Nuestra casa rodante - Our Airstream, travels and such…

One of the trips discussed at the AirForums was one to San Felipe, MX. We had been two other times with some other friends. It is a nice place to go and relax. This time we were going to go to a different place in San Felipe. As the plans were being formed it appeared that 5-7 Airstream units were showing up. As time got closer, people dropped out. It ended up being us and Ron and Debbie in their Airstream motorhome.

We left home on a Wednesday with reservations at an RV park in El Centro. We were to meet Ron and Debbie there to ‘caravan’ together down to San Felipe. The drive is a 400 mile trek for us and it seemed we would never get there. We left about 8:30am and go there about 12 hours later. We made SO MANY stops but we kept telling ourselves we are in no hurry. I also was trying was to slow down with the trailer for safety and MPG, more on that later. We got there and did not disconnect. I just connected the electric and put down the corner jacks. I took a shower and we went to bed, Roxie a bit sooner than I. It was weird to not disconnect but it sure made it easier in the AM.

We got going around 9am, made it through the border with no incidents. They asked if I brought any weapons (I didn’t). The drive took us about 2 1/2 hours. We stopped by to see Ron and Debbie’s house they are building down there and then went on to Playa Bonita. It was a little interesting to get into the RV ‘park’. I had to pull past the gate, back up a road to the left so I could align myself to go through the 10′ gate. We had the second spot from the water reserved (Ron and Debbie had the closest one), but when we got there we thought the third one looked better, it was much shadier. Her is a pic.

Here is the view from our trailer.

The beach was about 30 steps from our trailer. We went down there quite a few times. The RV ‘park’ also has condos there. It does have full hookups with 30amp service and good water pressure.

We went into town a few times to walk around, have some Mexican food and buy souvenirs. You can get 2 fish tacos, rice and beans for about $2.50 US. Everybody is very friendly and always trying to sell you something.

On Saturday we went to the 2nd Annual San Felipe Blues Festival. We started at 10:30 but it was pretty sunny later in the day so we bugged out back to the trailer (about 2 blocks) for a siesta. We went back about 6 and stayed to the end. It was fun, there were good bands and some not so good bands. It was fun to watch all the people which were primarily Americans that had moved down there. Very few local Mexicans there.

We finished up on Sunday by picking up some more things for people back home. I got my boss and one of my staff (we had a contest) 2 wrestler masks (like in the movie Nacho Libre). They all liked them. I also filled up the truck with diesel at a PEMEX station.  It was $2.10/gal!!!!   Wish I had a bigger tank with me.  Earlier that day Roxie got up early to take this shot of the sunrise (we are on the east coast of Baja).

Monday we made it back to the states. Ron and Debbie went via the east border checkpoint. We had always gone through the main one in downtown Mexicali. Once we got in line it took us about 15-20 minutes to get through. I guess it helped to have a unfriendly border guard. We said goodbye to Ron and Debbie in El Centro and we headed on to Anza Borrego State Park.

I had always remembered going here as a child in our Airstream so instead of heading home in one day we spent a couple of nights there. It is very quiet at night there and Roxie got a bit spooked when she heard coyotes in the distance yipping away.

On Tuesday it was very windy so we thought we would take a trip out of the desert. I remembered that the town of Julian was close by. Julian holds an interesting place in the Smith family history. Back in 1969, my parents tried to buy some land in Julian. The idea was to build a KOA kampground there. We were very close to purchasing the property when a bizarre thing happened. The lady that had the property also had a donkey, supposedly a world famous donkey. The donkey died, the lady buried it on the property and then she decided that she could not sell the property anymore. If that would have gone through, my life would have changed drastically. I am happy how it has turned out so far. I tried to find out some information about this lady and where the property was but the historical society was closed.

We headed back home on Wednesday. We were surprised to see someone towing a Bowlus on the freeway near Redlands. It had a few windows out and the front door was either open or gone. It had temporary tail lights and the axle did not look correct. But it sure was neat to see one. There was no reaction from the driver as we passed.

Since we came down through the LA basin we returned via I-15 through Victorville and the high desert. However this time, in a change of pace, we took State Route 18 (which becomes 138) to Palmdale. We normally go to State Route 58 then down through Bakersfield. We stayed on 138 which would take us to I-5 near Gorman. We were surprised to see a HUGE amount of California Golden Poppies in the fields and on the hills.

We find out further down the road that this is the location of the Antelope Valley California Poppy Reserve.  Very nice this time of year.  It was a nice way to end our trip.

I have other photos at my Flickr account if you would like to see them.

I mentioned previously about going slower in our trailer.  I thought I would run an experiment on this trip regarding safety and MPG.  This post by Rich Luhr got me thinking this way.  At 60mph, it is easier to handle the trailer, it is not too noticable since my truck outweighs the trailer by 50%.  I don’t have to worry about law enforcement at all.  I can cruise right on by a CHP with radar at 60mpg.  I don’t have to worry about passing anyone.  When is the last time you saw anyone doing 55 on the freeway?  The biggest plus is the MPG.  I have an option on the truck where one of the displays shows your MPG.  I don’t rely on it too heavily but on the trip down to Mexico, it never went below 15mpg.  I will take that ANY day while towing.  I did keep track of the entire fuel cost ($387), mileage (1290) and gallons (95.7).  My MPG for the whole trip was 13.48.  It could have been better but we had horrendous headwinds by Palm Springs and the high desert.

I am convinced about towing at 60MPH.  I normally would tow at 65 and if I had on this trip it would have saved us a total of less than 2 hours of time.   My MPG would have been down to around 11-12 so we also saved there.

We let our son and a friend use our trailer a while back.  They were helping with the security at the next county’s fair.  I delivered the trailer and then picked it up.  After we used it the next time, after about 3-4 days we would smell something foul around the bathroom.  Unfortunately it was a smell of urine.  This went on for too long so I finally decided to attack it.

Our entire trailer has a light colored carpet, with the requisite stains that comes from such a shade.  We cannot figure out why Airstream would do this.  The thought was that there was some remnant smell in the carpet in the bathroom.  This carpeted area is on the floor and on the platform where the toilet is.  The plan was to remove the carpet in there and replace it with another floor covering.

I was able to remove the old carpet with a bit of effort.  It did not smell bad, according to my wife (I wasn’t going to smell it!).  I noticed there was some water damage to the platform area.  When my parents gave us the trailer, the toilet valve became stuck on.  It might have damaged things a bit.  I use some Kilz paint to attempt to contain any odors from the wood.  To cover the floor and the platform I used some vinyl strips of fake wood that had adhesive backing to it.  I also then used some trim around the edges.  Here is the result:

I am pleased with the appearance, but unfortunately there is still a smell.  Time to do some more investigative work…

As part of my job in the local education field there are meetings to go to. Oftentimes these meetings are in Sacramento. This was one such time. I had meetings on the Thursday and Friday before spring break was starting for our daughter so we thought it would be good to incorporate a mini-vacation into this.

I took the trailer up to the Sacramento KOA on Wednesday. This was the first time I have ever towed the trailer any distance by myself and I DID NOT hit anything (so there Rich)! I went to my meetings. I remember some of them comparing what they were paying (or rather their offices) per night for motels. I stated $160, then I added that was for 4 nights. All of their prices were for one night. I stayed two nights by myself (another first) and then Roxie and Hannah came up on the Amtrak and I picked them up. Coincidentally our niece had a birthday party that we attended on Saturday. We headed over the San Francisco on Sunday.

We stayed at the San Francisco RV Resort, south of SF in Pacifica. I investigated the other RV park, down by Candlestick park but it did not seem appealing. Kind of like the park at CAL Expo. The location of the SF RV Resort is great. Right on the ocean, we were backed up to the cliff. The showers are EXCELLENT and the restrooms are very nice also. The entire park is asphalt and there are many ‘permanents’. The spots can be short and they want you to keep all vehicles within the lines. This posed to be a problem since we didn’t get the spot that we reserved.

I emailed to change our reservation back one day and I stated this. However, I also gave them the wrong dates, I added one day AND one month. They followed the ‘new’ dates. When we checked in, there was no reservation. Since they were not busy we still had a spot but it was shorter than the one reserved. This meant we couldn’t actually get both vehicles in the space. So we parked next to our trailer. It turned out that no one bothered us about it.

The first day we drove to the South San Francisco BART station. I chose this one over the Colma station because the parking was free at SSF. We rode it downtown and were planning on riding the Cable Cars to Fisherman’s Wharf and do the ‘tourist’ thing. The Cable Car line was very long. I remembered that the SF Muni system had a line of streetcars that they have acquired from other cities and it ran between Market St and the Wharf. However, that line was too long also. We asked at the Muni desk and they told us to take the 30 route. It was fun to take a local route and see a different route that we would normally see.

The Wharf has become very much more shopping oriented, lots of stores on the streets. Roxie and I remember when it was still more of a true wharf where the catches were brought in and distributed immediately. We had lunch at a restaurant called Capurro’s. It was a very nice place, nice atmosphere and good food. The manager(/owner?) was very friendly. Recommended. The last stop was Pier 39. I had never been there. It was more food and shopping. Here is a photo from there.

The next day Hannah decided to stay at the trailer and live on the internet all day. Roxie and I went across the Golden Gate Bridge to Muir Woods National Monument. Muir Woods is a very nice and relaxing place. The road to get there is very exciting (no trailer this time). We took the walk, saw a banana slug and another grove of Redwoods that we have not seen before. After Muir Woods we went to Sausalito for lunch. We drove down the main street, past the GEORGEOUS view of SF but did not find anything that looked interesting. We turned around (on some pretty interesting streets for the truck) and back again. We settled at Saylor’s Restaurant. I was very pleasantly surprised. I had probably one of the best restaurant burgers that I ever had, also recommended. On the way back ‘home’ we went through part of the Strybing Arboretum in Golden Gate Park.

While we were gone, Hannah called and talked about a para-sailer that was flying around behind the trailer. In reading some of my blogs that Bobby, Danine and Elise saw the same thing shortly after we were there.

The third day we went to the Exploratorium. We got there just at the time that schools were leaving so it worked out real well. There were many different exhibits as usual but we unable to make it to the Tactile Dome.

One thing that I found interesting was driving over the hill in Pacifica. We were without the trailer and came over a hill. A sign stated that it was a 17% grade coming up. I was amazed that there was a street with that type of grade. There may be some in SF that are more but this was pretty interesting. We turned the corner and there was a sign about an 18% grade(!) coming next. It was fun!

We then had our usual drive home, the worst part of any trip.

It has been a while since I have posted and, therefore, it has been a while since we visited the San Clemente State Beach.  It was during the first weekend of February.  It was with the California group from AirForums, the rallies are discussed in this thread.

We got there on Thursday and stayed in the full hookup loop, others were in the no hookup sites.  The weather was not too bad during the day but it did get cold at night.  We did the tourist thing on Saturday and went to the San Juan Capistrano Mission.  It was one of the first times that we had been to a mission without a child’s project riding upon a visit.

The saturday night pot luck was fun.  The weather was managable with the bonfire.  We had it at a campsite that was on a plateau overlooking the ocean and sunset.

After leaving San Clemente we took an extra day and went to Bolsa Chica State Beach.  They have a policy of not allowing you into the spots until 2pm.  They do enforce this.  So, since we were there early, we ate some lunch until we would could go in.  Essentially it is a parking lot(s) with hookups.  We had a spot that backed up to the beach.  We could see the Catalinas and oil rigs from our back window

The primary reason to extend the stay was to visit with my birthfather who lives nearby.

All in all it was a fun trip but it is pretty exciting driving around the LA basin with the trailer.

Rich Luhr at Airstream Life has started an area where you can upload your photos and videos about Airstreams. I keep most of mine on Flickr but there is an upload link for Flickr also. Go check out the “What’s in YOUR black tank?” video.

In a previous post I mentioned that I have a leak to fix.  Actually there was a second one also.  Whenever our fresh water system was under pressure from the pump or shore water there was a drip.  It was coming from the street-side rear quarter panel.  Right under where the shore water connects.  I didn’t see anything inside the trailer under my bed, liquid or otherwise.  There was nothing coming out on the outer skin of the trailer.  It was an annoying leak but a bit more critical than the other one.  So I tackled it.

I started by removing the blue plastic in the lower rub rail.  I have some new plastic so I was not careful with it.  I then removed the actual rub rail (aluminum piece) which was about 10 rivets.  Next came the removal of the lower cowling (plastic) and another 8 rivets.  I could see below the floor now but the water was coming from under the outer skin.  I removed the shore water connector/pressure regulator.  I could see an area where it appeared to be leaking.

I was amazingly able to find one of these locally.  I installed it, using some teflon tape on the threads.  It has now been under water pump pressure for 3 days with NO LEAKS!

One to go before San Clemente.

I found this page looking around. I think it is Korean but I am not sure. They are definitely talking about Airstreams and other ’silver’ trailers. I have used WorldLingo to translate it. It appears they just wanted to talk about Airstreams.

Fortune magazine has an article on Airstreams. Thanks to Sean and Kristy at The Long, Long Honeymoon.