I hope that this will be the last maintenance post for a while.  It’s good to have gotten things tweaked and fixed but I’d rather write about our travels.

Just to wrap up the repair saga, Super Terry came through with an amazing job on the Dometic AC/heat pump.  He salvaged the 1/4 hp electric motor from another unit and installed it in ours starting at about 6:30 Monday evening.  The job, conducted entirely atop the roof of the Airstream, took until about 9:30 pm, so mostly in the dark by flashlights.

I went up and down the ladder a dozen times to fetch tools as requested, and otherwise just stood at the top of the rungs admiring a mechanic with 30 years of experience solving what appeared to me to be an insoluble problem. That unit is not designed for easy serviceability, and the motor didn’t come out without a fight.  But at the end it was in, the whole thing went back together and upon testing it ran like new.  I’m amazed and grateful that this effort allowed us to avoid an expensive replacement, which is normally the only option.

For those who suffer this issue, believe your mechanic when he says the best fix is a whole new air conditioner.  Counting the time it took to salvage the motor from another unit, Super Terry put in a solid five hours on the job.  He did this as a friendly favor, but if I were paying shop rates it would have been probably $500 plus parts, and I’m left with a 6-year-old unit that probably will have some other fatal issue in a few years.  At the risk of sounding like an old RV codger, they just don’t make ‘em like they used to.  Hopefully ours will hold on for a few more years but I’m not expecting decades of service.

With the late dinner and the usual post-dinner conversation it was a late night, and then this morning we had a slow-motion getaway.  It was 11 a.m. before we got on the road, westbound for Alabama.  We got as far as 30 miles past Atlanta (hit downtown right at rush hour, which was challenging), then stopped for dinner and overnight parking in a private lot. It’s pouring rain tonight, so I’m very glad we resolved the leak in the Fan-Tastic Vent.

Our goal tomorrow is Birmingham.  It’s a city we’ve never visited, and there are a few sights we want to see there, which I’ll write about in future posts.  From there, our travel plan is basically to head back to Tucson in two weeks or less.  We’re going to leave the exact stops loose, but this is familiar territory so if we want something different we’ll have to divert plenty from the beaten path.  There are a few days built into the schedule for that.

The big splurge of our two-week return budget is going to be this weekend.  I’ve actually made reservations — a rare thing indeed — for a park in the Florida panhandle for four nights.  We all want beach time, to fill that piece of our souls and sustain us through the dry interim in the southwest this winter.  Detouring to the panhandle will add 300 miles to our route but I’m sure it will be well worth it.

So that’s the sum total of our remaining travel “plan.”  Not much, really.   Rather than figure it all out, we’ll let circumstances and whimsy suggest the opportunities.  In the nearly 1,900 miles ahead, I have a feeling we’ll find more than a few interesting things.

For those who idolize the traveler,  I feel compelled to occasionally offer tidbits of reality.  It’s not all fun and freedom out here on the road.  Our past couple of days have been pleasant enough but certainly not free of worry.

We left the Buffalo area with a bit of a problem.  Emma’s ultra-fancy orthodontic appliance had come loose from her left molar.  On Friday we found a local orthodontist who gamely re-cemented the thing but warned that another tooth was causing interference, and the temporary repair might  not hold.  It didn’t.  Saturday it popped loose again while we were in Toronto.  It doesn’t cause any discomfort or trouble eating, but it needs to be fixed soon.

On Monday we were due to head south through the rolling hills of southwestern New York and western Pennsylvania to Penn Wood Airstream Park, which is one of the parks that advertises in Airstream Life magazine.  Our home-base orthodontist was out on Monday, so we set the problem of Emma’s appliance aside and started towing.

Arriving at Penn Wood, I remembered that the park and the surrounding area is a total no-Verizon zone.  Our Verizon Internet didn’t work either, even with the rooftop antenna, but fortunately the park has wifi.  Sometimes it’s nice to be isolated by a lack of communication, and sometimes it isn’t.  On this occasion it didn’t matter much since we were only there for an overnight.  We met up with Alex K and whipped up a big dinner in the Airstream.

There was one task I needed to complete in the morning: deposit a check.  Our checking account was nearly depleted and we were going to need cash soon.  This is where modern technology really helped me out.  I have an app (from USAA) on my iPhone that allows me to deposit checks simply by taking a picture of them with the phone.  I walked over the park office, where the wifi signal was strongest, and in less than a minute I had turned the paper check into money in the bank. Gotta love it.

Earlier I mentioned doing maintenance on the road.  We’re still finding things that need a little help after the summer of storage.  The bathroom was a bit funky so Eleanor did a thorough cleanup while we had the luxury of full hook up at Penn Wood.  In the process, she noticed that the sink drain was leaking.  It needed plumber’s putty, and I didn’t have any.  We asked Alex, who has every repair tool & supply known to man stored in his shed, and he came over immediately with a golf cart and a tool kit.  A few minutes later we were good to go.

Leaving the park on Tuesday morning, the first order of business was to get diesel.  I hadn’t noticed that we were at a quarter-tank when we arrived at Penn Wood.  We began hunting the moment we left, but unfortunately our route took us further into the boondocks of Pennsylvania, where gas stations are few, diesel stations are fewer, and ones that have both diesel and room to fit our 48-foot rig are rare indeed.  In retrospect I should have ignored the GPS and gone directly back to the Interstate where fuel would have been much easier to find.  It wasn’t long before I regretted heading into the rural country with insufficient fuel.

The problem was made much worse by the incredible rolling hills in that area.  We were crossing perpendicular to the ancient flow of glaciers, which meant that we were climbing and descending steep grades repeatedly.  Where we would have gotten 13 or 14 MPG, we were getting 10 on average, and the fuel gauge was dropping rapidly.  At one point the car’s computer was estimating about 30 miles to empty and the nearest major highway (where we would be likely to find fuel) was 18 miles away, but soon the computer gave up and simply defaulted to saying “RANGE” with an alarming picture of a fuel pump.  That’s its way of telling us that we’ve pushed the limit too far and we are now officially into the “reserve fuel” allowance.

This has happened once or twice before when we’ve failed to plan ahead, and it’s always unnerving.  (Read: on the way to Banff, in the Adirondacks)  We got to the point of looking for a place to ditch the Airstream but there were no available flat spaces.  Finally, with 8 miles left to go before the highway, we stumbled upon a miraculous fuel station in the middle of nowhere that had diesel and room for us to pull in.  Saved again!  The tank took 27.7 gallons, and the manufacturer’s stated capacity is 26.4 gallons, so we had consumed all of that and were well into the 3.4 gallon reserve.  I can’t really complain since we got 430 miles out of that tank (which included some non-towing time up to Toronto and back).  I had just gotten too comfortable with the enormous range of the GL320, and suffered the dread that results from complacency.  Like the license plate we saw (PB4UGO) you need to fill up before you tow.

We are now courtesy parked at Bobby & Danine’s house in Virginia.  Once again, Verizon doesn’t work at the house but I’ve got their wifi, their house phone if I need it and Skype.  The bigger challenge here is the sloping driveway.  Bobby lent us a bunch of wood and extra plastic blocks, and we’ve managed to get the trailer close to level.  (Still, it’s a big first step up to the entry door.)

So you can see that there are always challenges along the way.  Plans get changed for you, glitches happen, things break, and sometimes the trailer ain’t level.  The point is, it’s all small stuff, and you know what they say about that.  Don’t sweat it.  We’re still having a good time even if things don’t always turn out the way we expected.

Congrats to Airstreamers David & Ariadne on the birth of their new baby!

Our decision to head immediately west toward Buffalo NY turned out to be a good call.  I was tempted to do the coastal route (as we did last year), and hit a few beaches along Massachusetts and Connecticut, but the massive rains from Irene and Lee would have made it an unpleasant week.  Even central New York and Pennsylvania suffered from flooding, whereas we were just west enough to avoid most of the problems.

Our friends in Virginia, where we have planned to courtesy park later this  week, emailed us this picture of our courtesy parking spot.  It is not looking good in this photo, but the rain abated last Thursday and this weekend gave us all a chance to dry out.  I think it will be fine when we get there.

We left the Airstream in a secure location near Buffalo on Friday morning and took a weekend jaunt up to Toronto, where a sort of magical Canadian weather pattern had set up, bringing us sunshine and 75 degrees every day.  It was the sort of perfect late-summer weather that Canadians and northern Vermonters live for.

Our trip was ostensibly to visit John and Helena, good friends with endless hospitality and a home conveniently located walking distance from downtown.  Eleanor feeds them as a way of saying “thanks” for the stay, but really she appreciates having an audience to cook for.  It gives her a good reason to browse the ethnic sections of town for interesting food items.

Tim Horton’s is not my idea of ethnic food, but it has been a serious stop for Eleanor ever since she discovered “Timmy’s” coffee (she and Tim are on a cozy basis these days) and the fact that her beloved “Dutchie” donut is apparently not sold in the USA.  Thus, every trip to Canada involves a stop for two pounds of coffee and a few Dutchies.  It’s a good starting point.

Our big goal for Saturday was to walk the city.  Emma was intrigued by the tall CN Tower (1,100 feet at the observation level, with a glass floor) and it was the weekend of the Chinese Moon Festival so we figured we connect the two with a little street hiking.  John started us off with a short toodle around town in his Citroen Deux-Chevaux (2CV), a tiny French car with a 29-horsepower two-cylinder engine – great fun with the canvas roof open — and dropped us off near Kensington, where the good food shopping is found.

We had skipped breakfast that morning in anticipation of a big pig-out at one of the many restaurants along Spadina that advertise “DIM SUM ALL DAY.”  Usually dim sum involves a series of carts filled with strange & wonderful things. You point at what you want from the cart when it rolls by, and the waiter hands it over, then marks a tally sheet with everything you ordered, for a (usually) shocking total at the end.

This restaurant took a more expedient approach, since it was too small for the carts. We got a single-sheet menu of items, picked three each, and gradually they appeared on our table as we noshed our way from pork & shrimp shumai to red bean “cake”.  If you want to know what else we ordered, simply read the bill pictured below (click to enlarge).

At the end of the meal, the waiter rolls up the entire contents of the table, dishes and all, in the plastic tablecloth and hauls it away.  I’ve never seen that maneuver before, but I have to admit it makes for a quick turnover on the table.  We were also encouraged not to linger after the bill was paid by a waiter who posted herself directly adjacent to the table and wouldn’t leave until we did.  Ah, well, the food was very good.

Eleanor didn’t want to buy all of her food items early in the day and then have to haul them around Toronto, so we gave the Kensington area a quick look (in Eleanor-culinary terms, which means about two hours) and made notes of places we’d want to return later in the day.

The rest of our day was spent walking all over downtown Toronto.  We dropped by the CN Tower but did not go up — Eleanor and I had done it before and these days it would be about $65 for the three of us to ride the elevator to the top — and we dragged Emma past various places that were probably not nearly as memorable to her 11-year-old brain as they were to us.

We found the very grand Fairmont Royal York hotel and reminisced about our first visit to Toronto in 1995. It was an unusual week.  Eleanor and I had tent-camped in the Adirondack Park (NY) on a 14-degree January night, then we drove up to Montreal for a night at the Hilton Bonaventure where we swam in the heated rooftop pool during a snowfall, then took VIA Rail’s “Blue and Gold” service to Toronto and spent two nights in the Royal York living large.  Things were quite different back then — no Airstream, no kid — but I think we travel better now.

One thing that stays the same:  we walk a lot.  This weekend it felt like two more miles of hiking before we got back to Chinatown, with a break at a Second Cup cafe in the entertainment district.

We hit Kensington again and bought a selection of dessert pastries, three cheeses including a very challenging Spanish blue cheese called Valdeon, vegetables for a big salad, and two kinds of fresh bread.  This was later made into dinner for the five of us back at the house.

By the time we got back to Kensington we were starting to drag: we’d been out walking for over six hours.  Fortunately Toronto’s efficient public transit (streetcars and subways) got us within half a mile of John & Helena’s home.  A note was on the door:  “R&E&E:  Back door is unlocked.  Call us when you get in.”  That’s a Toronto thing.  People leave their homes unlocked all the time and don’t worry about it, even in the city.  Crime is remarkably low, the city is very clean, and every time we come here we walk everywhere and never encounter a place that we feel unsafe.  It’s like New York city if it were run under contract by Disney.

We slept in a bit on Sunday, and John made waffles for a late brunch with strawberries & cream & maple syrup, and Canadian bacon.  I don’t eat that way very often anymore, but how wonderfully Canadian it felt, with a copy of the Globe & Mail lying nearby and the front door unlocked.  But that was the end of our Toronto jaunt.  We were soon off, down the Queens Expressway back to the USA, with — of course — one last stop at Tim Horton’s north of the border for a few more Dutchies.

We are now officially back on the road.  For how long, I can’t say.  We have a trip of about 3,500 miles planned, and that’s if we don’t dip into Florida (then it becomes closer to 4,500 miles).  At our pace, that’s a good long time in the Airstream — at least a month.  I’ll get back to my usual posting schedule as long as we are on the road, which means several times each week.

Our last days in Vermont ended with a weather whimper.  There was a final respite of passable weather on Sunday for the belated birthday celebration (maple themed edible gifts abounded), and then the beautiful late-summer days faded into steady cool showers that lasted all of Labor Day, while we took care of the final Airstream packing chores.  Then the remnants of Hurricane Lee slid up to New England and the result has been three days of fairly continuous rain, which is something nobody up here needed.  Flooding became a threat again in many areas.

Despite that, we had set a schedule and so we left on a chilly Tuesday morning, with wet decaying leaves stuck to our feet and tracked all through the inside of the Airstream.  I normally like to leave with the trailer interior cleaned up, but it was not possible under the rain forest-type conditions, so we’ll do a better job on the interior floors if this endless rain ever lets up.  Once I had pulled the trailer off the leveling blocks in the driveway, I could see the rear dome for the first time in months (it had been obscured by trees) and it looks miserable, stained with tannin and leaf mold.  Another roof washing session is due, but I think since we are on the road it may become a job for the Blue Beacon boys.

I am very pleased that all systems seem to be “go” with the Airstream.  After three months of sitting in fairly inhospitable conditions you might expect a few problems to crop up, but we’ve been lucky and found no major issues.  Even the Michelin tires held their pressure at exactly 50 psi each.  Sitting is really one of the worst things for an Airstream (or indeed, any brand of RV).  That’s when the rodents get in and start nesting.  That’s when spiders and mud dauber wasps begin to clog the furnace vent and water heater venturi.  That’s when water from a small leak gets a chance to cause rot, unnoticed.  Left without exercise, tires fail more quickly, axles stiffen, batteries go flat, wires get chewed … I always recommend that anyone who has to store their trailer for long periods of time make a point of getting inside regularly to check things out, sniff for strange smells, inspect for signs of insects or critters, etc.

Using the trailer is a good way to find issues, if you don’t mind fixing them as they crop up.  So far we’ve found the need to lube the entry door hinges and entry step with silicone spray, replace a cabinet latch, and replace a couple of light bulbs.  Nothing really of consequence.  I expect to replace a lot more of the bulbs soon, since they are mostly original and reaching the end of their expected lifespan.  I’ll buy a 6-pack of the 1141 bulbs and a few of the 10-watt halogens at the hardware store next time we go by.  The darned cabinet latches are another story: they wear out with distressing regularity and so far the only source I’ve found for replacements is Airstream and Airstream dealers, at $7-10 per latch

Our route has been conservative, at least initially. With flooding closing many lesser roads, I opted to take the safest possible route via the Charlotte-Essex ferry, I-87 (the Adirondack Northway) and I-90 (the New York State Thruway), connected by Rt 8 through the Adirondack Park.  This kept us away from detours but it wasn’t particularly exciting since we’ve covered that route many times in the past.

At least we ended up at a different place, Verona Beach State Park on the shores of Oneida Lake.  On prior trips passing through New York we’ve tried many state parks, including Cayuga Lake, Delta Lake, Letchworth, Darien Lakes, Fish Creek Pond, Mills-Norrie, Thompsons Lake, and Watkins Glen.  They’ve all been good. New York has a great & huge state park system, so there are still dozens more to visit, even if we are trying to stay within a reasonable distance of the Thruway.

I had no idea when we randomly picked Verona Beach that it was next to the famous old Sylvan Beach, with the small but active downtown (at least during summer) and the old-time Sylvan Beach Amusement Park.  It had stopped raining for a while, and I didn’t feel like unhitching the trailer for just one night, and we needed some exercise after being in the car for five or six hours, so we hoofed it about a mile and a half from the state park to downtown Sylvan Beach and found Eddie’s beckoning to us with a giant neon sign.  There wasn’t much else open in town, being a gray cool day after Labor Day, but even if there were I think we would have had to try Eddie’s for dinner just because it’s a historic piece of Sylvan Beach.

Camping and traveling in the off-season like we are right now, is a bit of a crapshoot. On the plus side, reservations are generally unnecessary, crowds are absent, and we can be as spontaneous as we want.  On the negative side, the weather can be iffy and lots of attractions are closed or have severely reduced hours.  Arriving at Verona Beach we found the entry building unmanned, so we just picked out a nice site and settled in.  No camp host or ranger was evident, and the park was about 90% empty.  In the morning a nice lady came by in the pouring rain (“and I’m driving an electric golf cart!”) and accepted our check for $22.75 for a night of camping near the shore of the lake.  Even with the steady rain it was a nicer experience than many a peak-season summer stay I’ve had in other places, just because it was quiet and uncluttered.

Tech note: I’ve been trying out some apps on the iPhone to see how they help us on the road.  GasBuddy (free) has been pretty good for us, usually allowing us to find diesel at $0.20-0.40 less than the going rate without detouring more than five miles.  This morning it directed us to the station closest to the state park and we saved about 20 cents per gallon on the fillup compared to the stations along the Thruway.  It hasn’t been 100% accurate, since the fuel price reports come from ordinary folks who sometimes get it wrong, but I’ll trust it enough to go a few miles out of my way.

The other app I’m evaluating is the Allstays Camp & RV app, which costs a few bucks.  So far I am finding it interesting but I need more time to be sure if I can recommend it.  Like GasBuddy, some of the data comes from volunteers and so may not be entirely accurate.  It’s useful for finding campgrounds, Wal-Marts, and various other popular stops for RV’ers.

We’re going to hunker down near Buffalo for a couple of days to get some work done, and then continue onward on Friday.  It won’t be an exciting period, but hopefully we’ll wait out the rain and have nicer weather for the next few stops that are planned.

My triumphant return to the northeast somehow became a story about a hurricane.  In the last 48 hours leading up to my dawn flight from Tucson to Manchester NH, I was suddenly getting emails (and a blog comment) from friends & family who were concerned about my apparent interest in flying into the midst of a famous hurricane, namely Irene.

Not to worry.  My flight was via Chicago, which meant that I didn’t need to worry much about in-flight weather and also that there would be an astonishing rarity in these days: a plane with lots of empty seats.  86 people on the Tucson-Chicago leg bailed out presumably because they couldn’t get their connections to eastern seaboard cities like Washington DC, New York, Baltimore, and Norfolk.  Without all the crowding, it was like flying in the 20th century.  (The illusion would be complete if only I didn’t have to turn my head and cough at the security checkpoint.)

We landed in Manchester in the late afternoon on Saturday, when people in North Carolina and Virginia were firing up their generators and bailing water, with only scattered clouds and no rain.  But not for long — the long gray tendrils of Irene reached us that evening and the excitement began.  Being from the area and having seen many an expiring hurricane dawdling up the east coast, I knew what to expect.  By the time they get up around Boston, the weather event is basically a lot like every summer afternoon in central Florida: torrential rain, occasional high winds, predictable flooding, plus a local bonus lots of hyper-excited news coverage.  I met my long-lost wife and we went out for dinner, then spent the night at a hotel listening to the splatter of an overloaded rain gutter splash the window.

The next day at noon, we took to the road.  The trusty GL was as surefooted as always, making the 200 mile drive up I-93 and I-89 a non-event for the most part, despite constant heavy rain.  Swish-swish went the wipers, the tires sliced through the puddles (as long as I stayed at a reasonable speed, far below the posted limit), and inside we had plenty of time to talk and listen to podcasts.  The best part was that virtually nobody was out, so the highways were wide open and there were no yahoo drivers to avoid.  We paused in Hanover NH near Dartmouth College to take in a long lunch and were the only people in the Chinese restaurant.  On the other hand, it was a bit sad to see spots where the White River and others had apparently overflowed their banks and flooded some farms and homes.  Up on the high ground of the Interstate we had little to complain about, but down below the damage was quite obvious and I’m sure many people are having a really rough time at the moment.

All of this is a long way of saying that we drove through a tropical storm (“hurricane” status having been stripped from Irene about the time she arrived in Massachusetts) for four hours and the most exciting part was lunch.  Things got considerably more interesting once we pulled into Vermont, where the Airstream has been stored all summer.  I was concerned that a tree branch might have fallen on the roof, but no.  The lake was rolling with huge widely spaced waves like you’d expect on Lake Michigan, not on our relatively small “sixth Great Lake.”  The power went out at the house, because this is Vermont and that’s what happens in virtually every storm.  We hung out with the family by candlelight for a while, then fired up the noisy backup generator that services the house on these occasions.

The Airstream needed no external power, of course, but as we attempted to sleep we were located far too close to the generator’s Sturm und Drang cacophony and it was a bit like being at the worst rally of our lives.  No “generator hours” here; we were the guests and without the generator the basement sump pumps in the house would cease working and then we’d have our own little tale of flooding to tell.  So we endured some noise until about 3 or 4 a.m., when the generator finally ran out of gas.  At 5:30 the hard-working representatives of Green Mountain Power arrived with a powerful chainsaw and proceeded to spend about half an hour rescuing power lines.  It was not the best night for sleeping, but the power was back on when we finally awoke for the fourth or fifth time.

And today it is the classic “day after” a major storm: startlingly clear skies, a beautiful view of New York state across the open waters of Lake Champlain, and the ground littered with downed branches.  I got out the wheelbarrow, ladder and tree trimmers, and with a little help from Emma cleaned up the overhanging branches in the driveway so that the Airstream will be able to depart in a few days.  The trees needed trimming anyway.  Tonight, friends will come over for dinner on the deck.  A precious few warm days remain up here in northern Vermont, so we’ll make the most of them while plotting a convoluted route down the east coast and across the south, in the Airstream, during September.

If you would like the short version of this blog entry, here it is:  500 miles later, I’m back at home base.

But there’s so much more to it than that.  The day started beautifully in the best fashion of southern California, with a light summer fog in the air that was quickly giving way to sunny skies and views of green desert hills.  I opened up the car windows and sped over to meet Uwe for breakfast in Orange at 8 a.m. We talked for over an hour, sitting at one of the outside tables at the Watson Drug & Soda Fountain, watching as very fit-looking men in blue Fire Dept. t-shirts ran around the block a few times.  The second time they came by I felt like getting up and joining them (and I don’t run, that’s how inspiring the morning was), but then I came to my senses and tucked into the waffle I’d ordered.  Extra maple syrup, please, I’m going to have a long day.

After dropping Uwe off at his shop, I automatically headed east on CA-91 toward Riverside, but a few minutes into the trip I realized that I didn’t really want to rush back into the desert heat.  It was still gorgeous where I was, near the coast, and it seemed a shame to have to close up the windows and turn on the air conditioner.  I’ve been doing that all summer.  So I took a right onto the Rt 241 toll road instead, with the vague plan of enjoying a scenic route along the California coast all the way to San Diego.

This turned out to be a bonus.  Being a toll road, Rt 241 is lightly traveled, and it rises up dramatically into the hills on smooth new pavement.  The toll charge of $5.25 was well worth it for this driving experience — at least once — and after about half an hour I was dropped off at I-5 in the traffic south of Irvine.

Nearer the coast, the way became foggy and even cooler, to the point that I eventually rolled up the windows just to stay warm.  Listening to the radio and distracted by scenery (I took a quick stop at San Onofre State Beach), it wasn’t until I was well into the Camp Pendleton area that I realized I hadn’t gotten gas, and now the car was running drastically low.  I exited I-5 at the first opportunity south of Pendleton to fill up and consider exactly what I was doing heading toward San Diego.  This plan wasn’t making a ton of sense.  Here I was, eighty miles from my starting point and still only a few hundred yards from the Pacific Ocean.

Well, I had all day, so what the heck.  I don’t get to just wander around aimlessly very often (or at least, not often enough).  Despite appearances, my travel usually has a definite purpose.  Besides, it had warmed up a bit, and that meant I could I roll down the windows again for a few minutes before the upcoming plunge into the desert heat.

Only a few minutes later, I picked up I-805, and then finally I-8 to head eastward for the next 300 miles or so. The road climbs out of the San Diego area, through La Mesa and El Cajon, past the inevitable & lonely Indian casino, and up to 4,000 feet over the portion of I-8 known as the Kumeyaay Freeway. This is a beautiful stony scenic area through the Cleveland National Forest, followed by a long descent right back down to sea level through a series of fantastic twists to the flat desert floor near Ocotillo.  At that point there’s little remaining to see, and the speed limit opens up to 70 MPH.  As I traversed this part I had to fight the urge to hang a left onto Rt 79 and drive the road up toward Julian — there just wasn’t time for that detour.

As I left the San Diego area I was watching the temperatures climb and the landscape grow steadily more arid.  By Ocotillo, it was a rousing 113 degrees and only Mexican stations could be picked up on FM.  I tried to remember that only a couple of hours earlier I was freezing in the cool fog of coastal California, but it seemed to be only an impossible dream.

I-8 runs tightly to the border from here all the way to Yuma, tediously straight most of the way, and there aren’t many places to stop for a cold one.  Fortunately, I had a cooler full of drinks and lots of calls to make.  For a long portion of this road you are south of the Salton Sea and below sea level.  The highway gets pinched between canals (like the one that formed the Salton Sea) and the fences along the US-Mexico border.  Then there’s the Imperial Sand Dunes, and then you’re seeing another Indian casino and the AZ border at Yuma, followed shortly by the welcome increase in speed limit to 75 MPH.

Somehow I managed to completely overlook Dateland (AZ), which is a great place to try a date shake and pick up fuel.  Not much else.  Having missed that opportunity, I paused in Gila Bend instead, where it was still 106 degrees under a cloudy sky.  Thunderstorms were threatening in the distance, and I knew at that point I was going to have an exciting end to my trip whether I wanted it or not.

Five miles later, the temperature plummeted 20 degrees, and for the rest of I-8 was buffeted by winds and sprinkled by the remnants of thunderstorms.  Lightning was everywhere to the east and south.  By the time I reached the end of I-8 where it merges with I-10 near Eloy, the rain was occasionally torrential, the desert was puddled with water, and kamikaze tumbleweeds were blowing across the road.  I clipped one with the right wheels and saw the tumbleweed explode into a thousand dry match sticks in my rear view mirror.

The weather was getting seriously threatening. I stopped to check weather radar on the iPhone at a gas station, and the gas station turned out to be closed for lack of electricity.  I saw one serious accident with police & rescue on the scene (two cars in the median, heavy damage), then another a few miles later.  Brief sections of the road were flooded a few inches, and the radio was filled with warnings about dust storms and lightning.  I had that feeling again — was it really only an hour or two ago that I was blinking in the burning sun at a rest area and marveling at 113 dessicating degrees?

Finally, Tucson: 72 degrees in light rain, wind blowing, flashes of lightning over the Rincons, carport half flooded.  Whatever.  It didn’t matter if it was snowing, I was home.  Time for laundry, dinner, and a few days of catchup.  It’s nice to be back, but the trip was so great that I’m wondering if I shouldn’t zip out for a roadtrip somewhere again this week.  I have only seven days before my TBM license expires.  Hmm… what next?

OK, I dropped Brett off at the airport tonight so we now we can all talk about him.  He’s catching a redeye back to Florida and I’m spending one more night at some anonymous hotel in the Los Angeles area.

Actually, I’ve got no lurid tales to tell of life with Brett.  We’ve done the business trip thing so many times that it’s just second nature now, and we know how to get along like an old married couple.  (No wonder that when we go to Palm Springs we sometimes get offered a single King bed.)  And this was a particularly successful week, starting with our two nights in Denver, then two nights in Tucson, two nights in Palm Springs, and one night in Anaheim.  The summary: we got it all done and we had fun doing it.

Driving back from LAX after dropping Brett off I was starting to feel the L.A. vibe and start to regret that tomorrow I’ll be heading back home.  The car was bouncing along the uneven concrete of “the 105″ (as locals say it) with a 72-MPH/ 72-degree breeze blowing in the open windows and KLOS taking classic rock requests on FM.  I was zipping and merging according to the whims of Garminita, listening to Jimi Hendrix and getting whiffs of the Pacific salt when I was near LAX.  It all felt like an experience I could only have in mythical southern California.

You know that California has a huge car culture, which is why I always feel most at home here when driving.  Yesterday we took the twistiest possible route from Palm Springs to Los Angeles.  The highlights were the climb out of Palm Desert along Rt 74 (the “Palms To Pines Highway” pictured above), the climb up from Lake Elsinore (below), and the Ortega Highway.  With stops at scenic overlooks, the drive took us most of the day and I didn’t regret it for a second.  I’m tempted to take the same route back.

Towing the Airstream I tend to pick straighter routes, but now that I think back to it we have towed on curvy and narrow roads without hesitation.  I remember a few roads that we probably shouldn’t have been on (89A heading south to Sedona, for example) and a few that people recommended we avoid with a trailer (coastal Rt 1 in California comes to mind).  In every case the effort required to navigate the road with a 30-foot Airstream was well repaid in scenery and memories. So I’m not surprised that the road less traveled in California was a great choice yesterday.

Well, that was yesterday when we had all day to kill.  Today was a different story.  Our goal was to visit a few clients and friends in the area and get tours of their facilities.  I like to have a good handle on the resources available for Airstream owners, and it’s always useful to snoop around in hopes of finding an interesting restoration project or contact person for a future Airstream Life article.

Our first stop was M.E.L. Trailer in Orange.  Named for the three partners in the business (Mike, Erasmo, Lucas), this little shop is turning out some very nice work and seems poised for even better things in the future.  By the way, Mike Keenan is the organizer of the very popular annual Pismo Beach vintage trailer event.  This year he offered 300 spaces and got 600 applications.

Right down the street is Area 63 Productions, run by Uwe Salwender.  I’ve known Uwe casually for years, since he wrote a short article for Airstream Life, but we had not met in person until last February at Modernism Week.  Like M.E.L., Area 63 is doing great restoration and customization work and so I’d be proud to capture Uwe as an advertiser in Airstream Life sometime in the near future.  Bill K., another Airstreamer and blog reader, happened by while we were visiting, and he joined us for lunch in town at The Filling Station.

Since we were in the area, and because Dr. C suggested it, we zipped down to the Mercedes Benz Classic Center for a quick look at their Museum Of Unattainable Classic Cars.  That’s not actually what they call it, but it certainly struck me that way, especially the ones on the upper rack that could be glimpsed from below but not fully viewed.  Still, the cars are cool, and I am appreciative to Mercedes Benz USA for opening their doors in Irvine to let us drool for a few minutes.

Our final stop was C&G Trailer up in Bellflower, run by Rod and Darlene Beltran.  These folks have been in the Airstream repair business for 48 years, and Rod is the second generation since his father worked at the Airstream plant when it was located in the L.A. area.  Amazingly, they’re far from burned out; they seem to thrive on it.  Their shop has the unique appeal that comes from being a long-time specialist. In every corner are stacks of vintage parts, so much that we spent half our time there just marveling at all the goodies that we could use.  C&G Trailer has been an advertiser in Airstream Life for seven years and I love ‘em for it.  Just recently I sent soap opera actor Ingo Rademacher to them for an interior makeover of his Airstream Safari 30 bunkhouse.  The trailer came out great and we’re going to have a photo spread on it in either the Winter 2011 or Spring 2012 issue.

We had a few minutes to kill before dinner, so we got the car washed (all hand wash & dry, $7.99, only in L.A.!) and cruised around town a bit since the temperatures were perfect in the evening.  Having accomplished all of our work goals and feeling the summer air, I’m pretty sure we were both thinking that it would be much nicer if the other suddenly disappeared and was replaced by a friendly female.  Not that we don’t enjoy each other’s company, but that’s what happens after a week on the road without our ladies.

Brett will be back to his girlfriend tomorrow.  I, on the other hand, face a long and quiet drive back to Tucson tomorrow and no prospect of romance for a while.  I’ll use the time to digest the events of the week and prepare for whatever lies around the corner.  Temporary Bachelor Man still has a little time left on his clock.

The transition from home life to road life can be jarring.  Things were moving in slow motion when I was in the house in Tucson, giving me the feeling that I was living in a world where Jello had replaced the air and I had to fight my way from one place to another.  Then suddenly the roadtrips began, and now things have sped up to the point that I have trouble keeping track of where I am and where I am supposed to be next.

My Friday return was classic Air Travel 101: the TSA confiscated my 3 ounces of toothpaste because it was in a container capable of holding 4.6 ounces, and I lost my watch in the confusion of undressing and dressing by the side of the conveyor belt.  By the time I realized that the watch was gone, I was in Terminal C, a solid 10-minute trip away from the security checkpoint by train and moving walkway.  I went back for the watch, which required me to go through the long security line again in order to retrieve it, and so 26 minutes later Southwest closed the door to the jetway and left me behind.  Brett got to Tucson at 9:30 in the morning with my bags, while I got re-routed through Las Vegas and arrived five hours later.

Saturday was quite a bit better. We blew off all accumulated work and spent the day up in the Santa Catalina mountains north of Tucson.  Not only was it much cooler than in Tucson but we had spectacular skies and great hiking weather.  The photo above is from Windy Point, an overlook along the Mt Lemmon Highway.

Near the town of Summerhaven we took a hike in the national forest that led us about 3.2 miles (roundtrip) past tiny waterfalls in deep canyons, then dropped in on the southernmost ski area in the continental United States for lunch at the Iron Door Restaurant.  The ski area is pretty minor when compared to those of Utah and Colorado, but for being located about 100 miles from the Mexican border it’s a minor miracle.

Sunday was another travel day, this time a long-anticipated road trip from Tucson to Palm Springs.  We’re in town to scout sites for next year’s Modernism Week Vintage Trailer Show (February 2012).  The entire valley is a tough place to park trailers, especially vintage trailers.  Some of the towns have rules against overnight parking even on private property, others have been intimidated by campground owners, some campgrounds won’t allow anything over 10 years old, some are “55+”, and many non-campground venues we approached won’t allow trailers on principle just out of pure snobbery.

Fortunately, the organizers of Modernism Week have good connections in town and had found a few prime spots near the center for us to evaluate on Monday.  We think we have a venue that will work very well, but won’t know for sure until we’ve had further discussions with the land owner.  I expect that by the end of September we’ll have the plan nailed down and can begin to accept applications for the show in October.  We’ll have only about 25 spots available, seven more than last year.

Let’s see, if today is Tuesday then we must be traveling again.  I would be tempted to spend the day in the valley here at the Indian Wells Resort Hotel (a golf course resort that is cheap in the off-season) but it’s scorchingly hot and the cool San Jacinto mountains are beckoning us.  Since we accomplished all of our site evaluations yesterday we are free to take our time heading to Los Angeles today.  I have a 143-mile driving route planned that is designed for pure pleasure (lots of twisties) and absolutely zero practicality; a real antidote to the sort of rush-rush straightline travel we’ve been doing.  We’ll start with the Palms To Pines Highway (Rt 74) from Palm Desert, and then pick up interesting roads to Temecula’s wine country and then Lake Elsinore, and San Juan Capistrano. We can take all day to do it, since we have no meetings planned for today.

So, time to get started.  It’s 7:28 a.m. and the heat is already building past 90 degrees here in Indian Wells, CA.  We’ll hit the hotel’s courtesy breakfast buffet, throw our road warrior gizmos into our bags, check that the cooler is loaded with drinks, and move on.  Another adventure awaits us along the road.

The leisure of the past few weeks is over; now it’s time to get hustling.  The next month or two will involve a lot of travel, primarily by Airstream of course, but also a few unavoidable airline flights and at least one good road trip next week.  Today it’s Denver, a quick and easy hop from Tucson by air, where I am visiting a client, Timeless Travel Trailers, with Brett.

In the best mode of business, we concluded all the serious stuff in a matter of a few hours and then got on with the good stuff, which in this case was a late dinner at some local Italian place and an evening at Lakeside Amusement Park.  The park is one of those historical time capsules, begun in 1908, massively remodeled in 1934, and owned by the same family for decades.

I like the place.  It’s the kind of old park that hardly exists these days, right off off I-70 despite the pressure of development in the surrounding area.  It’s a tad rough around the corners and a few of the original buildings are in disrepair & closed, but we met the owners of the park (it’s small)  and found that they are extremely dedicated to the place. They are actively investing in refurbishing old rides, bringing in new ones, improving the landscaping, etc.  The lakeside setting is very nice, lit up with the reflections of neon signs from the classic rides and circumscribed by a narrow-gauge steam (or diesel) railroad that brings you far out and back in 13 minutes.

At night the park comes to life with the lights and crowds that fill the parking lot, even mid-week.  Admission is just $2.50 and all-you-can-ride bracelets were $17.75, although the price varies a little depending on day of the week and special promotions.   The park was packed last night with families seeking fun on a warm summer evening, even well past 11 p.m, when we were still bouncing from the bumper cars (“Autoskooter”) to the Ferris wheel to the ultimate ride in the park, the Cyclone roller coaster.  (Brett captured the picture of me exiting the Autoskooter.)

No question, the Cyclone is just plain awesome.  It’s one of those great rickety all-wood coasters from the golden era of amusement parks that you can ride again and again.  It starts with a dark curving tunnel, then the inevitable steep ascent where you get a good look at the peeling paint and wonder “is this thing safe?” –but you don’t get much time to think about it because in a few seconds you’re barreling through impossible turns and holding on for dear life.  About two and a half minutes later it’s over, depending on how fast the Cyclone is running that night.  (The speed varies with temperature.) We got a fast ride according to experienced folks who knew it well.

I particularly liked the little architectural surprises that are everywhere in the park.  One advantage of being old and not modernized is that the rides like the Wild Chipmunk, the Spider, Scrambler, Tilt-A-Whirl, and Hurricane have terrific mid-century design ticket booths, all different.  In other parts of the part you’ll see great Art Deco, both inside and out.  Curious and quirky features abound, right up to the giant neon exit sign that says simply, “R E D I T” (Latin for “to return”).

Closing hours vary but we were there until nearly midnight and the rides were still open.  I saw the last couple of riders puttering by on their blue Skoota Boats at 11:30, and there were still people dropping in at the snack bar for a cotton candy, Icee, or popcorn.  I have a feeling we’ll be here again, perhaps on our trip coming back east from Vermont in September.

A commenter on the blog last week asked if I was Temporary Bachelor Man or Temporary Honeymoon Man.  Yes, I must admit that we are treating this little three-week summer visit as a series of romantic getaways.  Our goal has been to just have as much fun as possible, exploring places and things that we might have skipped with a child in tow.

We began preparations some months ago, collecting ideas for travel and searching out deals on hotels and restaurants so that we could take fullest possible advantage without spending ridiculous amounts of money.  Summer travel in southern Arizona and the desert portions of California, New Mexico, and Texas is a bargain if you take the time to look for the deals.  Our options would have been broader with access to one of the Airstreams, but we’ve managed to do pretty well nonetheless.  For example, Eleanor has completely mastered the intricacies of the Restaurants.com coupon system, to the point that we are eating out at posh restaurants three nights a week for cheap.

Tucson is great for restaurants.  Within a few miles of our house we can find virtually any cuisine, and we never have taken full advantage of that just because when we are home we tend to eat in.  This little “honeymoon” period is different, so now we are exploring restaurants with complete abandon.  Last week we tripped over a fairly unusual find, a real Cajun restaurant (run by folks from a family that settled in Louisiana in the 1600s).  Normally you can’t get good Cajun food outside of Louisiana — I don’t care what those fancy nouveau chefs in major cities think — but this place is the glorious exception.  I’ll be back there for a little jambalaya after Eleanor has left, I’m sure.

Our specialty this past week has been restaurants in the resort hotels.  A few days ago we tried Azul at the Westin La Paloma, which was fine, and this weekend we may go to Primo at the JW Marriott Starr Pass. These are mostly fun because we never go to the local resort hotels, and so we’ve got an excuse to dress up for dinner and check out the elite scene.  (We also went up to the Ritz-Carlton at Dove Mountain but didn’t eat there since we were just dropping off our niece who was in town for a business trip.)

Before you get concerned about the idea of me dressing up, relax.  This is Tucson, so dressing up only means I wear slacks instead of shorts with cargo pockets, and I pick a silk Hawaiian shirt that has been ironed.  Nobody wears a jacket and tie when it’s over 100 degrees outside, even at night.  I have not worn a tie since sometime in the mid-1990s.  I’m waiting for the ones I bought in 1991 to come back into style …

This time of year the thunderstorms cool things down for a few hours after the rain, but it’s still nice to get away from the heat for an extended period.  Looking at my work schedule I realized I could escape on Thursday and Friday, so on Wednesday we booked a hotel up in Show Low AZ, up in the pine trees above the Mogollon Rim that divides northern and southern Arizona.  It’s about a five hour trip up to there from Tucson, and even longer if you stop and enjoy the fantastic scenery along the way.  The route, pictured above, brought us up and around the Santa Catalina mountain range through Oracle (past Biosphere 2), through lots of rolling desert, past the ASARCO copper mines at Winkelman, and then to the town of Globe — famous for turquoise mining (B on the map).

From there the road starts to get very interesting as it gradually gains altitude and loses it again, three or four times, finally descending through a series of hairpin turns down to the beautiful Salt River Canyon.

This route (between points B and C on the map) is passable with a travel trailer, but you need to be comfortable with long 6% grades (both up and down) and willing to take your time.  There are many overlooks suitable for parking an RV or travel trailer. On Thursday the road was lightly traveled, and we rarely had company at the overlooks.  We stopped at one for a big picnic lunch (our usual crazy leftover smorgasbord) and had the place to ourselves the entire time.

If a teenager holding a can of spray paint can climb it, why can’t I?

Eventually the road climbs for the last time and ends up at 6,300 feet in the town of Show Low.  We had started the day with temperatures of 100-105 but up here it was a beautifully cool 81 degrees with scattered thunderstorms.  We found our hotel and a local Italian eatery, then parked somewhere to watch the lightning bolts in the distance, as the sun set in dramatic clouds of orange and blue.

In the morning we cruised over the Fool Hollow State Park, one that we’ve heard is nice but had never seen ourselves.  The park staff gave us a 30-minute pass (they held a $7 refundable deposit), which gave us time to roll through the entire park.  It’s a fantastic spot, well worth a visit, and so now we are trying to figure a time to drop in this fall.  If you go, book early as it probably sells out far in advance for every weekend in the summer.

Having taken hours to get up here, it seemed like a shame to drop back down the Mogollon Rim into the heat any sooner than we had to, so instead we wandered west on Rt 260 toward Heber-Overgaard, staying above 6,000 feet the entire route.  We made a few stops here and there to explore, and eventually came to the point where Rt 260 begins to descend, at the edge of the Rim.  It’s tough to drive away from the beautiful air up high, so we stopped off and found a secluded place to park near the General George Crook trail, and took in the view for a while.

A tip for you photographers:  doing justice to the expansive views from the Mogollon Rim is difficult without a super-wide angle lens.  I started with my Nikkor 18-200 but couldn’t get the shots I wanted.  I pulled out the Tamron 10-24 and around 12mm I finally started getting a fair perspective. The shot above is at 10mm.

The photo above, of Saguaro Lake, is from the iPhone. Sometimes it does a decent job, especially when there’s a lot of light.  We drove a few hours down the twisting Beeline Highway to near point F on the map and checked out this little lake formed from the impounding of the Lower Salt River.  It’s in the Tonto National Forest, so a “Tonto Pass” is required to use any of the camping areas, overlooks, boat launches, beaches, etc.  (Your $80 annual “America The Beautiful Pass” and/or “Golden Age Pass” doesn’t cover this, despite what you probably thought when you bought it!)

But no pass is required to park at the Marina and take in the view from the upper deck of the restaurant, which is what we did while sipping a couple of cold ice teas.  At this point we were well back into the oven east of Phoenix, but with full shade and the outdoor misting system running at full tilt it was tolerable outside on the deck.

The photo above is another iPhone capture, entering Apache Junction and looking east toward the Superstition Mountains. Lost Dutchman State Park, another one of our list, is not far away.  (Don’t be concerned about the 45 MPH speed limit — in most places the speed limit is a more-appropriate 65 MPH.)

All together, we covered close to 500 miles in two days.  A roadtrip like this would be exhausting or at least boring on the Interstate, but despite lots of long lonely stretches, we rarely felt uninspired.  The back roads of Arizona are vast and dramatic, with variety, color, and life nearly everywhere, and well worth exploring.