Mar 28 2013

Borrego Springs, CA

Coming over to the state park campground was a sort of mixed blessing. On one hand, it was nice to be out of the wind somewhat, with unlimited power and water. On the other hand, after the wide open spaces of the boondocking area I found the campground to feel uncomfortably crowded. What were all these RVs doing blocking our view?

Last night it was a little warm in the trailer at bedtime and I was grateful for the gift of air conditioning, but then again I wouldn’t have needed it if somebody hadn’t had a smoky fire nearby which forced us to close the windows to the cool night air. That’s often a problem for us in state parks: people who must have campfires but don’t know how to make one that produces flames instead of smoke. I swear there’s somebody out there selling green wood to tourists outside every state park.

One of the nice things about coming to the state park campground is that we often run into people we know. Sure enough, half an hour after arriving we had a visit from (Airstreamers) Frank & Carol, who we have met in this park a few times before. (They were also at Alumafiesta and like to read this blog, so here’s a shout-out to them.) There are at least four Airstreams here but we’re not going to go knocking on doors. Our visit is too short and I just want to chill out as much as I can. If we had more time I’m sure we’d meet them all.

The reason is that we waited too long to book this stay. Tomorrow is Good Friday and this is Easter weekend, which is a peak time for families to go camping in southern CA apparently. The best we could get was a Wednesday-Thursday stay, so we are going to have to leave tomorrow morning for some place that is either remote or unreserved. That’s not really a problem given all the good free camping available in the state park.

Our two nights gave us time to get all the housekeeping done and have some fun too. Eleanor ran some laundry today while I put in another half-day at work (more than I had planned for, but that’s how it goes sometimes), we charged everything up, and last night we had a nice dinner at the Palms Hotel on the patio by the pool. I got a nap on Wednesday afternoon, which feels like a forbidden pleasure especially in the Airstream on a sunny day with a dry breeze.

The big outing was this afternoon. We loaded up the Mercedes with six of us (our friends came along) and hit a few favorite spots: the giant metal sculptures that dot Borrego Springs in the open spaces, a hike up to the Wind Caves, the winding canyon of The Slots, etc. Nothing new on this voyage for us, but for Kyle-Mary-Kathryn it was all a great new experience and we enjoyed showing it all to them.

Tomorrow the females of our party plan to tackle the Palm Canyon trail, in hopes of perhaps spotting a Bighorn Sheep, early in the morning. Sadly, Kyle and I will stay back and tap away at our computers, but by noon we will break away and hitch up the Airstreams to move again.

Mar 27 2013

Anza-Borrego boondocking

Apologies for not updating the blog sooner. It has been a case of classic conundrums: finally escaping for a bit of time off and so not wanting to get back at the computer right away; and finding a great boondocking spot where cellular Internet service is marginal. After two nights out in the windy wild desert of Anza-Borrego I’m starting to rejuvenate.

But that’s later in the story. We left Tucson on Monday morning for the 370-mile trip across the west on I-8. Normally this is a trip that we’d take two days to complete, just because it’s more fun to stop along the way and camp for a night somewhere, but in this case we wanted to catch up with Kyle & Mary as soon as possible so that they could be reunited with the daughter we’d taken hostage. I have done the I-8 drive many times but so far I’m not tired of it. The desert scenery is interesting to me, although to other people it’s just a lot of nothing, and knowing something about the history, politics, and geology that have shaped this region makes me reflective, which makes the drive go quickly. The neat thing is that there’s still a lot to learn, about the ancient native communities, the volcanic eruptions, Patton’s tanks practicing during WWII, the stories of dusty little towns and abandoned airfields, the real estate plats that never happened, and the endless human drama of the border.

Our goal was reached by about 5:45, safely before sunset, which was ideal because we were planning to find Kyle & Mary and Brian & Leigh at one of Anza-Borrego’s desert boondocking spots, near Clark Dry Lake. Being telecommuters, they all have a nose for spots that offer usable cell phone signal, and Brian & Leigh in particular are adept at finding those spots that offer the ideal balance of remoteness & technology. In this case they’d plotted exactly which empty patches of desert near the dry lake would have signal, and as we arrived they stood by the road to wave us in (there’s no sign to find this spot) and help us park in one of the few locations where we could get online and be near them.

So here we are, three Airstreams parked on the valley floor between Coyote Peak and the Santa Rosa Mountains with the dry lake less than a mile down the shallow slope. A few other RVs of various make are scattered around too; this isn’t an unknown spot. Nearby is Pegleg, a popular boondocking spot a little closer to the town, and all along the 22 miles of the Borrego Salton Seaway road there are others scattered in the canyons and flats as well.

There’s no place where it feels even slightly crowded. This is a desert park of vast dimensions, so we are enjoying a panoramic view where most other RVs (other than our friends) are mere dots on the horizon. It’s going to be hard to move to traditional campground after this.

Clark Dry Lake campsite After the long drive we were inclined just to settle in rather than rushing out to go exploring. Our packing was somewhat rushed, so there were things to finalize inside the trailer, and we needed dinner, and of course we’d been in the car for seven hours so there was no desire to get in it again. I broke out the little Weber propane grill for sausages and Eleanor made some pasta and vegetables, and then as we were finishing dinner everyone came over to visit because we were all excited to be here.

A-B friends in AS None of us are retired and we all have jobs (whether office-type or parenting/teaching), so Tuesday morning was really all about work. I had made some effort last week to clear my desk as much as possible, so I worked only about three hours in the morning, but when I was done everyone else was still at work, including the mothers and daughters doing homeschooling. Eleanor and I finally got a chance to head into Borrego Springs (while the girls were preoccupied between themselves) in the afternoon, to check out what’s changed in the two years since we’ve been here. Not much, it turned out, which is fine with me. I like the small town nature of the place, the lack of retail chains and cutesy gift shops, the farm stands and the complete absence of crowds.

While Eleanor hung back to work on dinner and the girls talked books in the 34-footer, the rest of us loaded up in the Mercedes to do a little 4WD road nearby, called Rockhouse Canyon Road. It passes through Clark Dry Lake and onward through soft sand and gravel, eventually ending up at a place called Hidden Spring several miles up. This turned out to be a moderately interesting drive, but the road turned a little too technical toward the last mile and upon a vote of the car passengers we turned back. There aren’t a lot of desert blooms this year, owing to a dry winter, but we found a few.

The lake does occasionally get wet, and when it does there is a tiny species of brine shrimp that flourish in the shallow muddy water. Bert Gildart photographed these on his blog last winter, using some advanced photographic techniques. When the lake is wet the road is impassable, but for our trip it was dry, cracked, and very solid.

Since we arrived it has been lightly breezy, but last night the wind picked up and began to howl in the windows we’d cracked open for a little air. Everyone took in their awnings and I found that the Weber would not stay lit at anything less than full heat, which meant our chicken had to be finished in the oven and dinner was late. All night the wind raced past the Airstream, which wasn’t discomforting but a little noisy. This morning it is still howling at a solid 20-30 MPH (my estimate) although the official prognostication is for much less. The weather service guys clearly aren’t boondocked out here with us in a vast open stretch of desert.

Today we have a reservation at the state park campground, so we’ll be hitching up and moving a few miles. This gives us two nights of full hookups before we head out again on Friday. After that our destination is unknown but I think since it will be Good Friday and Easter weekend we will likely be boondocking somewhere for another couple of nights. We’ll coordinate with our friends and may stick with them, or may head off on our own.

Mar 24 2013

Last-minute cabinet

It’s Sunday night and our prep time has run out …

We’ve had a great week with our courtesy parkers Kyle & Mary & Kathryn. Now we are entering the second planned phase of our time together. Kyle & Mary hitched up the 34-footer and left early this morning for Anza-Borrego, and we are due to follow them on Monday.

They left behind a souvenir: daughter Kathryn. She and Emma are virtually inseparable so we opted to keep Kathryn here for an overnight and let the two girls travel together in our car tomorrow. Having two of them hasn’t been much harder than having one, probably because they are keeping each other entertained, and so Eleanor and I have had time today to get serious about prepping the Airstream for travel.

My projects aren’t done but the trailer is good enough. Kyle pitched in this week to help with building the new furniture, which was the last major project. By Wednesday I could see I wasn’t going to have time to complete it, but with Kyle’s help we at least had the first unit of three installed by Saturday. This first piece includes the laundry bin and shoe cubby.

It took a while because we were working with salvaged pieces of lightweight plywood from the previous cabinet. This stuff is great, much lighter than ordinary plywood, and already laminated with the correct wood grain pattern that matches the rest of the trailer, so it was too good to just toss out. The black melamine plywood I had purchased earlier was too prone to chipping at the edges when cut, and even the black melamine edge banding was chipping when trimmed. It was never going to look good, so I abandoned the melamine plywood and came up with a scheme to use the lightweight Airstream plywood with solid aluminum strips as edge banding. A two-part epoxy turned out to be the best adhesive.

Aluminum trimmed edges

Each piece had to be inspected, oriented so that prior holes and damage would be hidden, cut to size and length, then glued up with aluminum strips. Then we sanded the aluminum clean of blotches and sprayed clearcoat on it. The results were great but it took too long for a project that I had intended to complete before we hit the road.

I kept the fold-out credenza as the centerpiece of the new furniture, and built around it. The salvaged strips became facia, trim, and legs. I used the black melamine plywood for interior shelves, since the chipped edges don’t show once everything is trimmed out.

Temporary install What you see in the picture is only about 1/3 of the final piece. To the right (rearward trailer-wise) of the laundry cabinet/credenza we’ll have a microwave cabinet, and further right we’ll have a recycling bin, plus some misc other storage. I’ll have to finish it later in April when we get back.

The picture shows a temporary top made out of a scrap of MDF and quickly sprayed with polyurethane. The actual permanent countertop will be continuous all the way down the length of the trailer to the bulkhead you see in the background. This will be about six feet by 18 inches. We haven’t decided what we’re going to make it from, but I’ve got a few ideas.

The balance of the weekend has been spent re-packing the Airstream. It’s 7 p.m. and we’re still not quite done packing but it will be done tonight with a few last-minute things to be done in the morning. The next two weeks or so will be on the road, so I’ll try to blog at least every other day as we go.

Mar 20 2013

A 34-foot parking problem

Our friends Kyle and Mary and Kathryn arrived on Sunday as we had expected, and I was all set. The plan was to park their Airstream in the carport, as we’ve done many times before with other guests. In the morning before they arrived I cleared out all the remainders of the Airstream re-flooring project, and removed a few things from the Safari that would be difficult to get out once there were two Airstreams packed in tightly side-by-side. Mike came over with a blower and blew all the dust out, too.

And then they arrived, resplendent in 34 feet of aluminum goodness. Kyle looked suspiciously at the space I was asking him to back into, but I assured him we’d parked a 28-foot with slide-out in there previously, so he’d fit. He gamely took a crack at it, which I have to give him credit for, but soon a problem emerged. Their 34-footer has a rear air conditioner (an unusual option) and it wouldn’t clear the carport roof.

Normally rooftop A/C units slide into the carport easily, but in this case the trailer was so long that the truck was still in the street when the A/C unit was entering the carport. This meant that the trailer was nose-down, and tail-high, which would be just enough (with that long 34-foot lever) to allow the A/C to hit the ceiling. So the Airstream ended up in the street instead.

Well, we’ve parked an Airstream or two (and a Bowlus) here in front before, so it’s not a big deal. The 34-footer even fits with room for the mail carrier to slip her little truck in front of the mailbox and deliver the mail.

The camping in front is not as good as the premium space (carport). The wifi is spotty out there, we can’t hook up a sewer line, and the electricity is only 15-amp, not 30. Fortunately, this week it’s cool enough that air conditioning isn’t necessary. We’re getting upper 70s and low 80s here, a hint of things to come in a few weeks.

I am still working on the Safari, but much more slowly right now. I’ve still got some caulking to do in the bathroom, and I’m noodling how to build the new cabinetry we want, using only scraps of material scavenged from the cabinetry we removed. It’s an interesting problem, and I’ll write more about that later.

The Caravel project is completely on hold. The plumbing will have to get completed in a few weeks, after our upcoming trip. There’s no rush on that one anyway, as we have no plans to use the little trailer.

For the rest of this week, my major goal is to get work buttoned up enough that we can take a few days next week to be out of touch. That’s a long shot but always worth striving for. It looks like our route will take us from here to southern California, and then up to Las Vegas, and back—but we reserve the right to alter the plan on the fly. That’s one of the reasons we travel by Airstream, after all.

Mar 17 2013

Safari so good

We’re still working on the Safari and I’m watching the calendar now. We’ve got about a week before it’s time to head out for the next trip, and in that time we need at least five days to clean and re-pack the trailer. That may seem like a lot of prep time, but it’s always complicated when you travel as a family, with a chef, and with an office. If we were childless, ate out for most meals, and didn’t have a business, packing would be much simpler but our travel would probably be less interesting too.

Having about a week to go means I need to get the projects wrapped up or at least in a condition where Eleanor can work around me. Right now the Safari is cluttered with tools and supplies, and there are still small items to be resolved. These “little things” always take more time than they should, it seems.

Furnace chase

For example, on Thursday we reinstalled the furnace chase that runs between the dinette benches. This is just two pieces of plywood stapled together to form an “L” that covers up the furnace ducts. The problem with this job was that Airstream originally nailed the chase to the floor and to the wall, then stapled the wood together. When we removed it, we had to pull the nails and I couldn’t re-nail it without also pulling the staples (and potentially ruining the piece). So the best fix was to cut new wood braces (one of which you can see in the photo above) and screw them to the floor.

I found a scrap of Douglas Fir and cut two pieces to be the braces, then drilled holes, then screwed them into place. Then we screwed the chase to the wood braces with #8 screws and finish washers. Now, if we ever need to get in here again, we can remove the chase in less than a minute.

This isn’t a hard job, but in the end the whole thing took about 30 minutes, and it was just one of many “little things” that the Safari will need before it’s ready to hit the road again.

Another little job was to make the new entry door threshold from Black Walnut, to match the new floor. I cut and shaped it on Friday, and sanded and finished it with several coats of polyurethane on Saturday. Because the floor wasn’t even across the threshold, it took about six or seven test-fittings and careful sanding (first with 100 grit, then with 220 grit) to get it to be an exact fit. This project probably consumed another hour or so, but I think the end result was worth it. In the images below you can see the original oak threshold and then the new walnut one.

The white wall covering in the Safari is looking pretty ratty. It’s a fabric that approximates the fuzzy side of hook-and-loop fastener, and in fact Velcro will stick to it very well. This stuff gets black marks from any kind of aluminum abrasion (such as screws or rivets moving on the wall during travel) and that black stuff is aluminum oxide. It’s extremely hard to clean. The white fabric also picks up dust, stains, and lots of other things, so the long term result is that it looks terrible. The only effective way we’ve found to clean it is to use a product called Dealersol, which you can’t buy at retail. This is sort of like dry-cleaning liquid: it mysteriously picks up horrible stains and they evaporate in a cloud of unhealthy Volatile Organic Compounds. It smells for a few days and probably causes a dozen fatal diseases in lab rats, but it does work really well.

Since we can no longer obtain Dealersol or anything like it, we tried a simple Rug Doctor with the usual cleaning solution, and it had no impact at all on the stains. So at this point we are stymied. The white fuzz can’t be removed because it is strongly adhered to the aluminum interior skin. Even if peeled off, a significant adhesive residue remains on the aluminum. I’ve tried cleaning the adhesive off, but it takes other nasty chemicals and the walls never look good even after many hours of effort. So it seems our walls will continue to show their years of use, until the day comes that we are going to gut the trailer and replace the interior aluminum wholesale.

(Believe it or not, I’ve done that before. Long-time Airstream Life readers may remember Project Vintage Thunder, in which Brett & I gutted and refurbished a 1977 Argosy 24 including removing most of the interior skins and replacing them with shiny new aluminum. The results are very nice, but it’s definitely not a weekend job.)

Setting that problem aside, I decided to push forward with the new cabinetry project. For several years we have had a combination laundry/microwave cart that we rigged up with an off-the-shelf chrome wire rack and a sheet of white Melamine plywood. It has worked but we could do better. I’ve had thoughts of building something more permanent and more functional. We’d like to have a bigger space for collecting recycling, a bigger and more secure spot for a microwave oven, and more space for shoes by the door.

The recycling requirement might strike you as odd, but we recycle extensively at home (about 75% of our household waste is recyclable thanks to a really excellent program in Tucson) and we hate to toss out glass, paper, and plastic when we are traveling. The problem when traveling is that it can be a long time between recycling opportunities, because most campgrounds don’t offer recycling. (This is a travesty in my opinion. RV’ers already have the reputation of being resource hogs. Here’s a great opportunity for the industry to improve its image and they ignore it.)

So the new cabinet design I’m working on will allow convenient and roomy space for those things we have that Airstream didn’t build into the trailer in 2005. The end result will be fairly simple, just some shelves and a top, but it will be a big improvement for us and it will be an interesting challenge for me. On Saturday I went out to get supplies for this project, and Eleanor and I removed all the furniture on the curbside of the trailer including the interior wheel well cover, and then I did some measuring and thinking about how it should all go back together. More on that later this week.

Today we are expecting courtesy parkers to arrive, our friends Kyle, Mary, and Kathryn. I expect some upheaval, as Kathryn and Emma are deeply bonded by common interests and attitudes of 12-year-olds, and of course we’ll want to do what we can with Kyle & Mary while they are here. Still, I’ve got to work on this cabinet project every day if there’s any chance of getting it installed in time for the upcoming trip to California. It should be an interesting week.