I don’t like to talk about the weather too often, but sometimes that’s the story, as it has been in Borrego Springs these past few days.  For crying out loud, last night we had sleet.  We’re in the southernmost desert in the United States, just barely above sea level.  We’re as low as we can go, and yet …  is there nowhere we can go in the continental US for decent weather this week?

We’re grinning and bearing it, and until last night’s little sleet attack the weather hadn’t been enough to interfere with our activities.   The campground cleared out on Sunday, so things are nice and quiet, which I like.  We spent the day roaming around the park and off-roading here and there, and ran into very few people in the backcountry. We checked out the iron statues of prehistoric animals in Galleta Meadows, toured The Slot (one of the more famous slot canyons in the park), hiked to the Wind Caves again, ate lunch at Split Rock Mountain, and took in the sunset at Font’s Point.  All very satisfying and not terribly cold while the sun was up.

It even seemed like the weather was about to turn warmer, since we got back in the evening to temperatures in the upper 40s, so I broke out the grill again and roasted a bunch of vegetables and chicken sausage.  But that was just a tease.  Rain spit down intermittently all night and all the next day under mostly cloudy skies.  It has been damp, bone-chilling, and very un-desert-like.

With the threat of rain all day today, I wasn’t inclined to get into any off-roading (since the roads can quickly become impassable) and certainly wasn’t going to lead a group of people into a slot canyon.  That meant it turned into a true “Monday” for all of us.  Charon and Laura went off to do laundry,  Alex worked on administrative year-end stuff in his trailer, and I let out a heavy sigh as I opened up the laptop.

This afternoon we broke out for a drive up to Julian, which is high above Borrego Springs in the mountains at about 4,000 feet elevation.  We don’t normally make time for Julian, as it is just a three-block tourist town and over 25 miles away, but a rainy and otherwise disappointing day seemed to be the best opportunity for it.

Julian is a little town of about 700 people that swells to “20,000” according to a local I spoke with.  He says whenever there is snow, the San Diegans swarm up to see it, many wearing shorts and flip-flops.  That’s when he cashes in selling sweatshirts and warm hats.  When the power goes out in a snowstorm, as it often does, and the roads get clogged with snow, things get interesting. During our visit it was just more light rain and temperatures hovering in the upper 30s.

Emma and I checked out the local historic soda fountain, but cold drinks and ice cream weren’t very appealing on a cold day, and we settled for a hot spiced cider instead.  I was surprised at the number of obvious tourists exploring the downtown on a cold and rainy Monday.  The cafes were close to full even at 2 p.m., and no store seemed to be lacking for customers. But we lasted for only about an hour, ducking in and out of shops in an attempt to stay mostly warm and dry.

The drive up to and from Julian is as worthy as the destination.  Twisty and scenic roads are the rule, and without a trailer in tow it can be a lot of fun.  But the miles add up quickly when traveling around this region, as distances are longer than they appear at first.  A “short trip” across the park can be nearly 50 miles.  Since we have arrived, I think we’ve put about 150 miles on the car and tomorrow our planned route will add another 100 or so.

Tomorrow, the weather will be better. Already the nights are ten degrees warmer than earlier, so we’re no longer facing freezing temperatures in the morning.  This evening was actually sort of pleasant, without the precipitous slide at sunset.  If we could stay another week I think we’d see plenty of the kind of weather we expect but our trip ends on Wednesday — we’re now “weekenders” after all, and obligations at home are calling.

I often counsel new full-timers that there are only a few places in the continental US where you can go for “guaranteed” warm weather all winter.  Those places are south Florida, southern Arizona, and the southern California desert.  It’s fairly temperate along much of the California coast and a few other coastal spots too.  But for those who are “chasing 72 degrees” there really are no guarantees, as we’ve discovered this week in the southern California desert.

Normally we get 60s and 70s by day here, with nights in the 40s.  The weather this past week has been unusually cold and there’s no sign of much improvement during our scheduled stay. In the sunshine it’s not bad even though the air is only about 50 degrees (and cooler in the shadowy canyons and palm oases that we favor during hikes).  Immediately after sunset, the air plunges into the 40s and dips below freezing by morning.  We’ve been running the Airstream’s heat pump in the evenings, then switching over to the silent catalytic heater for peaceful sleeping.  This is the first camping trip that I can remember having to leave the catalytic heater on its highest setting (9,000 BTUs) all night.

This means layering clothes is the key to comfort.  We knew this during our packing stage and brought the right clothes, so we’re fine.  On our hike through Palm Canyon yesterday afternoon, I started with two layers on top, the midway through the uphill hike I got warm and shed a layer.  Then when we paused to sit on the cold rocks and have a snack while watching a waterfall, I got cold and put two layers back on.  I had a ski hat in my bag too, just in case.

Back at the Airstream my job was to grill hamburgers for five people out on the picnic table by the dim light of two railroad kerosene lamps (and my headlamp).  The temperature plummeted as usual, and so before the grill was even lit at 6 p.m. I had to go back into the trailer and load up on serious clothes plus the ski hat.  It’s a little challenging grilling in the dark and near-freezing temperatures, but fortunately I have experience from our life in Vermont.  All that was missing was a few inches of snow — something that Borrego Springs has rarely seen.

We haven’t let the cold change our activities, except that we aren’t spending quite as much time outside after sunset.  The desert here is still very beautiful and full of surprises, and there’s much we want to see.  We’ll pack the bags with extra layers of clothes again today and head out for some exploration.

Sometimes even the simple trips can get complicated quickly.  As I’ve mentioned before, we have been anticipating this trip to the southern California desert for a long time, and we’ve had plenty of time to plan and pack.  But somehow I managed to overlook one of the simple preparations: checking the tire pressure on the Airstream.

This week in Tucson we’ve had the coldest weather that we’re likely to see all winter.  At night the temperature has been dropping below freezing, which is a major weather event here.  We’ve been covering the citrus trees and running the electric space heaters in the house at night.  On Thursday, a “winter storm” arrived, which translates to heavy rain for half a day, and considerable snow up in the mountains.  Our nearby Mount Lemmon (elev. 8000+) picked up a foot of snow.  Down in Tucson, we just got wet and cold.

Our original plan was to head out on Thursday and drive half of the 380 mile trip, then boondock overnight somewhere along Interstate 8, but with the crummy weather we decided to spend another day at home and do the entire drive in a single day.  I turned the heat pump on in the Airstream, so that it would be warm while we were in there packing, and we were able to complete the re-packing process without having to rush too much.

So by Friday morning at 8 a.m. we were all set to go.  Alex and Charon and their friend Laura were ready too, parked directly in front of the house with their 1965 Airstream Safari.  They had arrived the day before.  The temperature was a shocking 29 degrees and the car had the thickest layer of frost I’ve ever seen on it.  (Forgive the quality of the pictures in this blog entry — they are frame captures from a video on the little Canon digicam.)

The last thing we usually do is plug in the tire pressure monitor for the Airstream, right before we pull out of the driveway.  As we did, I realized that the tires desperately needed air.  They had been set for 50 psi back in August, and I hadn’t had to adjust them for cooler temperatures since.  We stopped just a few feet out of the carport, and checked.  Sure enough, they were reading about 38 psi cold — far too low.  The load capacity of the tires drops dramatically with lower pressure.  Although they would warm up on the road and the pressure would increase, towing at this pressure still presented a very real risk of a blowout.

No problem, that’s why I have an air compressor at home.  But it wouldn’t work.  The darned thing worked for a while, then quit.  I assumed that perhaps it was unhappy with the freezing temperatures, and took it into the house to warm up.  I also told everyone else that they might as well go back into the house because I assumed this was a problem that would take some time to resolve.

But Alex knew something I didn’t.  Last winter he gave me the extension cord I was using. Although it looked perfect and had worked for me many times before, he replaced it with one of his own and that solved the problem.  So we pumped up all the tires in the freezing temperatures and finally got on the road about 40 minutes later than we had initially planned.

Well, that was still no problem because we’d allowed plenty of daylight to get to our destination.  But along a lonely stretch of Interstate 8 (and frankly, all of I-8 is lonely) Alex called on the road to report a flat.  We all immediately pulled over into the debris-strewn breakdown lane, but we were about half a mile ahead of them. A tire on his Safari had blown out, from causes unknown. I had to stay with our rig in case the troopers showed up, as our stop was technically unnecessary and we could be cited for a “non-emergency” stop, so Alex changed the tire himself.  About 30 minutes later, we were on the way again, now about three hours into our schedule and only 100 miles down the road.

Still, we had time to stop at the tiny outpost of Dateland, AZ for a couple of bags of fresh dates and some fuel, and at the Imperial Sand Dunes in southern California — just because we could — and still managed to get to Borrego Springs CA before the early sunset at 5 p.m.  When we arrived, we immediately saw some Airstream friends (Roger & Roxie, Bill K, Dan and Marlene) who were all hanging around wearing winter clothes.  It’s cold here, too, although a few degrees warmer than Tucson. We’ll spend the next few days hiking, exploring by car, and relaxing.

It’s a bit unusual that, in preparation for our next Airstream trip, we are mostly unloading the trailer.  That’s because we haven’t fully finished reconfiguring our Airstream from its former role as full-time home, to its new role as escape pod. The compartments are somewhat unloaded, but many things still remain tucked away in the corners that really should come out.

I want to travel a lot lighter than we have in the past.  Not because this will improve our fuel economy, and not because we were overweight, but simply because life is easier in the trailer when there’s less stuff to dig past in order to get to what you need.  It will be nice to have storage areas that have free space, instead of being packed to the absolute limit.  We’re not going to be needing that snorkel gear in the southern California desert anyway.

I’ll appreciate being able to get to the bed without stepping over my ukulele.  Finding the beef jerky for a hike will be nicer when there’s no heap of summer clothing stored on top of it.  And on and on it goes … every space in the trailer is getting overhauled, and all of the “we might need this” stuff is coming out in favor of the “I plan to use this next week” stuff.

This is fun.  Instead of packing food for every contingency and having to cut package down in size to fit, Eleanor is just tossing in the full size packages of the things we plan to eat in the week-long trip that is planned.  We’re bringing only the games we want to play, the clothes we want to wear this week, the books we are currently reading, and we’re putting the rest into storage bins in the house.

For example, this time of year it’s hard to find reliably warm weather anywhere, and the southwestern desert is certainly not immune to cold. No snowstorms are expected in the low desert that we travel, but nights will be near freezing.  A rapid 35 degree drop in temperature after sunset is not unusual, so our clothes for this trip have been chosen with layering in mind.

The upside of the winnowing process is not the hundreds of pounds of stuff we have removed, but more rather that we’ve simplified life yet again.  Simple is good when you are going on vacation, and that’s the mental mode I want to capture with this trip.  Usually it’s work and play combined.  This time the work will be kept to a minimum while the play stuff takes over.  Eliminating the unnecessary has made room for a few bulky luxuries that we haven’t traveled with in years: the Weber grill, the folding bicycles, folding chairs, and the waffle iron.

I know for most people who have Airstreams, this perspective on packing is not very new.  Most folks pack the trailer for each trip, and they are usually packing for less than a week.  But we haven’t had that experience since 2005. I am enjoying the novelty of being “weekenders.”

Part of the fun is the anticipation of the trip, and the anticipation can be strengthened by the process of picking out the things you’ll need for the things you’ll do.  I can already see us hiking up a canyon in search of a palm oasis and bighorn sheep (note to self: remember hiking boots, backpacks, trail snacks, water reservoirs).  I’ll have fun snapping pictures (remember to pack all the camera gear) as we discover interesting bits of geology, history, and botany along the trails.  In the evening we’ll grill out by the awning (pick up portobello mushrooms and peppers at the grocery), and watch the bright stars as the coyotes howl (binoculars, tripod, headlamps, folding chairs, warm sweaters).  In the morning we’re going to experiment with a new waffle mix and serve ’em with real Vermont maple syrup.

We are fortunate to have a full hookup in our carport.  This makes pre-trip prep a lot easier.  The trailer has been sitting since we got back, and there’s some cleaning to be done.  Eleanor defrosted the refrigerator quickly before we started repacking it, and I did a little mopping up of the desert dust that always accumulates even in closed spaces.  (In the photo above, she’s chucking a piece of ice from the refrigerator into the sink.) A quick check around the Airstream shows that everything is still operational except for a single bulb that burned out, so the prep is minimal this time.

The last simplicity accruing from this change in perspective is the ease with which this trip has come together.  Focusing solely on a closed-ended and brief trip, we have had to put less brainpower into the planning and packing.  Preparing for our last seven month voyage took weeks of prep, shopping, packing, and planning. It’s so much easier for this trip.  We need only pack for one season, one place, one week, and one intent:  have fun and relax.  Although I can’t wait to get going, these days leading up to departure are fine too.

Up in the northeast, where I am from, it’s a modern tradition to pass much of the long cold nights surrounding Christmas by watching movies.  Heart-warming tale after tale eventually anesthetizes you sufficiently that you don’t notice that it’s dark 16 hours out of 24, and thus you survive a period where there is otherwise not much to do.

But my Christmas week is somewhat different, because I am working on an article for a future issue of Airstream Life, about “Airstreams in the movies.”  Instead of cheer, I am watching horror, and bad horror at that.  Instead of hearing saccharine songs of happy reindeer and Christmas miracles, I am listening to gruesomely bad musical themes (generally written by the writer/producer/director’s cousin).  No upbeat characters and plots here; instead, Airstreams seem to be most often featured in gory slasher flicks, spoofs, and satires of human oddities.

I’m talking about movies like “Mars Attacks,” and “Eight Legged Freaks” — and those were two of the better movies.  Most of the rest are just plain bad. Spend an afternoon watching “Evil Alien Conquerors” and “Idle Hands” and you’ll know what it means to have your brain cells nullified, one scoop at a time.

Perhaps the worst part of the process was today, when I discovered that (despite tips to the contrary), the Wes Craven horror pic “The Hills Have Eyes,” does in fact NOT feature an Airstream.  The hapless family eaten by mutant rednecks are staying in an ugly corrugated Shasta trailer.  I had to skim through the entire movie to discover that an Airstream was not going to appear.

Why is it that Airstreams most commonly show up in horror movies?  Perhaps because they are cheap props.  “Motor Home Massacre,” for example, features a customized Argosy motorhome that was virtually the only set in the entire flick. Just add a few bimbos with huge implants, some stereotypical rednecks, and a few knives, and voila!  instant movie success thanks to an eager audience of teen boys.

Rather unfairly, Airstreams also show up in movies regularly whenever a connotation of “yokel” or “trailer trash” needs to be made.  This is the role in which “Mars Attacks” used them, and they were used to equal effect in “What’s Eating Gilbert Grape,” “Legally Blonde,” and “Raising Arizona.”  Is it a compliment that movie directors so often choose Airstreams to depict the wide world of travel trailers, or an insult?

Fortunately, there are times that the Airstreams get star treatment, as the preferred choice of movie actors.  In both “Simone” and the animated movie “Bolt,” Airstreams are used as star’s trailers in the backlot — which happens to be a slice of realty.  Movie stars really do like Airstreams, and many many famous names you’ve heard have owned them.  So the scene is not all bad, but there’s no denying there’s a distinctly unfavorable tinge about the way Hollywood has treated the world’s most famous and long-lasting travel trailer.

I have a rough list of about 55 movies that theoretically feature Airstreams.  There is no way I’m going to watch them all.  Most of them are bad, and I need to retain at least some of my brain for future employment. But I will watch or skim at least a dozen of them for purposes of research.  Tonight, for example, the movie will be “Space Cowboys,” a ridiculous premise involving a group of over-the-hill test pilots who get NASA to put them on one last crucial Earth-saving mission.

Coming up:  “Quicksilver Highway,” “Beyond The Sea,” “Baghdad Cafe,” “Charlie’s Angels,” “Air Bud: 7th Inning Stretch,” and “Pee Wee’s Big Adventure.”  So you can see that the life of an Editor is not all glamorous (not that you thought that anyway).  If you’d like to spare me further pain, do me a favor:  put in a comment here, naming movies that I should see, or those that I should be careful to avoid.  The brain cells you may save thank you in advance.