Archives for February 2016

Feb 29 2016

A deal on solar panels

You know … I had such a good time at Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument last week that I did something unusual. At Eleanor’s suggestion, I left the Airstream parked in the campground so we could come back as a family for another visit. We’ve never done that before.

So I came home on Wednesday, re-packed and caught up on some work, and then Friday all three of us went back just for the weekend.

It was a weird thing to come to the campground and find the Airstream sitting there, all set up and ready for us. It was more like having a vacation house. But it was great: We just piled in, and I slid out the awning and Solar Shade, and opened the windows and let the warm desert breezes flow through … and it was an “Aaaahhhhh” moment. No obligations, no deadlines, and glorious sunshine in a quiet park.

That feeling lasted all weekend as we hiked out to abandoned mines and filled in our “Desert Ranger” books (everyone got a patch), and visited with other Airstreamers, and generally just chilled out. I have to say, it was a great mini-vacation.

As we were camping I was reminded of how great it is to have solar panels on the roof of the Airstream. The Twin Peaks campground at Organ Pipe has a few rows where generators aren’t allowed, and I noticed that most of the Airstreams were clustered there (including us). It was more peaceful without the rumble of generators firing every morning while people microwaved their coffee.

This time of year the sun angle is low and I often wish I had just a little more sun-gathering capability, so I’m now using a 120-watt portable solar panel kit to augment the fixed panels on the roof. This has turned out to be so great that I’m going to start selling the same kit in the Airstream Life Store.

Having a set of portable panels means you can set them on the ground where the sun is shining (even if the Airstream is in shade) and angle them to catch the early morning and late afternoon light that flat roof panels miss. This effectively gives you a lot more power collection especially during the short winter days and cloudy days. They have adjustable legs so you can set the angle to match the sun, and they fold up to easily store in a zippered carry case.

I’ve got a bunch of these solar panel kits coming in next week. They’re somewhat expensive, but if you were ever thinking about getting a set, I’ve got a deal for you. The kit we are now selling includes 120 watts of top quality folding panels with all the bells & whistles. It’s totally “plug and play”—you don’t need anything else to get started—and we include a few crucial accessories that other sellers don’t include. We’re going to sell this complete kit for $636.

Since you’re a blog reader, if you contact me before March 10, 2016 and you’re one of the first 10 people to respond, I’ll send you a discount coupon to use on my store that will reduce your price by $50. I guarantee you will never find a better price on this full kit (including extension cable and 7-way plug adapter) anywhere.

Click here to read more about what we’re offering, but be sure to get the discount coupon from me before you place your order.

I’ll talk a little more about our Organ Pipe Cactus National Park experience in the next blog, because it’s an interesting place and we had a few, uh, “adventures” in the back country …

Feb 23 2016

Camping in Organ Pipe Cactus Nat’l Monument for no reason

I feel very fortunate to be able to travel via Airstream as much as I do. But some of the travel isn’t that great, because we are running from one place to another on a schedule. Being on a schedule means skipping interesting roadside sights and enticing state parks because they aren’t convenient for a stop. It means pressure to cover miles, and overnight stays in places that don’t exactly qualify as vacation spots.

The past few years have been filled with too much of that sort of travel, and not enough of the type where we lay back and let the days come to us. So to try to balance things out, I decided to take a trip by myself to Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument in southern Arizona.

Actually the trip was intended to include my friend Nick, but he got a virus the day before the trip so it became a solo voyage. This was a mental block for a little while because I had anticipated everything for a party of two, and now I would be alone in the Airstream with no real goals or plans. I stopped for a moment to re-evaluate why I was going.

This was an opportunity. I have not taken the Airstream out by myself for “no reason” in many years. Every solo trip I’ve had recently (and there haven’t been many) had some sort of quest as the central point of the trip. This time I’d be hitching have up the Airstream, towing 200 miles, and spending a couple of nights far out in the desert near the Mexico border for no reason other than to relax.

Eleanor loaded the Airstream up with food enough for several days, and we got it all straightened out for travel, and off I went. As I towed down Rt 86 through the Tohono O’odham Reservation and wide open Sonoran Desert, I got a little more cheerful. I was alone in my favorite place in the world (the Airstream) and heading off to adventures that I couldn’t predict.

Airstream camped at Organ Pipe — Camped at Organ Pipe’s Twin Peaks campground, $16/nt

Fate always seems to hand us a little surprise when we step out of our personal boundaries. In this case I found a story about Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument that I didn’t see coming. My friends Bert and Janie Gildart were here and Bert and I decided to go for a drive around the park on some of the backcountry dirt roads, to do some hiking and sightseeing.

You have probably heard about the reputation of Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument. Virtually closed for many years because of drug smuggling and illegal immigration, it was considered to be a “dangerous” place. In the years leading up to 2012 most of the park was barred to tourists (except in a few cases where they could go only with armed escorts). Even today people think it’s a war zone down here.

Mexico border fence — The border fence isn’t what keeps people out.

But it’s not. Not even close. I met the Superintendant, a confident guy with law enforcement background. He talked to a bunch of us campers at the park amphitheater and gave the story from his perspective. The park, he said, was suffering from “lore” but not facts. It also had a dysfunctional relationship with the Border Patrol, who were trying to do their job to protect the border without much cooperation.

Without getting into the long story of how the park was turned around, let’s just fast-forward to today. The park is safe. There are 550 Border Patrol people living just up the road in Ajo, and at any given time there might be about 40 Border Patrol officers traveling around the park in F-150 trucks. There are huge communication and surveillance capabilities, so everyone on the ground can be spotted. (I suggest avoiding romantic encounters out in the desert where “nobody can see us”.)

The Superintendant said we’d be hard-pressed to spot any illegals while we were in the park, and that was true while Bert and I were exploring. The smugglers don’t want to be seen, and the Border Patrol scoops up most of them anyway. We actually wanted to find some hints of activity, like some of the black plastic water bottles they leave behind, just because we were curious how successful the park has been at suppressing it. We didn’t find much during our 32 mile backcountry drive, until we were right at the border itself–and most of that trash probably just blew over the border.

Instead, we found magnificent cactus forests, delicate desert flowers, hidden springs, abandoned mines and ranches, and blissful solitude. Didn’t see a single other human being for most of the day, until we finally crossed paths with a Border Patrol officer in his truck, who gave us a friendly wave.

A saguaro cactus “forest” in Organ Pipe Cactus Nat’l Monument

Bert photographing the senita, a species that only exists north of the border in this place

A steel grate is the only thing between you and a 40-foot fall down this mine shaft

Desert flowers were just beginning to bloom in late February

The rebirth of Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument has been spectacular. The park is better than we’ve ever known it, and all the campers here have been commenting on it. They’re wondering why more people aren’t here, enjoying the fantastic weather and stunning scenery all winter. So I’m passing it along: Organ Pipe is open and thriving, and you should get here before everyone else figures it out.

For me, I’m reminded that no effort is pointless. I had no preconceptions about coming here, but the National Park supplied me with a purpose and an education anyway. I guess I was wrong when I thought I was coming here for no reason. I just didn’t know what the reason was.

Hitching up the Airstream to go see something always seems to pay off. This was a trip with no deadlines, no expectations, and no goals, and yet it has been as fulfilling as any other.

Eleanor says I’m not missing much at home right now, so I may as well stay for another quiet and cool desert night. That’s a nice bonus. While I’m here I’ll research a few things to do as a family so we can come back together before the season ends. Organ Pipe may become our winter vacation spot in the future, now that we know it has come back better than ever.

Feb 04 2016

Beach camping

I love camping at a beach by the open sea. We’ve done it at every opportunity, from Connecticut to California. There is something unique about camping at the edge of the ocean. It is one of those places that most people can only visit briefly, for a glorious but all-too-short day at the sandy beach before heading home. But with an Airstream your home can be just a few feet from the beach, providing a comfortable and cozy shelter while you watch the setting sun reflecting on the water, or listen to the endless rhythm of pounding surf.

Some of my best camping memories are from beachside places. One of our very first experiences, back in 2004 when our 1968 Caravel was still very new to us, was camping at Charlestown Breachway State Beach in CT. It was just an asphalt lot by the ocean, but being fresh to the Airstream lifestyle, it was a magical time.

It probably helped that Emma was just four years old. Everything was pretty magical back then, and it cemented our fondness for beachside camping.

Since that first experience we’ve camped by the beach on the Outer Banks of North Carolina, most of the eastern seaboard states, extensively in Florida and the Gulf Coast, Padre Island National Park, Puerto Peñasco and Bahia Kino in Mexico, California, and Washington. The only place we didn’t absolutely love was Bolsa Chica State Beach in Huntington Beach CA, and that’s mostly because heavy highway traffic was obnoxiously close.

For sure, your camping experience by the ocean can vary quite a lot. It might be peaceful and rustic, colorful and carnival-like, foggy and quiet, or blazing with sunshine and salt breezes. In California there are roads built close to the water nearly everywhere, so often the campsites are just asphalt spots sandwiched between beach and highway. Still, a lot of the sites are pretty nice.

The sound of the surf at night is a big part of the attraction for me. I distinctly remember the sound on that first night in Connecticut, and the different sounds we heard one wild & windy night in North Carolina, and yet another memorable night on St George Island (FL) where Eleanor and I stayed up late listening to the waves and talking (that was the night we decided it was time to buy a house after two years on the road). You only get that wonderful sound of waves crashing when you’re camped by the water.

On our trip in January this year we visited Thornhill Broome campground (part of Point Mugu State Park), between Oxnard and Malibu. It’s directly adjacent to the Pacific Coast Highway. The beach is rocky but there’s some sand. Like all the west coast sites the water is pretty cold most of the time. No hookups at all, nor dump station, and the gate gets locked at 10 pm. Still, it’s popular because it’s close to Los Angeles and Ventura, and we liked it.

If you visit here, try for a weekday to avoid crowds. For practical supplies and services, go north to Oxnard, and for people-watching and an entertaining California scene, go south to Malibu. It’s just a short and scenic drive down the road.

Our Airstream friend David organizes an annual get-together of fellow travelers (mostly vintage trailer owners) here every September, so we timed our visit to coincide. That was a good call. We spent a very pleasant evening with some new friends, sitting in a little courtyard they’d built between a vintage VW bus camper and a vintage Eriba Puck (German camper), while David made chili for everyone and Emma played cards with the other kids in a vintage motorhome.

This sort of self-entertainment is “low concept” to many people today. They don’t think they can have a good time without being on an expedition, a cruise ship, or a theme park, but I think we get just as much out of a quiet night with a few good people as anything else we’ve done. I think we all need to do some camping to stay in touch with what’s real, and what matters.

Now, I love camping in all sorts of places. Beaches, forests, deserts, even badlands … all of those peaceful places are good for keeping you centered. But beaches will always be special. I don’t know why. I’m just going to roll with it.

Feb 01 2016

Why you go to Death Valley

You don’t come to Death Valley for the fast Internet. Or for good cell phone coverage. This is part of what makes it a rare and peaceful place, because once you arrive there is a moratorium on ringing phones, text messages, social media, and other such distractions.

I’m a big believer in vacations. It’s hard to vacation when email is beckoning and the obligations of work can follow you every step of the way, so I think big western parks like Death Valley should stay “quiet zones” forever—but I’m sure that’s not going to be the case. Already in most of the remote places of the west there’s some spots of cellular service and so the responsibility is on me to put the phone and laptop away to disconnect for a few days. That takes self-discipline.

To a self-employed person, it feels like shirking. Being cut off from the Internet is like going without water; you can only do it for a limited time, and gradually things begin to stink. The longer you ignore email and let the voicemails pile up, the more you know you’ll have to deal with later.

I have many friends who work and live full-time in Airstreams, and those people plan ahead carefully to ensure they can get online as they travel. My friend Kyle is one of those people, so for him to tow his Airstream Classic 34 out to the “quiet zone” of Death Valley required getting ahead on work the week before in Pahrump NV, and then formally taking vacation time for the four days we would be camped at Stovepipe Wells in the vast desert.

You also don’t come to Death Valley for the high-concept entertainment. There is little shopping, and no commercial attractions except the lowest elevation golf course in the world. It is a huge, mostly empty place with subtle pleasures: eerie landscapes, tiny animal tracks in the sand dunes, a fragment of human history, abandoned mines and ghost towns, strange salt formations, superlative altitudes (282 feet below sea level and 11,000 feet above), and of course legendary heat in the summer.

Perhaps this is why there was hardly anyone there in January. You’d think the place would be flooded with visitors from northern states, escaping the gloom and snow for a patch of inexpensive desert sun, but the Stovepipe Wells campground was 90% empty, and we encountered few people during our explorations (except near Furnace Creek, by the Visitor Center and “ranch”).

We have visited Death Valley I think four times over the past decade, and each time we find something different. It’s too big to see in a single visit, even if you stay a week. Driving from Scotty’s Castle or Ubehebe Crater south to the Devil’s Golf Course (for example) is about 70 miles one way. It’s easy to do 150 miles a day roaming from one interesting spot to another, and then back to your campsite.

Normally we pick Furnace Creek as our campsite because it’s fairly central. This time we chose Stovepipe Wells just because it seemed like we might do more stuff in the northern part of the park. Scotty’s Castle (a popular historic house) was closed due to flooding, but that still left Ubehebe Crater (pictured at left), the Sand Dunes, Rhyolite ghost town, Leadfield ghost town, and the epic one-way Titus Canyon drive.

Titus Canyon was the big goal for me this time. Eleanor and I first visited Death Valley in the early 1990s, camping in a tiny “2 man” tent and driving a rental car, and when I spotted Titus Canyon I was desperate to drive it. There are only two ways to experience Titus Canyon: by driving the entire road from Rhyolite (about 3-4 hours) or by walking uphill from the parking lot.

Alas, we didn’t have time to drive it, so we walked a bit of the lower canyon and put it on the “someday” list, where it remained for over twenty years. This visit I was determined to make the trip.

Since it’s a one-way road, you have to first exit the national park by driving to Nevada. This adds a “might as well” stop to the trip: Rhyolite ghost town in Nevada. There are a few buildings still there, and the most notable are the former train station (which no longer has tracks to it) and the Tom Kelly House (composed mostly of glass bottles).

After a visit to Rhyolite (a quick one since it was rather cold due to higher elevation), we embarked on the Titus Canyon drive. This drive is best with a high clearance vehicle and you’d better be OK with bumps because the first few miles are a tedious flat slog through the desert on a rocky road. After that it gets scenic—really scenic.

It was worth the wait. Every twist of the road (and there are many of them) revealed a new vista. We lunched at Red Pass, a spectacular spot high in the mountains, and then slowly worked down to the abandoned mining outpost of Leadfield.

Eventually the road enters narrow Titus Canyon for a couple of miles, which is very cool, and finally pops out into the wide open Death Valley to a small dirt parking lot. There we found a few envious visitors who were staring at the sign that says “one way traffic only”.

So that’s the sort of thing you go to Death Valley for. Oh, and one other thing … the sunsets.