May 12 2010

Elephant Butte Lake State Park, NM

At long last we are back on the road. Getting back into the Airstream was easy, like riding a bike, but getting out of the house was not. Even though we delayed our departure a couple of times, it was still a long day on Tuesday settling final projects and packing the Airstream.

Part of the trouble stemmed from the fact that the Airstream will be away from home base for six months, and it contains a growing child. Eleanor desperately tried to plan for Emma’s expected growth this summer by test-fitting every single piece of clothing, culling the borderline outfits and finding suitable replacements. This was a process I’d just as soon never see again, much like touring a meatpacking plant or a Congressional committee hearing.

But it’s all done, and by 10:20 a.m. (only an hour behind schedule) we were heading away with everything we’d need for an indefinite time on the road. We got back into the full-timing groove almost instantly. At the first rest stop, Emma commented wistfully, “It’s good to be back.” I had to agree, although I realized that she was twice the size and twice the age she was when we started out the first time. She used to be able to sit cross-legged on the dinette and take pictures through the window, but now, she’s a pre-teen approaching five feet tall. Still, the Airstream is home to her.

Having trimmed a full week from our original itinerary, we have to make some miles at first. Rather than dawdling through New Mexico, we are making a simple overnight stop at Elephant Butte Lake State Park in central New Mexico (near Truth Or Consequences) and then proceeding north to Colorado. Our trip plan calls for about six hours in the car on Thursday, then about three hours on Friday, and then we’ll pause in Colorado Springs for the weekend.

Zooming past the scenery is not all that bad today. Generally we like to go more slowly and explore, but this time we are making notes for a future pass through the area. There are a lot of interesting state parks, historic and natural areas, and “blue highways” that we would like to explore, and we will, next year. The sky is brilliant blue, the mountains are red and tan, and the weather has been absolutely perfect. Best of all, the Airstream and Mercedes are performing optimally, with no strange glitches resulting from months in storage. So our opening day has been auspicious and I hope it will be the start of a long stretch of happy towing.

Elephant Butte Lake is a nice spot. There are “developed” campsites (shade ramada, water, barbecue grill, $10) lined up on a bluff overlooking the long and convoluted lake, and we chose one of those. Our Verizon Wireless cell phones seem to work fine here. Down below are sandy primitive sites ($8) where tenters are camped right next to their boats pulled up on shore, and a large marina. Off to the west and mostly lacking a view, is an electrified campground ($14) where all of the other RV’ers seem to have chosen to be. I don’t think you could go far wrong choosing any of these, but I would warn RV’ers to avoid the sandy primitive spots by the lake, because you could easily get stuck.

After a long day in the car it’s really important to get out and move around a while. There was just time for a nice walk down to the beach and back (about a mile total), settling in, and dinner, before the sun set. We needed that break to work out the little travel stresses that build up in a long day of driving. I spent the evening on the bed, working on my first little travel video about towing with the Mercedes. Eleanor shot it for me with her little Canon digicam. The video quality isn’t superb but it does the job, and it was fun to make. You can see the results of our first effort on YouTube.

Now the wind is blowing warm against the side of our trailer in the dark, with a brilliant star-filled sky, like it should be in the desert this time of year. I had forgotten about this: a night with the trailer gently rocking in the breeze. I won’t ruin it by putting the stabilizers down. Emma was right, it really does feel like coming home.

May 04 2010

I should know better

I should know better than to predict our departure date. Last year I wrote the blog entry “(Almost) Ready To Roll” on June 1, and we ended up stuck for various reasons until June 17. This year I wrote “Last week before launch” on April 27 and then we realized it wasn’t really the last week at all.

Not that we’ve had serious mechanical issues, like last year. This time it’s more a matter of feeling not quite ready. We’re going with our guts here. Eleanor was feeling stressed by a lot of projects she wanted to get done, and I was feeling put off by the generally lousy weather conditions along our proposed route. I can’t see the point in rushing away from decent weather here just to go up and freeze our snowbird tailfeathers in the upper elevations of New Mexico and Colorado.

As I’ve said many times, flexibility is the key. We had an Executive Committee meeting (Mom & Dad) and decided that we would simply chuck a few destinations from the trip plan in order to be able to stay in Tucson for another week. The major destination dropped was Chaco Culture National Historic Park in northern New Mexico. Being at about 6,000 feet, it was still experiencing cold days and wind recently. Although Chaco has been on our destination list for a long time, we’re going to postpone it again until summer 2011 when we are looking for a cooler getaway from the heat of the low desert.

This has turned out to be a great decision. Not only do we have a much more leisurely packing process, but we are using the opportunity to clean up projects and tasks that otherwise would have dragged on into the fall. We’ll leave in a clearer-headed state, and that much more able to enjoy the travels that are ahead.

That’s a really important point. When talking to prospective full-timers, or people who are planning a grand voyage of several months, I always mention that they need to get the little things cleaned up before they go. Most people don’t follow this advice as well as they should, and the result is always that the first year or so of travel is overshadowed by lingering issues from their life before. In particular, it’s important to get your financial house in order. Too many times I’ve seen folks go out assuming that life on the road would be fantastically cheap (which it can be, but isn’t always), and then they inevitably hit a wall caused by old debts not cleared up, lack of capital, tax problems not resolved, or unexpected expenses. More than one person I know has had to give up their travel dreams, sell the trailer, and go back to a day job, very much against their will.

Of course there are plenty of other things that can hang you up as you go. Some can’t be prevented, and just have to be dealt with as they crop up, like medical problems and mechanical breakdowns. But it’s a crucial exercise to think for a few months about how you live every day, and what you’ll need to adjust when living out of a 200-square foot space that has no fixed address. We still do it before every trip because it’s easy to accumulate stuff and habits while living in a house, that don’t translate well to mobile life. It’s a process of cleansing, simplifying, and organizing your life that ultimately yields benefits beyond the travel experience, so it’s well worth doing.

You may not think retirees have a lot to teach you, but in this case they do. Retirees often simplify their lives in a healthy way. With kids and jobs behind them, they reduce expenses, clear out the garage, downsize the house (or get rid of it entirely), don’t replace the elderly pets, stop taking on big projects, and try to focus on what’s now important in their lives. A lot of working people try to have it all when they travel, and that’s a huge mistake. The freedom and broadening of travel are the rewards — everything else is ancillary.

Oh, how nice it would be if I didn’t have to work as we go! But of course in every life there are compromises. This year, thanks to the new magazine project (launching in November 2010), I expect to have more work-related compromises than ever. In fact, I have given in to reality and built a six week hiatus into our travels, during which I will return to Tucson alone (by air) and just get stuff done. Rather than be depressed about this, we have a plan to make the most of it, which will be revealed later. It should be a very interesting summer.

And that’s perhaps the most important point about travel life: everything is an opportunity, if you’ll just choose to see it that way. Even a breakdown means a chance to meet someone new, try to learn a repair skill, or suffer discomfort that becomes a grand tale of adventure later. We are leaving later than planned, digging a 6-week hole in the middle of the schedule, and working too much … and yet this looks to be the most interesting summer we’ve had in a long time. I’m looking forward to it.

Revised countdown: T minus six days and counting…

Apr 27 2010

Last week before launch

It is our final week at winter home base. That means we’ve dragged out the checklists from last year, and every day we try to check off a few items toward the goal of hitting the road in the Airstream.

It takes a long time to get three people (with homeschool and a business) ready to hit the road for six months. But each year it gets easier. My checklist for shutting down the house has only about two dozen items on it, all relatively simple. The jobs fall into four categories:

Shutting down (like putting the Qwest DSL service on “vacation mode”, turning off the gas, and clearing out the refrigerator);
Securing things for the time we are gone (backing up computers, putting fuel stabilizer in the car, locking up);
Preparing the Airstream and tow car (oil change, equipment checks, packing);
Cleaning up (cleaning the house and Airstream, giving away outgrown clothes, exchanging books at Bookman‘s, thinning out stuff in the Airstream’s storage compartments).

We’ve tried to optimize this process by keeping the house “lean,” meaning relatively free of stuff and obligations, but having good neighbors is an enormous help. The potted plants always find a home where they’ll be watered, and we have several people who will watch the place while we are gone. I never worry about the house. If something ever happened, we’d probably get half a dozen phone calls in fifteen minutes.

Theft while we are gone is a relatively small issue as well, by virtue of the simple fact of our minimal possessions. In other words, there’s nothing worth stealing inside. Not only do the computers come with us, a thief would find no Picassos on the walls or oxycontin in the medicine cabinet. We don’t even own a TV. (Note to would-be burglars: if you are interested in risking a felony conviction for some garden tools, or a kid’s room full of who-knows-what, I can point you to the right place. Frankly, you’d be doing me a favor. I don’t like gardening all that much.)

Eleanor and I find that it works better to each have our own lists. We both have our specialties, and we overlap enough that nothing gets overlooked. We both keep a checklist of preparatory “things to do” and “things to pack.” The “to do” list usually starts about three weeks in advance because of time-consuming projects (house repairs, trailer repairs, trip planning) and the “to pack” list kicks in during the final week, which is now.

Packing is probably easier for us than for most people, because we leave the Airstream mostly packed and ready year-round. Long ago we bought duplicates of the most commonly-used items, specifically to stay in the trailer. The trailer even has its own silverware. Those things that do get removed (such as tools, office equipment, stuffed animals) are stored in containers while in the house, so that we can easily grab the container and put it back in the trailer without extensive re-packing. That’s a tip I got from a fellow Airstreamer years ago: bins are your friend.

Of course, we do try to advance our tools and our packing process every year. For example, the Kindle e-book reader has turned out to be a neat addition to our equipment list. I’ve added “Fill Kindle” to my checklist so that I can head out with at least half a dozen books ready to read, in one slim and lightweight package. Since working on the Wally Byam Books project I have become aware of the abundance of free public domain books available online, and it seems an excellent opportunity to finally read some classics that I otherwise never would have enjoyed. I can also read newspapers and magazines on the Kindle (by subscription), something that I never did when we were full-timing, since all the paper was cumbersome in the trailer. But Kindle aside, I still like to have a few paper-based books in my hands, so we’ll also load up with tradeable paperbacks.

(These thoughts are probably on my mind because of the upcoming Summer 2010 issue of Airstream Life magazine. We have an article on new mobile technology and a separate article about using checklists. I learned some things from both of those articles, and I hope you do too. That issue will be mailed in about 10 days.)

We are generally the type to avoid making reservations, but there are a few points on this voyage when we will need them. Yesterday my “to do” was to identify those points and book campsites that would otherwise be unavailable on particular dates we expect to be in certain areas. I hope I’m not giving away too much of the story by saying that those sites included Cheyenne Mountain State Park and Cherry Creek State Park in Colorado, Alumapalooza at the Airstream factory (of course), Long Key State Park in Florida, and Ft Wilderness in Disneyworld. There are a few others we’ll have to book from the road, when some things solidify. We’ve also had to book a couple of airfares, and alert some friends that we’ll be looking for courtesy parking on specific dates. That’s a lot of reservations by our standards, but that’s because this is a much more structured trip than we’ve ever taken before.

The biggest challenge of packing up for a six-month trip is that you’ve got to anticipate a lot of varied needs. We will encounter all kinds of weather, terrain, and a wide range of activities. It’s impossible to bring something for every possible circumstance, so some judicious choices have to be made. We know we will be hiking in northern New Mexico, swatting mosquitoes in New England, and snorkeling in the Florida Keys, but what lies between? Some challenges will have to be solved ad hoc, with loans of gear by friends and the occasional purchase. In a travel trailer, you really do get by with a little help from your friends.

This trip we are not taking the folding bicycles. It was a tough call, but when we analyzed our trip we saw that the only times we were really going to use bicycles, we’d be able to borrow them easily. That saves a bunch of room inside the car for other things. In prior years I wouldn’t have dreamed of going away for six months without at least one bicycle, but every year is different.

Now that I think of it, perhaps packing for six months isn’t really the biggest challenge. The biggest challenge is to get mentally ready. I have to admit that life in the house has been exceptionally pleasant lately. We’ve had low stress, lots of friendly visitors, cheap movies on Tuesday night, and of course all the amenities of modern suburban life (ice and water on the refrigerator door, a barbecue grill on the back patio, room for projects, daily mail service, pizza delivery, etc.). In some ways, it is hard to leave. But if I look forward to the many adventures that await, that homebody feeling goes away and gets replaced by a tickle of excitement.

The other thought that is in our minds is that it is very likely this will be the last year we get to go out and extensively roam the country as we have been privileged to do. Too many things are cropping up to allow a six-month voyage in 2011. The best we can hope for will be a month away here and there, before we are called back to home base for one obligation or another. It’s the end of an era for us, but there’s nothing to be sad about, since it is simultaneously the beginning of a new era. Change is good, and we will find ways to make the most of what we have. As has been said many times, it’s not about getting what you want, it’s about wanting what you have. I can see how 2011 and the next few years are likely to be radically different from our previous lives, but only in superficial aspects. The core values will stay the same, and we will still travel.

So here we go. The countdown is T minus 8 before launch.

Apr 20 2010

Suspension of disbelief

Starting in the late 1950s, Airstream made one of the best marketing moves since Wally Byam started running caravans, when the company hired photographer Ardean R Miller III. Ardean’s photographs of Airstreams in exotic locations were so visually stunning, so artfully composed, and so inspired that they have been a staple of Airstream’s marketing for six decades.

Take a look at the thumbnails here (click any of them for larger versions). These are just a few samples of the great commercial work that was being done for Airstream in the 1950s, 60s, and 70s.

Even today, it’s hard not look at these photos wistfully and wish you were somewhere in that scene. Tossing a ball on the beach in Florida, meeting a “real Indian” on family vacation out west, fly-fishing near the red rocks of Arizona, or toasting your sweetie on a hill in San Francisco — those were all moments that Airstream promised you could have with one of their trailers. No wonder the company was regarded as such an icon of Americana — Airstream’s marketing took every American’s fantasies about escaping the rat race and hitting the open road, and put them on steroids in these beautiful images.

Now pause for just a moment after looking at some of the photographs. Were you thinking, “That’s a beautiful scene,” or were you thinking, “Hey, you’d never be able to park your Airstream there!” ?

That’s the magic part. The scenes in these photos tell a wonderful story at a glance, and you bought it automatically. Even though the images are always fantasies, they are fantasies you want to believe in. It’s the principle of “suspension of disbelief” — if a movie, story, or photo is good, you’ll suspend your cynicism long enough to enjoy what’s in front of you. This is good stuff, and ageless because it touches universal human themes: freedom, adventure, and family.

The other noticeable commonality is that in an Ardean Miller photo, the Airstream is always present but is never obtrusive. He recognized that the product is only a means to a greater end. People don’t buy Airstreams for practical reasons– they buy the aspirations that an Airstream enables.

That’s a refreshing thing for me. I spent a few years in corporate marketing, and a couple of years working in an ad agency, and I can tell you that most marketing managers have no clue of the subtle principles that induce people to buy. Instead you hear comments like this from people with “vice president” in their title: “Can we make the product bigger?” “I don’t think the logo shows well enough.” “Why don’t we add in a dog — because people like dogs.”

There are many ways to kill great art before it has a chance to develop. Results like these take nurturing, and protection from bean-counting managers. Any goofball with a camera can claim to be a commercial photographer, but only a real artist can repeatedly produce really great images that make you long for more. Ardean had that sort of talent. Sadly, not many other photographers do. Time has proved that Ardean was a tough act to follow.

Sometimes I wonder if modern businesses have simply given up trying. Here’s a horrifying example from my favorite company:

What’s wrong with this picture? Well, to start off, the composition is all wrong. Clearly the Airstream is the overwhelming emphasis, and the people in the front are awkward specks of foreground, mere props. There’s no story here. So right away, you start to doubt the contrived scene. And that leads to uncomfortable questions. What are they doing there? Where did the Adirondack chairs come from? Is that what people do when they travel — just stop on the road and pull out their guitar for a quick serenade? Where’s the “adventure” in this scene?

And then you start to actually look at the extremely fake people … Now really, does anyone dress like that? This postcard is from the 21st century, but “Suzy” here seems to be stuck in another decade. And “Jim” just looks like a dork. Didn’t someone tell him that wearing a sweater knotted in front is really not cool? It makes me wish for a review by Charles Phoenix.

“Jim” here is obviously very impressive to his “wife” as he strums that guitar out in the middle of a lawn somewhere while his Airstream blocks traffic. Her adoring gaze tells you everything you need to know (e.g., someone paid her to look that way. When was the last time your wife looked at you like that?)

Note the staged iced tea, too — isn’t it just too perfect with that slice of lemon perched on the rim of the glass? … And now here we are, focusing on the minutiae and completely unimpressed with the product, because the scene surrounding it is so damn bad.

Honestly, do you aspire to be either of these two? I didn’t think so. Personally, I’d run screaming from a product that might make me into one of these plasticine people. If I ever start wearing a sweater knotted over a sport shirt like that on a summer day, please take me into custody.

You could do a better job of inspirational photography with an Airstream parked at Wal-Mart.

I won’t even begin to pick apart the second image at right (I leave that as an exercise for you. Click, and enjoy.)

Now, to be fair, these images may represent the nadir of Airstream product photography. I’m not sure of the date of these two images but it was at least several years ago. The work has gotten much better lately. Airstream has even hired Ardean’s son (Ardean “Randy” Miller IV) to do some work for them recently. Once again, the company has started to tap the romance, excitement, freedom, and togetherness that Airstream has been so closely bonded to over the years. It’s a matter of selling the sizzle, not just the steak. If they can get even halfway close to the high standard of the 1960s, I think the company can expect a commensurate rise in public image and sales.

Apr 18 2010

Chiricahua National Monument

For three years we have had this unit of the National Parks system on our “must visit” list. Mostly this has been because Chiricahua sits in the southeastern corner of Arizona, not far from our winter home base, and it beckons to us. A national park left unexplored is, in our lives, an unnatural vacuum. Missing one that sits only 100 miles from our home is inexcusable.

But we have had excuses nonetheless. Chiricahua has presented two small barriers to our visitation. For one, most of the park is between 5,600 and 6,800 feet above sea level, which means it gets snow in the winter and presents its best weather in spring and fall. We’re usually busy with other things at those times, and often aren’t even in the state.

The other barrier is one of logistics: the road through the park and the only campground are CCC (Civilian Conservation Corps)-era creations, with the usual gorgeous stone works and narrow, winding roads. Our 30-foot Airstream would never be able to camp here. The official limit is often stated as 29 feet, but that really refers to motorhomes. For trailers, 22 feet would be a more practical limit, maybe even shorter.

Two years ago Bert and Janie Gildart took their 28-foot Airstream to this park and found out why: the CCC workers in the 1930s built two steep road dips through dry washes inside the campground. The Gildarts added a long scrape of their own to the many others found on the roadway. Just last week I got an email from some blog readers with a 25-foot Airstream and they, too, reported scraping. (They had bumper damage, as well.)

We had planned to tent camp here, but with the arrival of the 17-foot Caravel we finally had a proper vehicle for Chiricahua National Monument. Looking at the trip plan this year, I realized that we needed to either go this month, or pass on the park until sometime in 2011.

The funny thing is that I hadn’t expected all that much. Sure, we’d heard of the “wonderland of rocks” that has been promoted here since even before it was a National Monument, and others had told us that it was a very nice place, but that didn’t prepare us for the scenic beauty of the place. Let me cut right to the chase: Chiricahua National Monument is a really gorgeous, and possibly under-appreciated (only 56,000 visitors last year), national park.

The only campground in the park, Bonita Canyon, is classic CCC. There are the narrow roads, as I mentioned, and there are the little stone and brown-wood bathhouses, and tiny tent-sized campsites that have been gradually co-opted by trailers and small motorhomes over the decades.

A word about those campsites. They are not friendly to big RVs and long trailers. In addition to the impossible dips, the 90 degree bends, and complete lack of RV services (no hookups, no dump station), the sites themselves are generally sized for one ordinary passenger vehicle. That parking space is probably not level, either, since when this campground was built people were expected to pitch a tent. Only the tent spaces have been leveled. We had to pull out every leveling block we had, and extend our tongue jack to the highest level to get the Caravel approximately level in site #12.

Still, I do not begrudge rustic little CCC campgrounds like this one in any way. They are charming, shady, and quiet. They take me back to days of camping many years ago. It’s like traveling back in time, since little has changed in the seven decades since they were built. I am not an advocate of expanding, leveling, and adding utilities to these campgrounds, since in almost every case, “improving” a CCC campground would utterly destroy the essential charm of it. For many people, a wilderness area (an official designation that constitutes the bulk of Chiricahua) is cruelly mocked by massive infrastructure such as is seen in Yellowstone and other major western parks.

I consider it a privilege to stay in such a historic, beautiful, and primitive place for a mere $12 per night. Apparently others feel the same way, since the 25-site campground fills up nearly every night in the spring and fall. We arrived at about 12:30 pm and found that only a few tent sites remained available, besides the notorious Site #12 that eventually accommodated us.

Our friends Ken and Petey had arrived the night before, in their 16-foot 1961 Airstream Bambi. After settling in, we met up with them and checked in at the Visitor Center to get oriented, pick up the Junior Ranger program, and plan our next 24 hours.

When you are in a tiny trailer, life is generally conducted al fresco. It is difficult to find room inside for three people to function all the time, and a group of five for dinner is unquestionably an outdoor affair. Fortunately, the entire weekend we received the typical southern Arizona April weather: dry, clear, and mostly bug-free. (Emma, however, has gotten so used to not having bugs that the appearance of just one or two strikes her as cause for complaint. “The bugs are awful!” She needs to spend a May weekend camping in northern New England sometime.)

There are two major activities here: hiking, and visiting the original ranch houses as part of a guided tour led by park rangers. I can heartily recommend the hiking, and in fact you can’t really see the best of this park without doing at least a little. The “wonderland of rocks” is a huge formation of volcanic tuff that has gradually eroded and split into tall spires and unlikely balancing rocks. The photographic opportunities are endless, for both the bird-watcher and the rock-watcher. The trails, again built by CCC labor, are excellent. We covered 3.3 miles in one hike on Saturday, circling from the Echo Canyon Trail to the Upper Rhyolite Trail and then to the Ed Riggs Trail, and we wished for more.

The ranch tour (free, no reservations needed) is also well worth a visit. It’s always interesting to hear the tale of how a national park was established. The Faraway Ranch house is the centerpiece of that story. Since the house is essentially a time capsule complete with furnishings, it has its own story to tell, too.

Every time we travel to a southern Arizona park we hear from someone about the dangers of encountering border crossers from Mexico. For the first time we encountered a Mexican immigrant who has taken up residence here in recent decades: the Coatimundi.

This cute critter looks like a cross between a cat and a monkey, with an incredible long tail. He climbs like a monkey, too, quick as a flash up and down trees. We’ve never seen one before, even in a zoo (although I believe there are some at the Sonoran Desert Museum), so it was quite a surprise to have one slinking and sniffing not far from our campsite. From the wildlife log at the visitor center, it seems the coatimundi drop by on a regular basis.

With only two nights in the park, our visit was too short. Emma snagged the Junior Ranger badge of course, and we managed to take in several trails, but there is clearly much more to explore. I’d also like to try the graded dirt road over the mountains to Portal AZ (on the east side of the Chiricahua Range), possibly with the Caravel in tow if the road conditions permit. And just a few miles down the road, there’s Fort Bowie National Historic Site, which we missed on this visit.

We are already talking about going again in about a week. It’s the perfect time of year and we’ve got our eye on a particular 6.9 mile trek the would bring us past most of the park’s best formations. We would have just stayed another day on this visit, but unfortunately I am expected in the office on Monday for several important tasks. There is no cell phone service in Chiricahua Nat’l Mon., nor Internet of any sort (even satellite would be tough with all the trees and canyon walls), so there was no possibility of extending our visit by working from the Caravel. (Drat that “work” thing.)

This Sunday was our neighborhood’s annual block party, which we managed to get back in time to attend. I told some of our neighbors about our trip and in doing so I met a couple of guys with trailers who started telling me about all kinds of wonderful boondocking spots in southern Arizona. It seems that we’ve only scratched the surface of this region. We have just a couple of weeks left before we must leave for points north, but now we have a long list of explorations to enjoyably work through while we are here — and next season as well.