You know we’re on a serious mileage-conquering roadtrip when we drive until 9 p.m. and spend the night at a Cracker Barrel. That was yesterday. It’s not as bad as it sounds, since our drive was pretty pleasant and the night was reasonably quiet, but still it’s not an experience I care to repeat any time soon.
We’ve been lucky this year because the weather has been extremely nice as we have descended slowly from the altitudes of Colorado and into the plains and river valleys. Even tonight, east of the Mississippi, the humidity is low and it hasn’t been scorching hot, so we can boondock without the dramatic suffering of years past, if we care to. The forecast for Jackson Center OH (the home of Airstream and Alumapalooza) is surprisingly good too, without a lot of thunderstorm action predicted. I’m keeping my fingers crossed.
The story of today is high winds. It started off as a light breeze but by 11 a.m. it was a nasty crosswind out of the south and it just wouldn’t let up. White box trailers were dancing around in their lanes and it made me extra cautious even though our Airstream was handling very well. By 3 p.m. the wind was a solid 30 MPH with gusts, and by 4 p.m. the gusts got to 40-45 MPH (according to the weather service). We were trying to make it to Starved Rock State Park in Illinois but around 4 I decided to cut the drive short and look for some other place to spend the night.
I did this not because the Airstream couldn’t handle the weather, but simply to maintain my safety margin. I’ve done a lot of high-risk activities (ultralight flying, diving, motorcycling) and I know that safety does not come from any single choice, but from multiple layers of good choices. I’m talking about things like good skills, driver fitness, appropriate speed, safety equipment, and situational awareness. Make all the right choices and you’ve got a padding to help keep you out of trouble—or resolve it successfully.
When layers of that safety padding start to fall apart, it’s time to end the trip. This time I saw extreme high winds, driver fatigue, and increasingly rough roads with heavy truck traffic as we approached the Chicago area. Three bad factors are my limit, so even though I have high confidence in our tow rig and high confidence in my own abilities as the driver, we looked for somewhere to call it a night.
This turned out to be a fortuitous move. We discovered a park we’d never heard of before, Johnson-Sauk Trail State Recreation Area in Illinois. It’s a very nice park set inside a pine and oak forest, only 6 miles off I-80. The campground is a large circle of widely-spaced sites surrounding a tranquil grassy center. We got an electric site for $20 and the Airstream is pointed into the wind so, although the wind is howling, we aren’t rocking on the stabilizers.
Stopping an hour early has given me some time to catch up on some work, and Eleanor has time to make us all a nice dinner. We’ll have to get started a little earlier tomorrow in order to make up the lost time, but otherwise this was a nice tradeoff. I don’t envy the folks who are still on I-80 in Iowa or Illinois this evening.
But our evening was not entirely dull, as we had an unexpected visit from the Zimmer family, local owners of a 1963 Airstream Safari. They were passing through the park and spotted our Airstream, and ended up coming in for a tour and visit.
The route we planned was sort of a Arizona/Utah dream trip, up Rt 89A and then Rt 160 deep into the Navajo Nation, then up through the incredibly beautiful red cliffs and buttes of Monument Valley, and then up the edge of Utah past some great parks we’ve visited before (Hovenweep, Natural Bridges, Canyonlands), through Moab, and finally into Colorado.
I am happy to report all systems are functioning well on the Airstream and Mercedes. The Merc did an odd thing yesterday during a steep climb, giving us a Check Engine light. It wasn’t overheated and the light cleared itself overnight. I can’t detect any issues with the car, so I’m not going to sweat it for now. The car’s computer will store the fault code and we can get it read out later if we want. The Airstream seems perfect. The fridge is cold, the tires needed no air at all (after five months of storage!), the hitch is silent, etc. At this point we’ve run up about 700 miles and everything is fine, although I’m noting a few things I’d like to update soon.
We stopped at a rest area south of Moab where there’s a great sandstone arch that you can easily climb to. If you are in this area and missed Arches National Park, this is a nice consolation prize. You can also get a nice shot of your Airstream down below in the parking lot if you want (and of course, I did).
Our drive today brought us west on I-10 to Phoenix, then I-17 north all the way to Flagstaff. I-17 heading north has a couple of tough climbs, the type where signs warn “Turn off air conditioner to avoid overheating”. They mean it. It was about 95 when we hit the first steep grade north of Phoenix. I watched the engine temperature and mostly it was stable, but there was one point at which it started to rise and so we went without a/c for a few minutes.
And then something great happened. We passed by a sign for Sunset Crater National Monument, and Eleanor said, “Why don’t we stop here instead?” It was only 3:30 in the afternoon and we hadn’t covered the miles I had hoped for. I wanted our first day out to be a big one, so we’d have less pressure in the next two days to get to Denver. But I was feeling tired, and we’d never visited Sunset Crater before, and there was a little blue symbol by the road indicating that it had a campground. We considered the pros and cons, and then turned around and drove a mile back to Sunset Crater.
It was a stunningly beautiful afternoon, with temperatures in the 70s, beautiful sunshine, dry air, and a pleasant breeze. You couldn’t ask for a better day to visit this great National Park, and yet the campground was half empty (on a Friday night) and the trails were uncrowded.