I think we’ve discovered how many days in a row we can tow 400 miles.  The answer is “four.”

I find it very convenient that someone, back in the early days of American westward emigration, conveniently spread out certain cities exactly 400 miles apart. Burlington VT – Buffalo NY – Jackson Center OH – St Louis MO – Tulsa OK – Amarillo TX.  That was great forethought, pilgrims.

But 400 miles is too far in the long run.  It’s just too much time in the car.  Back muscles begin to stiffen, eyes glaze, bowels seize up, and gradually your mind begins to go.  We found ourselves asking what day it was, what state we were in, and (worst of all) actually interested in roadside attractions just as a way to escape the car for a few minutes.  Somewhere in Missouri, Eleanor ended up buying a set of steak knives.

This morning didn’t start out very well for me.  We slept late, which was well needed, but that just meant that the temperature was already spiking as I worked outside to prepare the Airstream for departure.  I had some extra jobs to do today, like lubing the Hensley hitch.  The old BAL Tongue Twister came apart while I was using it, too.  It has been rebuilt once already and needs replacement, but I gave it a quick partial reassembly and threw it in my box of tools.  By the time all things were ready I was also ready for a fresh shower.

Well, no time for that, so we headed out and promptly got on the wrong highway, then stuck in some crazy traffic caused by a wide load, and all the while the loose parts on the Tongue Twister were making an incessant rattling noise.  Eventually it was all sorted out, but it wasn’t much later that I was looking for a break, and we hadn’t even gone 100 miles yet.  By 3 p.m. I was worn out and abruptly pulled the Airstream into a rest area to do something we almost never do in those places: actually rest.  Thirty minutes later we resumed rolling down I-44, and I was just hoping that somehow I’d make it to Tulsa.

We did, finally, but not until 7 p.m. and it was again hot, at about 96 degrees.  It will be ironic if the coolest stop we make is in Arizona, and at this point I’m guessing it will be, somewhere around Eager AZ just north of the Apache National Forest.

The refrigerator has been way too warm lately.  Eleanor defrosted the coils less than two weeks ago, but all the humidity has caused them to frost up again and this drastically impedes cooling.  Some sausages had to be thrown out upon arrival in Tulsa, so we did an emergency defrost followed by turning on the electric boost fans.  I think we will run the boost fans while towing from here on in, at least as long as the temperatures are above 90.

We’re taking a break here.  The RV park we are in is nothing special, and Tulsa has no particular attraction, but we all need a day out of the car to move our bodies and recover our minds.  I’ll spend most of the day working on Fall magazine layouts and Alumafandango stuff, and then we’ll hit the road again on Wednesday.

I think, amidst the endless concrete and mediocrity that adorns the American Interstate highways, we have managed to work up a Plan.  Brutal heat and humidity continue to dog us through the midwest, as expected, but we will escape to the high desert and Ponderosa forests that begin in New Mexico.  It may be just as hot there but at least it won’t be as humid.

So our day unfolded much like the previous two, rolling down I-75, I-70 across the southern portions of Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois.  The day started well.  I woke up feeling like I hadn’t gotten quite enough sleep but still very refreshed after a shower and a night of blessed air conditioning.  We got up early because we were expecting a visit from Dave Schumann, the veep of Airstream’s service department around 7:30.  He and I have been trying to get together for months to talk about some future projects, including his participation in the upcoming Alumafandango, and this was at last a chance to sit down face to face.  While he and I talked in his office, E&E got prepped for the day, and sometime after 9 a.m. we were on the road again.

It’s good to start off the day in a good mood and feeling strong, but I knew that I was short on sleep and at the end of our third 400-mile day in a row I was going to need to take some time off.  By 5 p.m. it was hitting me, but we had reached our goal of St Louis MO and in the process crossed a time zone, so we all get to sleep an extra hour tonight. Plus, we aren’t expecting any visitors in the morning.

Knowing that we’d need air conditioning again (100 degrees as we arrived) we had already researched campgrounds.  St. Louis has always been a tough place to camp, at least for us.  The pickings are dismal among commercial campgrounds and there aren’t any state parks with camping in the area (somebody correct me if I’m wrong —I wish I was).  This time we tried the Casino Queen RV Park, which is in East St Louis, just across the river from downtown.  We can see the Arch from here, and there’s a free shuttle to that, and of course the casino.  Those of you who know East St Louis know that it’s not exactly a dream destination, but this RV park has the advantage of being right off the Interstate for those weary travelers who just towed 400 miles from central Ohio and are desperate for a level spot with 30-amp power.  We are paying a royal price for this privilege, $46 for a night and we will not be visiting the casino.  This is what desperation will drive you to.

We had a partial plan to courtesy park with Stevyn and Troy, folks we have not yet met but who will be at Alumafandango, at their home about an hour west of St. Louis, but that was too far off our route to justify.  We’ll have to wait to meet them in August.  I found myself explaining to Stevyn that we don’t normally travel this way, roaring across the country without so much as a sniff of the flowers, but this was an unusual year for us.  We are crossing a swath of the USA that would normally take us three weeks, in roughly six days.

So here’s the Plan.  We will continue our great race two more days to Tulsa (about 400 miles) and then Palo Duro Canyon State Park near Amarillo TX (another 400 miles).  Once we reach northern New Mexico where the air is cooler, we’ll begin to slow down and take about five or six days to meander through NM and northern AZ, skimming the edge of the Mogollon Rim and then—at the very last possible moment—make that final drive back into the low desert and home.

It seems like a great plan, but I don’t really know if it will pan out that way.  Work will undoubtedly interfere at some point, and the need for decent Internet connectivity may force us out of the forests and back to the Interstate, or at least towns with cell phone service. Since I can only loosely predict what’s going to happen work-wise in the next week, we’ll have to stay flexible.  But flexibility shouldn’t be a problem once we are out from under the threat of massive thunderstorms and energy-sapping humidity.  We’ll have more choices of where to camp because we won’t be restricted by the need for air conditioning at any cost.  Tomorrow, we will hit the highway again…

It’s our second day of a marathon trek back to Arizona.  Back at home daytime temperatures run up to about 100 degrees, but we knew when we started off this day that it would feel hotter in Ohio.  The curse of the Three H’s (hazy, hot, humid) has finally caught up to us and that meant we had to come up with a plan for tonight’s destination.  A night of boondocking along some highway with no air conditioning was not going to make for happy travelers.

The forecast called for about 100 degrees, and indeed that’s what we saw all day from western NY to central OH.  The problem was that being a holiday weekend our chances of getting a decent campsite conveniently along our route were poor.  Eleanor suggested we detour slightly to visit Airstream in Jackson Center, OH, and at first I was reluctant, but then realized it was a brilliant solution.  The company always closes for the entire first week of July, and so who would be parked in the Terra Port?

Lou & Larry gave us pause however, with an invitation to stop at their place and take advantage of their 30-amp driveway power, but it would have been a short drive from Buffalo and we can’t afford that at this point.  Continuing to Airstream meant nearly 400 miles of driving (again), but we’ve decided that given the weather we’d just as soon knock off a lot of miles in the comfort of an air conditioned car and make our stops later in the trip.

Each time we stopped the Airstream (for lunch, a rest stop, groceries) it was hotter inside.  By the time we got to central Ohio the Airstream was 99 degrees inside, and I knew it would take hours to cool back down even with the new 15K BTU air conditioner cranking away.  Everything inside is heat-soaked, so cooling the air is only the beginning.  Fortunately, we got an early start today and managed to pull into the Terra Port by 5 p.m.  As expected, there are only a few other cheapskates like us parked here; a total of four trailers counting us.

Normally it doesn’t take long after you pull into the Terra Port before someone comes walking by to say Hello and find out who you are.  This time: doors and windows closed, every trailer sealed up like a tomb.  Nobody is going to be walking around outside as long as the sun is up.  It’s just too darned hot and humid.  Ten minutes outside hooking up the hoses and power cords, and my shirt began to stick to me.  I will gladly go back to Tucson heat in a week.

The trick now will be to find stops later in the trip where it isn’t scorching hot.  Altitude will be our ally on this one.  I’m proposing we keep driving like maniacs until we get to New Mexico, and then stretch out somewhere above 7,000 feet.  Or maybe Utah, or northern Arizona.  Any of them would be great, as long as we can work around the peak weekend days and find places that aren’t closed for forest fires or bear attacks.  Right now all six of the campgrounds in the Tonto National Forest are closed because of a series of bear attacks, for example.

So I’ll be scouting carefully using the Internet tools available, which are considerable.  For National Park sites, I use nps.gov.  For National Forest campgrounds, I look up the regional forest name and then navigate to the official site for updates.  The key is to always check the official sites so you know about closures or length limits.

For commercial campgrounds, RVParkReviews works well.  Every state park has a website of course, and while we are traveling we find the app “AllStays Camp & RV” to be very useful.  Add all that to a good old fashioned Rand-McNally road atlas and you’re pretty well set.

Tonight we have a few hours in the Terra Port and since we aren’t going out, I’ll get started on the research.  We have 1,885 miles to go and somewhere in there, something interesting WILL happen.

Departure day is always a little bit sad, as we wave goodbye to the Vermont summer scene and begin our annual migration back to the southwest.  It was even more so this year because we are leaving much earlier than usual, in early July rather than late August or September.

I’ve explained why we are leaving early in previous blogs, so I won’t repeat that here. However, the timing of this trip has caused us to face unusual choices, both because we are obligated to tow the Airstream back to Tucson (2,700 miles at a minimum) in less than 12 days, and because we normally would swing through the southeast for visits to friends along the way and perhaps a little Gulf Coast beach time.  The prospect of Florida in July is not particularly appealing so we are obligated to consider alternate routes, but we don’t have time to really do the northern tier well.  Catch-22.

That leaves us with a route that isn’t making any of us jump for joy: lots of Interstates, a diagonal through the muggy climates of Ohio, Indiana, and Missouri (or alternately Ohio, Kentucky, and Arkansas), and hardly any opportunities for exploratory detours.  Well, you can’t win them all.  We will have to make up for this with some fresh travel at high altitudes out west, in August.

Per our usual style, we’ve made few solid plans for this route back.  We’ve just set some general goals and researched a few possibilities for fun along the way.  This bodes uncertainty, which makes many people uncomfortable.  I find it to be a break from the otherwise-certain monotony of the Interstate, especially Interstate highways that we’ve traveled many times before.

Today was a fine example.  This morning, departing at a leisurely 11 a.m., we set out sights on Buffalo NY, approximately 400 miles away.  With stops for lunch and dinner, we arrived in the area around 8 p.m. and decided to visit a state park.  We had completely forgotten that this is considered a “holiday weekend” even though July 4 was on Wednesday, and of course it’s peak season for northern state parks, so there was no room for us even in the overflow area.  The one commercial campground in the area that we called held firm to their requirement for a three-night minimum, a foolish request at 8 p.m., but it was their campground to run as they saw fit.  Meanwhile, the state park staff was distraught that we were in such a “bind” but we were more calm about it, pointing out that we knew where we were going to sleep tonight, we simply didn’t know (yet) where we were going to park.

When you look at it that way, there’s really little to get excited about.  We always travel with plenty of supplies (water, propane, food) and parking is always available somewhere.  We settled on a Cracker Barrel near I-90.  There were also a few Wal-Marts and other such places that we could have gone.  We’ll make it worth their while to have parked us overnight by buying some breakfast in the morning.

The only real issue is that it has been hot, and a little humid.  This won’t be our worst night of boondocking by a long shot, but all three fans have been running tonight and a round of quick rinses in the shower were prescribed to cool our bodies down before settling into the sheets.  The interior of the trailer is 82 degrees and the night air outside is 72, so it won’t be long before everything’s reasonably comfortable.

At times like this I am reminded of Wally Byam’s writing about the methods he used to locate free overnight parking all over the world.  The Airstream owners manuals for decades also included a simplified version of his philosophy, saying “You can park anywhere the ground is level and firm.”  This seemingly left quite a lot of terrain for the taking, but in today’s more complicated world it’s a matter of knowing the few spots where overnight parkers are generally welcome and how to take advantage of them without running into hassles.

There are still plenty of places to go, especially if you can take the time to just talk to people and open a few doors for yourself.  Since we didn’t have much time tonight, we just chose a default place, but if we’d had more time I would like to think we would have come up with something interesting.  Perhaps we’ll get another chance, on another night on this voyage.