We are at Airstream, in the village of Jackson Center, Ohio. I took a day off blogging yesterday, so here’s a rundown of the past two days.
Our drive from Johnson Saulk Trail State Park to our next stop of South Bend IN was uneventful. This would not be news except for our history: every other year we’ve driven past the Chicago/Gary area, traffic on I-80 has been horrible with congestion and construction. This year the work seems to be mostly done, and it was a smooth ride on new concrete all the way to the Indiana Toll Road. We landed at Charlie & Lynn’s house in South Bend right on schedule.
It has become a sort of tradition for us to stop with Lynn and Charlie nearly every year. They were our first stop in October 2005 when we began full-timing with the Airstream Safari, and they’ve made us so at home that we just keep showing up. The last three years we have made their driveway our home as a final stop right before Alumapalooza. It’s a last chance for us to recover from the long drive before we jump into the tempest that is Alumapalooza.
This year was no different. We set up the Airstream, visited the horses, and took Charlie’s vintage Mercedes (300SEL, I believe from 1959) down the country roads to get some pizza. It was exactly what we needed: a chance to unwind and hang out in a peaceful, low pressure setting.
And the weather was just spectacular. Perhaps that’s what inspired us to clean the trailer’s windows and the mini-blinds in the kitchen, the next morning. They had suffered from a year of dust and uck while parked in Vermont last summer and all winter in Arizona, and were long overdue for a good cleanup.
Or perhaps we were just delaying the inevitable. The forecast was quite different for Jackson Center, 200 miles away by road: 90+ degrees and “oppressive” humidity, and none of us were eager to get into that for the weekend. But we did arrive in J.C. by 2:45 p.m. and it was indeed oppressive. In fact, Alex K was already on site (he’s acting as our resident weather reporter this week) and he declared that the heat index was officially 100 degrees by late afternoon. It’s supposed to stay that way through Monday, but then cool down nicely for Alumapalooza. In the meantime, air conditioning is our friend.
We seemed to be nearly the last members of the advance team to arrive. Brett & Lisa got here Thursday, Alex & Charon also, Tim & Alice got here Friday, Matt & Beth were probably here a couple of days ago, and Lou & Larry beat us to the site today by about 15 minutes. In our defense, let me note that our drive was further than anyone’s at 2,450 miles total.
We did a little chatting about details of the event setup, but the real work won’t begin until tomorrow. Tonight Matt organized a small potluck dinner at the picnic tables under the hickory trees that border Airstream’s Terra Port, and despite the heat we all had a nice evening. Tomorrow we are holding a small appreciation breakfast for the volunteers who work the event, and then the work begins with flagging the sites and stuffing the goody bags.
For those of you who are coming to Alumapalooza, the field looks nice and dry and evenly mowed—just perfect for the event. The chance of rain is very low for the next few days (except for a 30% chance on Tuesday) and the temperatures should be ideal. If you planned to come this year, you’re in for a very fun week!
This turned out to be a fortuitous move. We discovered a park we’d never heard of before, Johnson-Sauk Trail State Recreation Area in Illinois. It’s a very nice park set inside a pine and oak forest, only 6 miles off I-80. The campground is a large circle of widely-spaced sites surrounding a tranquil grassy center. We got an electric site for $20 and the Airstream is pointed into the wind so, although the wind is howling, we aren’t rocking on the stabilizers.
The route we planned was sort of a Arizona/Utah dream trip, up Rt 89A and then Rt 160 deep into the Navajo Nation, then up through the incredibly beautiful red cliffs and buttes of Monument Valley, and then up the edge of Utah past some great parks we’ve visited before (Hovenweep, Natural Bridges, Canyonlands), through Moab, and finally into Colorado.
I am happy to report all systems are functioning well on the Airstream and Mercedes. The Merc did an odd thing yesterday during a steep climb, giving us a Check Engine light. It wasn’t overheated and the light cleared itself overnight. I can’t detect any issues with the car, so I’m not going to sweat it for now. The car’s computer will store the fault code and we can get it read out later if we want. The Airstream seems perfect. The fridge is cold, the tires needed no air at all (after five months of storage!), the hitch is silent, etc. At this point we’ve run up about 700 miles and everything is fine, although I’m noting a few things I’d like to update soon.
We stopped at a rest area south of Moab where there’s a great sandstone arch that you can easily climb to. If you are in this area and missed Arches National Park, this is a nice consolation prize. You can also get a nice shot of your Airstream down below in the parking lot if you want (and of course, I did).
Our drive today brought us west on I-10 to Phoenix, then I-17 north all the way to Flagstaff. I-17 heading north has a couple of tough climbs, the type where signs warn “Turn off air conditioner to avoid overheating”. They mean it. It was about 95 when we hit the first steep grade north of Phoenix. I watched the engine temperature and mostly it was stable, but there was one point at which it started to rise and so we went without a/c for a few minutes.
And then something great happened. We passed by a sign for Sunset Crater National Monument, and Eleanor said, “Why don’t we stop here instead?” It was only 3:30 in the afternoon and we hadn’t covered the miles I had hoped for. I wanted our first day out to be a big one, so we’d have less pressure in the next two days to get to Denver. But I was feeling tired, and we’d never visited Sunset Crater before, and there was a little blue symbol by the road indicating that it had a campground. We considered the pros and cons, and then turned around and drove a mile back to Sunset Crater.
It was a stunningly beautiful afternoon, with temperatures in the 70s, beautiful sunshine, dry air, and a pleasant breeze. You couldn’t ask for a better day to visit this great National Park, and yet the campground was half empty (on a Friday night) and the trails were uncrowded.