November 20, 2007 at 8:09 pm · Filed under Uncategorized
As always, things changed. Last night we were going to try for an oceanside county park, but then we got to thinking differently (always a dangerous thing) and suddenly we were going to Riverside, 120 miles distant.
It happened like this: I called a friend in Riverside who we were going to look up, to tell him that we couldn’t make it over for a visit before Thanksgiving. The friend promptly invited us to Thanksgiving dinner. That was unexpected, since we thought he was going out of town.
Riverside is not an easy place to camp. There is a county park called Rancho Jalupa, and a few commercial campgrounds 30 to 60 minutes drive away. That’s about it. Rancho Jalupa was (predictably) completely booked, and the commercial campgrounds were $45 per night and up, if they had space. After considering it for a while, I remembered Don & Gail, Airstream Life subscribers who have emailed me in the past. They have a house in Riverside, so I emailed them at about 10 p.m. to see if they had suggestions.
They did. Right in front of their house in a very nice neighborhood in Riverside. It’s nice to have so many friends in the Airstream community who are willing to help out.
Then I called my old college buddy Alex, who live in Silicon Valley. I’d been feeling badly about skipping the entire Bay Area and a bunch of good friends. I remembered that Alex’s mother-in-law lived in Riverside, and theorized he and his family might be coming down for Thanksgiving. They were — another lucky break.
All the signs were now clear. We were destined to go to the great Inland Empire of California. So in the morning we packed up and bailed out of the noisy campground (while a news helicopter was slowly circling overhead and a freight train was passing by). Five minutes after we hit the road, our last courtesy parking host David called to say that he’d driven past all the county campgrounds we were considering earlier, and every one was completely full. That was yet another confirmation we’d made the right decision to head east.
Driving across the Los Angeles metroplex can be a harrowing experience, but even more so with a big trailer strapped to your butt. The 120-mile trip from Ventura to Riverside can take two hours, fifteen minutes, or it can take four hours with traffic. We went mid-day in the hopes of avoiding the worst of the traffic, and were amazingly successful.
About 3/4 of the way through we made a wrong turn and ended up in a quasi-industrial / Hispanic neighborhood for a few minutes, so we took it as an opportunity to grab some lunch at an authentic taco shop. We’re in southern California so it’s safe to eat Mexican again (no risk of eastern “Mex” food made with spaghetti sauce, or de-spiced for wimpy palates).
When you eat at this sort of place the tacos are always soft, not crunchy, and the fillings don’t resemble anything you get at Taco Bell. They had four types on the menu: asada, langua, cabeza, and pastor, and since we didn’t know what those meant and the girl at the counter couldn’t explain it in English, we just ordered them all. $1.25 each plus an awesome burrito for $3.99. Add in some horchata, a pineapple soda for Emma, and jamaica for Eleanor, and we’ve got lunch.
It turns out that the difference between the four types was considerable, although they all looked similar. The pastor was spicy, the asada was a tasty steak, the langua tasted of fresh green spices, and the cabeza was a bit dull.
If you want to know where to get the best tacos in the Los Angeles area, check out this guy’s taco blog.
We are now parked on the street in front of Don & Gail’s house in Riverside. It is a huge relief from the Ventura campground and the price is right too. We are parked in a “knuckle”, a wide spot on the corner where we will be out of the way for the next couple of nights. Don and Gail will toss us an electric cord later tonight, but otherwise we are going to try to stay out of their way. They just got back last week from a multi-month Airstream trip, and so they are still settling back into their house. I think that’s the hardest part of any trip.
November 19, 2007 at 11:26 pm · Filed under Places to avoid
Finding camping in and around Los Angeles is always trickier than other places. Finding camping over Thanksgiving week — at the last minute — is nearly impossible. This is one of those exceptional times when our “no reservations” policy has made life more difficult. We’ve looked around the past couple of days and found that our choices have dwindled to virtually none.
Normally we’d bail out of the metro area and head a hundred miles into the desert where other people don’t go, but this week we have special considerations. We need to be back to LAX on Saturday, and we have friends to meet in the area, and I want to get some work done before we fly out. Plus, Eleanor wants to do some cooking even if we aren’t going to have a full-blown Thanksgiving dinner in the trailer this week.
That means we need the impossible: a camp site that is inexpensive, close to Los Angeles, and offering full hookups. In reality we can get any two of those three things this week.
The reason is that area campgrounds are charging “holiday rates” for sites. Here that means $55 per night for a site that should cost about $30 normally. The more reasonably priced state parks are booked solid. We have a potential strategy to try to get into a county park that doesn’t take reservations, but it is boondocking only (no water, electric, or dump station). So we decided to spend one night in an overpriced full-service campground so we could dump, refill, do laundry, and stay closer to our Ventura friends. Fully restocked with water and with empty holding tanks, we’ll be ready to hit the county park on Tuesday, assuming we can get an opening.
The place we have ended up is actually very well-kept and would be a decent place if it were not located directly adjacent to Highway 101. Pick any major interstate highway and imagine yourself camped in the breakdown lane, and you won’t be too far from what it is like to be here. By day the noise is tremendous, a constant four-lane roar layered with thundering tractor-trailers, the whine of tires on concrete, and the occasional unmuffled motorcycle.
There is no chance of sitting peacefully under your awning in the afternoon, unless you are stone deaf. This is not what Gerry Beckley and Dewey Bunnell had in mind when they wrote their lyrics.
“There are a lot of transients in this area,” warned the nice lady at the check-in counter. They asked me to destroy the secret code to the bathrooms and the pool somewhere off-site, so a dumpster-diver can’t find it. Propane refills are $4.50 per gallon, and you have to leave your driver’s license while the tank is being refilled.
And yet the place is sold out for Thanksgiving, at $55 bucks a night. When I see situations like this, I wonder “Who in their right mind would choose to stay here and pay that rate to park in the noise? Can’t they think of a better place to be on a holiday?” For us, this is like torture. I’d rather be at a Wal-Mart. The noise makes me feel like we are staying at the Flying J truck stop, only with grass.
I’ve never understood why people will voluntarily park for more than a night in a noisy RV park. But even in the rattiest hell-holes of RV parks I have met people who think they are in paradise, so clearly there is something I’m not seeing. It is probably that, like us, they have a particular reason to be here (relatives?) and are simply taking what is available. It certainly is true that along this stretch of coastal California there are hardly any places to camp away from Hwy 101, so perhaps they figure that at least in the RV park they get hookups with their dose of noise.
In other parts of the country we have bypassed such places and found a lovely county or state park just a few miles away. I know most of these folks have a copy of Woodall’s guide or the Trailer Life directory, so they must know that other options exist. For some reason, they won’t take them.
Well, perhaps tomorrow we will. Up the highway the county parks we have our eyes on probably won’t be a lot quieter because they’ll be near Hwy 101 too. There won’t be any hookups at all and we’ll have to conserve water and electricity as we have done so many times before. But for those considerations (plus $20 a night) we will be just a hundred feet from the pounding Pacific surf, and we’ll have a million-dollar view. I’ll take that deal — if I can get it. If not, we’ll have to figure out Plan B.
November 18, 2007 at 11:32 pm · Filed under Uncategorized
Some time ago I was “tagged” by my friend Rich C, who writes a blog of his own about his life in Prescott AZ. I think that being tagged means I am supposed to write seven things about myself that are not commonly known (and then tag a few other bloggers to do the same).
My first feeling about the “7 things” tagging game was that it was silly, a sort of blog chain letter, far outside of the purpose of this blog. Then it occurred to me that since I have been blogging our daily life on the Internet for over two years, there remains very little left to tell other than things I have deliberately avoided discussing. Thus, perversely, the challenge of coming up with seven more things to say might be interesting, or at least a mild break from the musings of daily events that usually comprise the blog.
So here they are, seven things you didn’t know about me and probably don’t care to:
- I never wear a watch but I own two watches, an ultra-thin black Swatch and a vintage Hamilton Electric Ventura.
- My Airstream’s essential equipment includes a torque wrench, a laptop, and a collection of James Bond movies on DVD.
- All of my three pairs of glasses have scratched upper left corners from using my camera. This makes me consider Lasik or contact lenses.
- My favorite animal is a Maine Coon tabby cat, the bigger, the better.
- If I had my life to live over again, I would have cycled across the USA the first time somebody suggested it to me.
- I once lost my sense of smell for two months. (Steak tastes like cardboard if you can’t smell it.)
- The most common comment on my school report cards was that I’d do much better if I just applied myself. I always wished I could turn the tables by issuing a report card on my teachers.
Well, I feel better having gotten all that off my chest. And now, back to our regularly scheduled program …
The Airstream is parked on a sloping road in front of David and Ariadna’s house. It is so sloped in fact that even unhitching the trailer and dropping the front down to the ground, we still have a noticeable elevation gain when walking from back to front. I put both Rotochoks into the wheels and hoped they would hold. So far the Airstream hasn’t traveled as a result of gravitational attraction.
Either the city of Ventura or the county of Ventura would like our courtesy parking hosts to report that we are parked here on the street, if we are to stay more than two nights. Rather than force them to do that, we are moving on to a campground tomorrow, where we will stay through Thanksgiving if possible. We wanted to go to Point Mugu State Park’s beachfront camping area, but it has been foggy and cold lately along the coast. Not only would this make the beach much less fun, but we wouldn’t be able to make power with our solar panels, and the campground offers no electrical hookups.
So we are leaving, but Emma and her new friend 7-year-old William have been so happy together (yet another score on the kid front) that we may stay fairly local and come back for a few more play dates. They certainly managed to keep each other entertained today while we roamed around town. David took us to the secret location where he stores his highly polished 1964 Airstream Globe Trotter, and his slick vintage truck, and then we all went down the Pacific Coast Highway past Point Mugu to Neptune’s Net for seafood.
Neptune’s Net is a great spot for seafood, but in my opinion the best aspect is the people-watching. You can sit at big picnic tables with your fried seafood basket and see the most classic California personalities, from sun-bleached surfers to hawg riders to Sunday-best-suited churchgoers. There’s a dress code, though. A sign says clearly that if you are dripping wet (the beach is just across the highway), “No soup for you!”
Now, let me offer a version of the “7 things” challenge to you. If you can, write up 7 great places that we should visit in southern California or the American southwest that we might otherwise overlook, and post them to the blog as a comment. If you can’t come up with seven, just write as many as you can. Other blog readers will appreciate them, and I’ll see how many we can add to our itinerary.
November 17, 2007 at 11:41 pm · Filed under Uncategorized
Note that this post is entitled “Airstream life” with a small “l”. It’s not about my magazine, Airstream Life, but rather the fun and occasionally odd coincidences, opportunities, and friendships that pop up simply as a result of being part of this lifestyle.
For the past two days we have been feted by our hosts Cynthia and Dennis as if we were celebrities, which has been simultaneously flattering and humbling. Flattering, because of the attention we received and the thrill our hosts affected from our visit. Humbling, because at the end of our visit, Cynthia noted that in the final analysis we were “just regular people” who happen to be living a different sort of life. After two nights in their driveway our celebrity status was stripped away and we were revealed as Rich & Eleanor & Emma, three people who breathe the same air as everyone else, and who still have to swipe the credit card at the pump twice when the total exceeds $75.
Perhaps in the future we should bail out before our courtesy parking hosts realize they’ve been had by a family of nomadic carpetbaggers who sleep in driveways for free. (Although I did give Dennis an Airstream Life hat and some free advice to “pay” for our visit.)
I’m just joking of course … We became fast friends with Dennis and Cindy, and Emma has a good friend in Madison, and we hope to see them all again soon. That’s how it goes, and we love it. We’ve made a lot of good friends in the past few weeks and there is little doubt they will pop up in our lives again, possible in an completely unexpected place and time, as happened today with Rickie and Yank Sefton.
We were standing in the driveway admiring the two lovely Airstreams when an unknown truck pulled in to the driveway. A man in the driver’s seat called out, “Is this Mark’s place?” I said “No!” and then noticed that the driver was our friend Yank, and sitting next to him was his wife Rickie. We hadn’t seen Yank and Rickie since last June in Oregon. It turned out they were in Los Olivos looking for the park where they had first kissed, and they were attending a rally of the El Camino Real Unit of the WBCCI just a few miles away.
So we went to the rally, of course, and found many other Airstream friends there, including Tommy & Kathy Green, Herb Richter, and Marilyn & Roger Taylor. Tommy pulled out his collection of ukeleles and dobros and inspired me to get back on practicing. I’m hoping he will join us at Anza-Borrego in December so he can tutor me a little — his playing is really great and he’s only been at it a couple of years.
Meanwhile, Cindy & Dennis got so pumped by the friendly people at the rally that they went home and got their trailer. They’re going to camp at the rally site for a few nights and commute to work from there instead of from home for a while.
Before all this happened, Emma joined Madison for her Saturday morning karate class. I’ve been wanting Emma to try karate since I’ve hypothesized for a while that she’d like it, and I was right. When we get back to Tucson and are working on the house I’ll try to get her in for some lessons. Karate is great for kids, helping them develop physical skills and mental discipline. The instructor in Los Olivos was really excellent. I can only hope we can find someone as good as him later.
Driving around town after karate, we spotted this little gem sitting in a driveway. It’s a 1947 Silver Streak, very much like the late 1940s Airstreams. I talked to the owner, who was only too happy to give me a tour of the project. It’s still gutted inside but in a year he plans to be touring the country in it. It’s very hard to find 1940’s-era aluminum trailers in any condition these days, so he’s got something quite special on his hands.
With all the action today, I was beginning to feel the need for some down time, and we were due to head to Ventura to courtesy park at Dave & Ariadna’s house. The 70 mile drive down Rt 101 was just the answer, since the traffic was light and the scenery along the Pacific Coast always inspires me. We made a quick stop at Carpinteria State Beach to use the dump station ($8) and found ourselves parked on the street in front of Dave & Ariadna’s by 5 p.m., just in time for sunset.
Once again we are blessed with a 7-year-old to engage with Emma. She and William immediately began doing kid things to the living room (stacking pillows to make a fort, playing raucously with the dog, yelling, and pointing Nerf guns at each other), and left us free to get to know our current courtesy parking hosts.
Ariadna is from Mexico, and for this occasion she went all out and made us an authentic homestyle Mexican dinner. I ate far too many tortillas, but I couldn’t resist her cooking. She has completely charmed Eleanor, and it wasn’t long before David and I began kicking around ideas for a Sonoran Airstream tour, perhaps in late February or early March — assuming we can get the house under control by then. Not only would Ariadna be a huge asset by speaking Spanish, but it looks like we would all enjoy doing the same sorts of things once we get to Mexico, and the kids would have a blast together.
But that’s far off. Right now we need to figure out this week. Thanksgiving is looming and we have no place to stay. Tomorrow we are going to check out some interesting potential spots in Malibu, Santa Paula, and other close areas. On Saturday, one week from today, we will fly out of LAX for a vacation, and between now and then we have a ton of things to do.
Now, I know what you’re thinking … “Vacation? How can they tell the difference?” Well, a vacation by my definition is a period in which I do no work. Normally I work every day of the week, weekends included. Once in a while I declare a holiday and leave work behind. This time, it happens that the place we all want to be while I am on vacation is a place we can’t reach conveniently with the Airstream, thus we are flying from LAX. I’ll talk more about that later.
November 16, 2007 at 8:51 pm · Filed under Tips & Ideas, Travel / lifestyle musings
We seem to be really scoring with the kids these days. Two years ago when we were roaming California for the first time (in December), we went through a long spell of seeing hardly families, and we were wondering if this was going to be the pattern during the school year.
This year the situation has been much better. First we met up with 8-year-old Allison at Halloween, then again in Yellowstone. Here in Los Olivos we are lucky to find 7-year-old Madison, and this weekend we’ll see another 7-year-old down in Ventura. Emma has been having a great time, and luckily we’ve enjoyed the company of all the parents as well.
Last night we backed the Airstream into the driveway of our hosts Dennis and Cindy just before sunset. I’ve got to be constantly aware of the short days now, because if we had arrived just 30 minutes later the moderately tricky backing job past trees and around corners would have been escalated to a bona fide “ordeal”. Even in this part of southern California sunset is arriving before 5 p.m., which makes our driving days very short.
Last night Cindy made a great dinner for us all, and so tonight Eleanor is going to reciprocate with an Indian meal. I complain that the Airstream’s cabinets contain too many ingredients and not enough food, and for non-cook like myself that is true. But on nights like this the value becomes clear. Eleanor is able to whip up an amazing ethnic dinner (Indian, Japanese, etc) right out of the masses of diverse ingredients in the cabinets. Since I love foreign food of all types, I can only sit back and admire as she creates something worthy of a genuine Indian restaurant in the space of an Airstream kitchen. Even outdoors in a 20-foot radius around the trailer you can smell the wonderful odors of rogan josh, curry, dal makhani, and palek paneer.
Los Olivos is in horse country, and it seems that nearly every house in the rural areas (which is most of it) has a horse paddock or a small farm growing nuts or berries. Just a short distance from our parking spot is a tiny downtown, which is filled with art galleries and wine tasting rooms. It’s nice, pedestrian-friendly, and pleasantly uncrowded — at least this time of year. I went there today to mail a few boxes of books back to Tucson for storage (we’re trying to lighten the trailer and make some room).
A tip for those of you who are on the road for long periods: look for the Priority Mail “Flat-Rate” boxes at the post office when shipping heavy items like books. You can stuff as much as you want in those boxes regardless of weight (for about $9) but you have to be sure to get the box that says “Flat Rate” on it. We divested ourselves of about 20 lbs of stuff, but more importantly freed up some valuable storage space.
The other neat town near here is Solvang, a “Danish village” according to the billboards. The entire town is themed with Danish and psuedo-Danish architecture, much like Frankenmuth MI but quite a bit larger. Even the Mexican restaurant is clad in a Danish exterior. The overall effect is quaint to a fault, to the point that it begins to resemble EPCOT at DisneyWorld.
The stores are mostly one of these categories: wine shops, gift shops, restaurants, bakeries and inns, so it gets a little redundant after a while. Fortunately, Solvang has managed to keep out the homogenization of chain retail shops, and except for an IZOD Outlet most of the stores seem to be local and unique. That makes it much more interesting. If the outlets take over, Solvang will look like Freeport, Maine in drag.
The bakeries and restaurants are my favorite part of Solvang, only because I like to eat anything that doesn’t move quickly. We decided to be totally decadent today and have a pastry lunch at “Mortensen’s Danish Bakery”, and is our practice we all ordered something different: a butter cream-and-raspberry-filled puff pastry for Emma, a raspberry Danish for me, and some sort of almond cake with mocha butter cream for Eleanor. We haven’t been so bad about lunch in a year, when we did the same thing at a little French pastry shop in St Augustine FL. It’s good to be bad once in a while.
November 15, 2007 at 8:01 pm · Filed under Travel / lifestyle musings
Normally I’m an advocate of preserving our natural resources for future generations. This means protecting wilderness areas from undue encroachment, and setting in place reasonable policies for use and management of natural spaces. It turns out that here at Oceano Dunes a battle is ongoing for domination of the sand, with off-highway vehicle users and campers (like us) on one side, facing off against beachfront property owners.
I can’t jump into the middle of the battle without knowing better what the issues are. So far I’ve heard only from one side. But I can say that an experience like camping overnight on the sand at Oceano Dunes is almost unique in this country, and that opportunity is itself a form of vanishing resource.
It seems to do no harm for us to be here. We will pack out everything we bring in and leave no trace of our visit (except tracks in the sand). We won’t destroy dune grasses or harass wildlife, even the sand dollars that are embedded in the flat wet sand below the high tide line. I can think of no one, no living thing, and no local natural resource that we will negatively impact.
But I suppose those people who live near the beach have their reasons for wanting to get rid of us. And they may eventually win the battle, so the opportunity to camp by the sea here at Oceano ““ a unique experience in all of California ““ may be only temporary. It may join a long list of really special travel experiences that your parents or grandparents remember doing, but which are no longer allowed in the name of “property rights”, wildlife protection, or national security.
Some of those changes have been for good reasons, such as no longer feeding bears garbage at Yellowstone and Yosemite. But others have been pushed through for political gain or as part of shallowly-disguised land grabs. Regardless of the reason, we seem to have less freedom and fewer opportunities here year after year. If you want to experience what we’ve done here, I know of only two places left in the US (Oceano Dunes and South Padre Island). And in general, it’s a good idea to grab the experiences that the world still has to offer before they disappear.
I would like to stay here a week, and next time we are in the area we will absolutely do that. The truck that drives by (several times a day, it turns out) has ice, water ($0.50 per gallon!), and pump-outs for $30. With two full tanks of propane and our solar panels, we can stay here for a long time. Better yet, I can work here, since my cell phone and cellular Internet connection function well. This may have been one of the best days at work I’ve ever enjoyed, with door wide open to admit the ocean breeze, the high tide now only fifty feet from our door, incredible sunshine, and Emma happily making a castle in the sand nearby.
Around 10 this morning we had a visit from Shaun Kieran and his associate Nikolai, who work repairing church organs all over southern and central California. They pulled up in a new 20-foot Airstream Safari Special Edition, which they live in while working on jobs. On the weekends, Shaun brings his wife and two small children out in the Airstream for vacations.
These guys were just looking for a spot to take a break in between jobs today and went looking for this beach. They were surprised to see us parked here on the sand, so they stopped and unloaded their surf boards and we got acquainted. The water was too cold for surfing even with their wetsuits, but Shaun will be back next weekend with the family for some camping.
We hung around the beach until 3 p.m., and by then the sun was already dipping low to the southwest. It was time to head off to our next stop, down in Los Olivos with Cindy, Dennis, and Madison. But first, we stopped at the North Beach Campground to use the dump station, and there we had one more surprise. A fellow walked up to us and said, “Hey, you might not remember me, but we were parked with you in Whispering Pines in Vermont!” We love the “small world” moments like that.
November 14, 2007 at 9:10 pm · Filed under Places to go
During our stay in Visalia, Roger mentioned a few places to camp in Paso Robles and Pismo Beach. I was considering them all until he mentioned that in Pismo Beach, if we drove past the commercial campgrounds and the state beach campground, we could camp on the beach. That was all it took to make the decision.
We’ve camped at the beach several times, and we always like it. Memorable places include Charlestown State Breachway (RI), the Red Coconut (Ft Myers FL), and Bahia Honda State Park (Florida Keys). We’ve also driven on beaches, including a couple of weeks ago in Oregon and back east in St Augustine FL. But we’ve never camped on the beach before.
It’s a three hour drive across the sunny dry valley on Route 41 to get to Hwy 101 and finally Rt 1 along the coast. But then when you swing through Pismo’s downtown and see the surfboard shops, Chinese restaurants, art galleries and, just beyond, palm trees in sand, suddenly the sun is a welcoming friend and the drive is worth it.
The camping here is just $10 per night, since there are no amenities except trash barrels and chemical toilets. Most of the dozen or so campers here have brought four-wheelers and buggies to ride in the dunes behind us. They’re here for the long haul, so a truck comes by daily selling ice. The truck also pumps out holding tanks. I hope they keep the two operations well separated.
We got here about 4 p.m. but this time of year that means only about 90 minutes until sunset. Now at 6 p.m. it is utterly black outside except for the stars, the crescent moon sitting low over the Pacific, and a glowing line to the north from the town of Pismo Beach.
I have to admit to a little trepidation about the softness of the sand. The lady at the entrance booth who took our $10 told me the times of high and low tide, advised me to be sure to tow the trailer on the wet packed sand but park above the high tide line. The thought had occurred to me already, when I was first contemplating towing an 8000 lb trailer on the beach. The trailer sinks into the sand about half an inch in most places, a little deeper sometimes. To be on the safe side I kept the speed up to the maximum of 15 MPH and the 4WD engaged.
The trick is that above the high tide line the sand gets soft, so like all the other RVs we are straddling the uppermost line of packed sand and hoping not to get wet. We don’t have floats like Chitty-Chitty Bang Bang. We’ll be watching the tide come up tomorrow at noon. In the meantime, the pounding of the Pacific surf outside our window is a constant reminder of the sea just outside our aluminum walls.
« Previous entries ·
Next entries »
