Archive for January, 2006
January 11, 2006 at 11:08 am · Filed under Uncategorized
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!
January 9, 2006 at 10:10 pm · Filed under Uncategorized
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.
January 9, 2006 at 9:31 am · Filed under Uncategorized
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!
January 8, 2006 at 7:09 am · Filed under Tips & Ideas
The longer we stay in Borrego Springs, the more we discover. The history and geography of Anza-Borrego is so extensive that it has spawned several thick books. And the “hidden” parts of the park are just enormous.
We took a hike yesterday morning to spot some bighorn sheep. Four trips to Anza-Borrego and I’ve never seen one, although they are very common in the hills here. After a mile of hiking we saw a ram and a ewe leaping from rock to rock at an unbelievable speed. It was all I could do to get my camera pointed and firing before they disappeared. Even at three shots per second, I only managed to get a few images.
You can see how well camouflaged these animals are. If it weren’t for their rapid movement, we probably wouldn’t have spotted them at all. Although we stayed out for another hour on the trail, we didn’t spot any others. This pair managed to double back and sneak past us (by climbing high into the hills) later. I am amazed the mountain lions ever manage to catch one.
Saturday I also dropped in on an ranger talk about the Carrizo Gorge Railroad, which passes through this park to the south. Eleanor and I had hiked about six miles of the inactive railroad bed back in the mid-90s (where we had a surprising encounter with a group of nudists, but that’s another story). I wanted to find out why the railroad was ever built, since it was an impossibly twisty route with over fifteen tunnels and enormous bridges made of 8×10 redwood posts.
Turns out the railroad was an unprofitable disaster since it opened in 1919. Floods, derailments, tunnel collapses, Mexican bandits, and many other problems occurred over the decades. It was finally abandoned in 1983, but in 2003 the County of San Diego announced plans to bring it back. Now it is being policed and we can’t hike it anymore, which is a shame since it is an amazingly scenic trail.
Last night we went to a campfire talk with another ranger. The subject was the Fish Creek parcel of the park, where we went offroading on Friday. The talk really rounded out our experience. Whenever we are in national parks, we aim for the ranger talks because they give you an appreciation and understanding of the place that you can’t get by just wandering around with a trail map.
Our Saturday morning hike. Trailhead sign says, “Trail is HOT – DRY. Bring one gallon of water per person.”
January 6, 2006 at 7:19 pm · Filed under Uncategorized
What a beautiful day today! Pure sunshine, 80 degrees, dry and gorgeous. We stayed close to home to relax and catch up on some work. But I took an opportunity to catch our hummingbird friends in flight, over by the Camp Host’s hummingbird feeder. After just five minutes of waiting, this lovely couple showed up.
These are “Anna’s Hummingbirds,” which I suspect are the same as the “Costa’s Hummingbird” but I haven’t checked yet.
Sorry the photo is so grainy. I had to crank the camera up to 1600 ISO (in full sun!) to even catch this much. This was shot at 1/640th of a second, f13. Those little birds are fast! I’ll post more photos on the Flickr album later tomorrow.
January 6, 2006 at 9:21 am · Filed under Travel / lifestyle musings
Remember back in early December when we stopped at Tim Shepard’s house for a night of courtesy parking and an interview? Well, you can listen to the podcast now, on your computer. Just go to www.thevap.com and download Episode 9! You don’t need any special software.
In the podcast, Eleanor and I talk about living on the road, planning, budgeting, getting along, vintage vs. new, packing, laundry, and more.
January 5, 2006 at 5:15 pm · Filed under Uncategorized
OK, we have had our offroading experiences. The Nissan is now, uh, “broken in” (a few scratches), and we’ve learned what it is all about.
Yesterday we spent the afternoon checking out a slot canyon which is only reachable by 4wd road. You drive about two miles and then climb down into the canyon. The canyons go for miles sometimes. Serious fun!
Later, we took the scenic route through a few rocky washes (dry creeks), and found some SERIOUS off-roading spots. I wish I had a picture of us going down a steep rutted slope in 4WD LO, but at the time our thoughts were mostly of survival. The roads can go from sandy tracks to “mountain goat required” in an instant. In fact, the road with the steep descent was called “Goat Trail”. It should have been a clue! Fortunately, most of our routes were fun and easy driving.
At one point, driving down a rocky wash, Eleanor asked if we could get the Airstream in there. Uh, probably not. But it would be a very cool place to camp — very isolated, very private, very pretty.
We topped off the evening with a campfire cookout, and then I had to get to work. I’ve been working early mornings and late evenings so I can get the most out of the sunny days. If you see me on AOL IM late at night, that’s why. (My AOL screenname is “rluhr” — feel free to say Hi sometime.)
Today we snuck out of the “office” at 11 and headed out for more exploring. This time we hit a 4wd road that leads to “Wind caves”, which are sandstone deposits eroded by the wind into interesting formations. On the way, we passed through a large canyon. Those canyons are magical. Fossilized mollusks make up some of the walls, along with sandstone, desert flowers, even bees. There’s always something to stop and take a look at.
The wind caves are a one-mile hike from the road (mostly up), and it was the perfect day for it: sunny, 80 degrees, light breeze, dry. And the views from the top were spectacular.
The caves are small but perfect for kids to climb in and around. I checked them for scorpions and similar critters, but they were all empty except for sand.
We did manage to uncover some interesting symbols drawn on the rock.
Our final venture was to Sandstone Canyon, which was extremely interesting at times. In the photo below we’ve just come out of one of the deep winding slots. But this spot was easy. At times we had to fold up the side mirrors and watch both sides to make sure we could fit! We did pretty well until we reached a spot where it was too technical to continue. I had to back out for about 100 feet, and unfortunately scraped the front lower bumper a bit along the sandstone. Oh well.
Back at camp, we found a note from Bruno Accart, a subscriber and blog reader from France. Bruno and his family are in southern California on their annual vacation. Unfortunately, Bruno lost my phone number and so he couldn’t call today to tell me he was coming for a visit. He sent a note through this website but I didn’t get it until I got home. By then, there was a note on our door: “Hi to Rich & you family. Bruno and Leila were here … but not you. Maybe for the next time. Bruno & Leila — FRANCE –”
Sorry Bruno! I tried to call you back but my mobile phone wouldn’t let me call your mobile phone because your phone number is in France. If you see this — give me a call at 1-802-877-2900. I have a t-shirt here for you!
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