Archive for Uncategorized
November 5, 2007 at 11:24 pm · Filed under Uncategorized
Not long after we arrived in Amador City, I knew we would want to stay two nights. The town is just a tiny blip in a valley, the remnant of a gold strike along historic Route 49 in California. There’s not a lot to do here, but the simplicity and quiet of the little town were hugely appealing to me.
Our Airstream occupies a huge chunk of Rob & Sadie’s driveway next to their Airstream, forcing them to park on the street, but they were very gracious about our request for a second night. With an electric cord from the garage, a connection to their outside water spigot, and absolutely perfect daytime temperatures, we’ve been very comfortable here. They are lucky that Yosemite is calling us, because otherwise we’d be tempted to stay a lot longer.
Just across the street are the remains of the first hard-rock gold mine in California, soon to be re-developed into housing. The developer is considering plans to retain some of the gold mine remnants, since the site is somewhat historic. He drove by our Airstream today and paused to admire it in the driveway. I told him to remember to leave space in the development for Airstream parking, and he said, “No problem!”
Our mail arrived at the little post office one block from the house, two big boxes, two fat Priority Mail envelopes, and a box of ten advance copies of the Winter 2007 Airstream Life. When we get mail, we usually get a lot of it. I sat down in front of the laptop and spent most of the day processing all the business mail that came in. The two big boxes contained a treasure trove of CDs, mostly photographs and past electronic layouts of the magazine that I need to organize and copy. I’ll be buying a new external hard drive soon for this project, and possibly moving my thousands of photos from the Mac’s default program (iPhoto) to something a little more robust.
By the way, copies of the Winter 2007 magazine should be in the mail to subscribers this week (but keep in mind they can take up to three weeks to arrive!) The magazine has a little surprise about it which long-time subscribers will notice immediately. I’ll let you find out for yourselves.
Rob gave us a little tour of his 1973 Airstream Safari, which he has been renovating for some time. We last saw this trailer at the 2006 Rocky Mountain Vintage Airstream Rally in Creede CO. The interior is very cool, with lots of interesting customizations. Among other things, it has solar panels, a retrofitted gray tank, a pure-sine wave inverter that powers every AC outlet in the trailer, a security system, custom cabinets, and custom lighting. It’s still not quite done but very usable and quite unique.
This afternoon Kelli called to say that Rt 140 into Yosemite is closed to vehicles over 28 feet long due to a rock slide. They found out the hard way, and were in the process of figuring out their detour. Fortunately, we will be coming in via Rt 120 (the northern entrance) and shouldn’t be affected.
Tonight and last night we have had dinner with Rob & Sadie in their little house. Like us, they are fans of small architecture. The house was expanded out of a 3-bay garage on a tiny plot of land. Rob and Sadie have managed to create a beautiful townhouse that functions beautifully in hardly any space at all. Like the Airstream, it reflects an appreciation for utility, form, and durability. The house feels very comfortable because it takes into account the needs of human beings first, rather than trying to impress, which is what the best RV’s do also.
November 3, 2007 at 11:59 am · Filed under Uncategorized
One of the best things about traveling by RV is that you can drive to the season you want. Most RV travelers naturally gravitate from north to south in winter, but we have chosen this year to enjoy an extended fall season by traveling to the northwest. I’m glad we did, since the northwest was full of interesting places and living things. But having done that, and endured inches of rain and many chilly nights, I’ve been looking forward to getting back to summer.
This morning was a good motivator to get moving. Our heat pump froze up around 4 a.m. This is the first time we’ve encountered this issue. When the temperature gets down into the 30s and there is high relative humidity, ice can form on the outside coils and prevent the heat pump from working. We’ve been having heavy dew each morning, but not until today did the magic combination occur that would cause the heat pump to stop producing heat. The cold air on my ears woke me up and I found it was 47 degrees inside the trailer. I flipped on the furnace and went back to bed, thinking it was time to head south and downward in elevation.
We said goodbye to the McDills, who are also heading south, and promised we’d all meet again on Tuesday in California. Partially because of our influence they are modifying their travel plans to include Yosemite. I think (after a holiday break) they’ll end up being on the road much longer than they originally thought. This lifestyle suits them well.
Because we had the wheels off the trailer (again), our drive down I-5 was periodically interrupted by my obsessive lug nut checks. Losing a wheel will do that to you. The road climbs up to the Siskiyou Pass (around 4,000 feet) where the weather can be dicey, and then descends slowly, first past Mount Shasta and the gorgeous Trinity area, then into the Sacramento Valley. Suddenly the temperatures soared to 80 degrees, the air smelled of growing plants, and we were back in summer.
Our goal today was the home of Doug and Sandy Keister in Chico. Doug is a photographer and author who has written several definitive books on travel trailers and motorhomes, and occasionally contributes an article or photo to Airstream Life. Sandy is a superior court judge. Doug and I been acquaintances for about three years, running into each other at Tin Can Tourist events and exchanging email, but have never had the chance to really sit down over dinner and get to know each other. So that’s what we did last night.
Doug and Sandy have a vintage “Safari” canned-ham type trailer that they hardly ever get to use. Being a prolific author (about 36 books so far), Doug is constantly traveling around the world and so he seems to live mostly on airplanes. At some point they plan to settle down more and travel in the trailer, but not any time soon.
Our stop here on the street in front of their house is necessarily short. It’s a quiet suburban cul-de-sac, but we aren’t really supposed to be here. We’ll move on in the morning and continue warming up in the glorious sun of the Sacramento Valley for a couple more days.
October 31, 2007 at 11:56 pm · Filed under Uncategorized
A blue polar bear and a pirate girl went wandering down the streets of Ashland, OR today. Fortunately no one noticed because they were part of a large parade of oddly-dressed people.
Ashland throws a huge costume parade down the main street for Halloween, and we were invited to attend by our new friends Kelli, Rob, and Allison. I say “new friends” because we’ve never met them before. Like us, they are traveling in an Airstream trailer with a young daughter and blogging the experience. Kelli and I have been reading each others blog for a few months, and Kelli realized recently that we would all be in Oregon right around Halloween, and invited us down so the girls could trick-or-treat together.
That turned out be a superb idea. Not only did Emma and Allison have a fabulous time together (parading, collecting candy, sharing their own private booth for pasta dinner after the parade, etc.) but the adults found a lot of common ground too. We’re thinking about getting together for some travels in California in the next couple of weeks.
The Ashland parade was full of incredible and creative costumes, but the most amazing costume we saw today had to be Zoltar. This guy not only built the booth (full of intricate details) and the costume, but mounted the whole rig atop a Segway so it could travel along the sidewalks and streets.
Without video it’s hard to convey how startling it is to see an entire booth, complete with mystical fortune-telling “robot” inside, roll up to you. It’s even more magical when strange music begins to play, and you hear Zoltar’s recorded voice announce in ethereal tones, “ZOLTAR SPEAKS!” Then he either tells your fortune or a joke, and the “robot” inside slowly picks up a candy and drops it in the bin so that you — the lucky recipient of a visit by Zoltar — can retrieve it.
And then, Zoltar silently glides away, booth and all.
It’s pure magic, and the guy who came up with it deserves some sort of award. Nicely done.
October 23, 2007 at 6:49 pm · Filed under Uncategorized
Cape Disappointment is another great state park along the Washington coastline. It’s too bad we can’t stay. It has everything (nice campsites near the ocean, full hookups, hiking trails, great scenery, historic sites, lighthouses) except the one thing I really need right now: cell phone coverage. There’s a spot of cell phone coverage in the nearby town of Ilwaco, but I need two full days in front of my computer, not just a quick email hit.
I hate leaving a nice spot to go work somewhere else, but that’s the essential element of full-timing and working simultaneously. People are clamoring for me to get things to them, and I have a stack of paperwork a foot tall in my bag that has to be dealt with.
So off we shall go tomorrow morning, in search of a nice spot along the Oregon coastline where I can get online and there are also things for Eleanor and Emma to do. I think we’ll find it, but it may take a few tries. I’m budgeting all day to drive only about 100 miles, with stops at various campsites to see if I can find the right spot.
This afternoon the Coast Guard has been practicing rescues off the rocky bluff by North Head Lighthouse, just down the beach from us. We’ve been hearing and seeing the big orange helicopters buzzing over our site, so we took a walk down the beach to watch the show.
They’ve staged a bunch of blue-suited rescue dummies on the cliff, and the helicopters hover overhead while orange-suited specialists comes down the line like a spider in a web. Eventually the dummy is hauled up into the helicopter and then for some reason they pull a few hundred feet away and hover over the water. The helicopter’s huge blades turn the rolling waves into fog, and then they fly back to base, and another helicopter arrives.
Being here has been a nice break from the week of rain and gray that we got from Vancouver all the way down to Hoquiam WA. The towels are finally dry, and our Airstream’s batteries are recharged. I think the consensus is that the Olympic peninsula was well worth the visit, even in the off season, and we’d do it again if we had the opportunity. But on the road our practice is to look forward, and rarely backward. Now we’re thinking about Oregon and the great things it has to offer.
October 22, 2007 at 7:43 pm · Filed under Uncategorized
The forecast for the Hoh Rain Forest turned out to be just as ridiculous as I suspected. Partly cloudy? 61 degrees? I couldn’t see any difference between the rain of yesterday and the rain of today. Just as moderate, constant, and exactly the same upper-40s temperature. Not that I was disappointed, because it is after all a rain forest, but I was wondering how often such optimistic forecasts really come true up there.
So we went for a hike in the forest. There are two short trails near the Visitor Center, running about 3/4 of a mile to 1.5 miles each. We took the longer one, but both Eleanor and I were wistfully eyeing the Hoh River Trail which goes 18.5 miles up to the Blue Glacier. In the summer that would be a heck of a great hike. We weren’t prepared for it on this visit, and conditions up above the rain would have prevented us from reaching the glacier anyway.
I can’t say enough about the beauty and dramatic forest scenery in the Hoh, but mostly because I haven’t time. This blog is coming to you from a parking lot in a small town near Cape Disappointment State Park, on the very lowest western corner of Washington State. This is the end of the Lewis and Clark expedition’s trail, and it’s also the site of a great state park where we are now camped. There’s no cell phone service in the campground at Cape Disappointment, so I have to commute a few miles into town to get online.
We had tried to make an intermediate stop at Kalaloch campground, on the coast in the Olympic National Park, but the weather was abominable. The campground was (predictably) completely vacant despite being located right on the water and having a beautiful setting. In the summer reservations are recommended, but now you can have your pick of sites.
We were just a bit unlucky. When we arrived it was still raining, with huge sandy-brown waves crashing far out off the shore, and a cold wind. There was no electricity in the campground and no cell phone service. We stopped for lunch, parking the Airstream by the shore, and moved on.
The only other stop for the day was the tiny village of Humptulips, where we picked up mail. We chose this spot for our mail only because it was right on our route and had an interesting name. Picking up the mail forced us to stop and take a quick look at a place that we otherwise would not have bothered to visit. I may start picking other oddly-named little towns for our mail pickups in the future, just for fun.
Despite having difficulty getting online, we’ve decided to spend two nights at least here. There’s a lot to check out and it’s balmy (50s and 60s) and sunny. We need to soak up a little warmth and dry for a few days.
October 9, 2007 at 9:48 pm · Filed under Uncategorized
We’re parked at Bert & Janie’s house in Bigfork, MT, near the beautiful Flathead Lake. We’re here to catch up on a few things before we head across the border to Canada.
Mostly we have an enormous pile of mail to dig through. Emma’s school curriculum arrived in two large boxes which will probably put us 30 pounds closer to exceeding the Airstream’s Gross Vehicle Weight Rating. I also got a large Priority Mail box full of letters from Airstream Life magazine subscribers (mostly renewals and subscriptions) which I’ll need to process before we head out. With all the various things in the mail we expect to need all of Wednesday and Thursday just to catch up.
One of the articles to be published in the upcoming (November) Winter 2007 issue of Airstream Life will be about crossing the Canadian border. I re-read it this morning and remembered that I had neglected to call our insurance company for a new “Canadian Interprovince Liability Insurance Card.” That’s a little slip of paper that reassures the Canadian officials that we have insurance in the event of an accident. Fortunately, my insurance company was able to email the card to me in PDF format so I had it in two minutes via email.
The weather is forecast to be warm and sunny through the weekend in Banff, so at this point our little northern excursion is looking good. Our only real concern is another early snowstorm like we had in Yellowstone last week.
At this point, snow seems confined to the upper reaches of the Rockies. The drive up from Butte to here was beautiful, and Flathead Lake was glassy calm in the late afternoon. Montana, Eleanor has pointed out, looks like an amalgam of many other states we like: snow-capped mountains, pines and aspens, little cacti, broad lakes, dry valleys, hot springs. Driving through it can be as pleasant as a day’s hike.
October 6, 2007 at 10:07 pm · Filed under Uncategorized
The winter storm that has brought us the constant rain and snow the past two days was still with us this morning. Even in Ennis, below 5000 ft, we woke up to snow flurries and threatening gray skies.
We debated all morning about the choice between another visit to Virginia City, or driving 59 miles to Bozeman to see the Museum of the Rockies (which was highly recommended). In the end, Bert & Janie went back to Virginia City and we took the beautiful but snowy route east to Bozeman.
The Museum of the Rockies is adjacent to Montana State University, and it was highly recommended to us for the dinosaur exhibit. Emma is at that age when dinosaurs are cooler than chocolate ice pops, so even though we saw dinos just a couple of weeks ago in Thermopolis, we had to go.
Of course, what Emma doesn’t know is that every museum is an opportunity for homeschooling. She just soaks it up like kids do, and then spouts it back to anyone who will listen. Sometimes adults are a little taken aback when they hear her talking about the Cretaceous Period and what an Archaeopteryx looked like. (“Gee, they don’t have any feathered dinosaurs in this brochure, and those are the ones I know the best!”)
Montana has a “Dinosaur Trail” which has 16 places to stop (museums, parks, and field stations) in a giant circle across the state. We’ll get nowhere near all of those sites, but I’ve asked Bert to research and write a dinosaur-hunting article for one of the 2008 or 2009 issues of Airstream Life magazine. His article will include not only the great spots in Montana but also those in Wyoming, South Dakota, Colorado, and possibly Utah.
The storm began to move off to the southeast in the afternoon, which gave us views of the mountains that we hadn’t been able to see before. With the heavy clouds and fog, it was easy to forget that we’re in the northern reaches of the Rocky Mountains. Being in a valley between two ranges of mountains, Ennis has some spectacular views both east and west, and with the dissipating fog and golden fields it became quite dramatic.
Mountains over Ennis Lake Recreation Area. Click for larger.
The town is cute and very small, amounting to a two-block downtown. But everything is there, including a cafe where you can hear the local news being discussed in the morning, and a creaky old-time one-screen theater across the street. Being Saturday night, we decided to check both out. (We left Bert & Janie back at the campground — those poor folks are just too old to go out on a Saturday night, I guess.)
Emma has had quite a good day by kid standards (see her blog entry, following), and the parents have too, so I didn’t see any reason to stop the fun this evening. Besides, it has been forever since I saw a movie in an a really old-fashioned theater with Art Deco lighting, a balcony, and cracked leather seats with wooden backs. About 25 local kids showed up to see the movie with us. The theater is only open Friday and Saturday nights, and the movie changes every week. I got the sense that someone was keeping the theater alive against financial logic, because it was a good thing for the community. Or perhaps, it does a more lively business in the summer. In any case, it was nice to find.
We like small downtowns like this one. There’s a strong sense of community and a central gathering point for people, and a little bit of nightlife. One thing I never liked about living in rural areas was the sense of isolation that comes from lacking a town center. I think this affects our choice of places to travel. While many people dream of finding that perfect secluded spot and camping “away from it all”, we have seclusion available to us in abundance and so tend to seek out places where people live and commune.
But tomorrow we will definitely be out in the boonies. We are heading to Bannack, a true western ghost town where it is likely I will not be able to get online. If so, I’ll update the blog from our stop on Monday.
By the way, I uploaded a bunch of pictures from our trip to Yellowstone National Park. You can see them in our Flickr photo album.
« Previous entries ·
Next entries »
