire garage of tools. In other words, no need to travel light.
Then we got on with the main event of the day. Stan and I wheeled out his vintage Cessna taildragger and
aimed it down the runway. It was a perfect day for flying… calm wind, warm air, not much turbulence, and surprisingly little air traffic for this busy place. There are bunch of small airports, plus DFW, within a few miles, but it seemed like hardly anyone else was up there with us.
Stan let me fly his Cessna for a while, which was a real pleasure. The plane handles beautifully with a light touch. It reminded me of what I liked about flying my own plane in the 1990s. After four landings, we parked it and headed back to the house and trailer for one last grilled dinner (tilapia, salad, asparagus, and cheesecake) by the pool. Yep, courtesy parking can be really nice.
Tomorrow we need to get over to Roger Williams Airstream for our big service appointment. Let us know if you can drop by! I am looking forward to documenting our disc brake conversion, solar panel installation, and other upgrades.
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