OK, we’re back from our break and prepping to head out again. Tomorrow we’ll take the drive down I-8 and begin the first eastbound leg of our trip. But today we have a few more things to do in San Diego, including a tour of Cabrillo National Monument with Terry & Mike. Terry works there, so we are looking forward to the “insider’s tour”. I’ll post photos late tonight or tomorrow.
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Yes, he really did come all the way from France to the California desert … and missed us! But at least he got a picture to prove he made it. I just got this via email today:
Bruno’s Airstream blog can be found here. If you can’t read French, just click the button that says “English version”.
Hey, great news! Frappr has upgraded their mapping capability so now you can mark your location on our map!
Just click the link in the left column of this page that says “Click to see our map!” (you may have to scroll down to see it). When you see the map page, click the link to the right that says “Add yourself to map” and enter your name, email address and zip code. A little red pin will show up on our map that shows where you are!
You can also put in any little message you want. For example, do you own an Airstream? Do you plan to take a trip like ours? Do you have courtesy parking for us? We’d love to hear from you!
Flashback: Avenue of the Giants, near Redwood National Park, Nov 23, 2005
You asked for them, you got them! I just uploaded a new album to Flickr with a bunch more photos of our 1952 Cruiser project. You’ll see it’s pretty rough inside, but wait … in six months this trailer will be awesome!
Rob is towing it up to Plattsburgh later this month so Colin’s team can get started on it. We’ll start a separate blog for it around then. The plan is to have it ready for the International Rally in Salem Oregon by late June. Not much time! We’ll have to hustle.
OK, I’ll confess today …. I bought another Airstream last Saturday.
It’s a fixer-upper, over fifty years old. It’s going to be the next Airstream Life magazine project trailer. We are tenatively calling it “Project Vintage Lightning” (in homage to “our first project”).
The trailer is a 1952 Airstream Cruiser, 25 feet long. Richard Tedesco in North Carolina found it for us. It has some very cool 50s features, including the “sunburst” 13-panel front and rear domes, and a Zolatone painted interior. Of course, we’re going to do a total makeover on it, so when it is done it will be a beautiful showpiece, polished and outfitted with all kinds of cool goodies.
For you Airstream fanatics (like me): this is the only example we know of a 1950s Cruiser with two axles! It’s a California trailer, and we are working on discovering its history right now. I’ll report on that later. My only clue to its history at this point is a 1962 California title.
By the way, now you know why I was checking out that 1953 Airstream Cruiser we were parked next to back on December 3 in Santa Cruz … (The owner of that one wouldn’t sell.)
I’m very excited about this trailer. Not only does it have terrific potential, we have partnered with Colin Hyde for a professional refurbishing. Colin worked on my 1968 Caravel, and is currently working on Rob Baker’s “1958 Sovereign of the Road”, and will soon start on Steve Hingtgen’s “1956 Caravanner”. So we expect great things.
We hope to have it ready for the 2006 International Rally in Salem OR (late June). We’ll tour it around a bit in the summer and fall, and then it will be sold to some lucky person. Should be a sweet ride!
It was a beautiful day for towing over the mountains, but Julian was a bust. It’s not the sort of place one wants to be wandering around with a 30-foot trailer in tow. The whole town is basically on a hillside, and long parking spaces on level ground are non-existent.
We inquired locally about the gold mine, and were told we might be able to visit it with our trailer, but that turned out to be terrible advice. The road in was rutted dirt, one-lane, and without any sort of respectable turnaround. We arrived at the entrance gate to see a sign advising us that tours for adults were $10, children were $5, and “if you cross this line, you owe!”
At that point we just wanted to get our trailer out in one piece. After an exciting three-point maneuver (with barbed wire fencing to add to the fun), we reversed course and carefully picked out a path between the potholes back to the main road. Ah, well, not everything works out the way you’d want it to.
We’ve arrived at Terry and Mike’s house in San Diego for courtesy parking. Their extended family seems to own half the block, and they’ve combined backyards to create a private parking area for their various projects. After a little vehicle shuffling to make room, we got a nice spot on a concrete pad with electricity and fencing all around. Private, quiet, free … three of the the things that make courtesy parking great!
Terry is an occasional writer for Airstream Life. Can you guess what her day job is? Her husband possesses one of the most elaborate mustaches I have seen since Salvador Dali. Together they are quite a pair, and I’m not even mentioning Terry’s fetish for Tinkerbell dolls (oops, sorry Terry). We loved having chili dinner with them tonight, and Emma loved meeting their niece, cat, and two dogs.
We’ll be here for over a week. The rest of this week and next, I will be posting some tips and answers to your questions here, about every other day. Then, we’ll start heading east next Thursday or Friday.
Regretfully today is our departure day from Anza Borrego Desert State Park. This visit is definitely going to be one of our favorite stops in the entire tour, and I think we are all sorry to have to leave after only eight days.
Right now we are packing up in prep for our haul back over the mountains to San Diego. There’s a lot of pack up: bicycles, chairs, firewood, office equipment, etc. We don’t usually spread out so much during a stop, but this was a relatively long one.
If we can, we will stop in Julian on the way over, at 4000 ft. Tonight we’ll meet up with some Airstream friends and courtesy park. I hope it’s not raining over there. California has been getting drenched but we’ve had warm temperatures and sunshine every day. It will be an adjustment to go back to real weather!
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