Monthly Archives: March 2014

Picking up the Airstream and heading out again.

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We went to Toscano’s on Wednesday to pickup the Airstream after the repairs were done.  Well, at least some of the repairs.

We have some wood that has cracked on both sides of the bed.  The parts have been ordered from Airstream but it is unknown how long it will take to get to Toscano’s.  We also had issues with the fresh water tank not reading correctly on the sensor.  I would take out 3 gallons of the 50 gallon tank and the meter would show 5/8 remaining?  The techs said they could actually see the meter drop as they were running water.  Changing the sensor and the meter made no difference.  The company that made the meter was stumped.  They will try again when we take the trailer back.

The other issue was the jack.  It made a terrible noise when operational.  They found a broken bolt inside but left it on the trailer.  They stated that the manufacturer was sending a new jack head.  OK.  I can live with that as long as it will get fixed.  I went to raise the trailer to hookup and the jack did not work at all.  I thought maybe the techs turned off the 12v switch but all the other 12v systems were working fine.  They came out and found the jack was blowing fuses each time they put one it.  The replaced the jack with a ‘loaner’ one.  Better it happened there than on the road.

We stopped off in Fresno to have dinner with our son and I had to do some interesting maneuvering with the trailer.  Like a u-turn at a very busy intersection.  But my philosophy is that the more practice I get in tough situations the better I get overall.  We got home around 7 and I didn’t even back it into its spot for a reason.

We had reservations to meet up with an Airforums group in Three Rivers starting Friday.  Oh yes, off again!  But realize that Three Rivers is only 36 miles from home so we did not have far to go.  We all met at the Sequoia RV Ranch.  We had about 12 trailers show up.  Roxie and I had driven through the park previously but never stayed there.  We will go back sometime.  Here is a few of the trailers:

Sequoia RV 01

The group of Airstreamers were a very friendly one.  We found some old friends and new ones as we always do at these.  Had a nice low key happy hour on Friday night and a great potluck on Saturday night.  We also had our granddaughter with us for the weekend.  We stayed 3 nights but she had to get home on Sunday.  We were going to meet her mother in Three Rivers so we didn’t have to drive ALL THAT WAY home and then back!

Sunday we decided to head to Sequoia NP and climb Moro Rock and have a picnic.  We have done this before but our granddaughter had only done it once.  Only over 350 steps to get to the top.  We just took it slow, how else could we?  Here are some shots from the top (even one with both of us in it!):

Sequoia RV 03 Sequoia RV 04

We had the local newspaper come by on Saturday and ask questions about the Airstreamers.  It will be fun to see what gets written in the article.  I know they talked to me quite a bit and took some pictures.  Probably didn’t hurt that we were local also.

On Saturday we were off doing some other hiking in the lower levels of the park and someone came through and took photos of the trailers.  He did an HDR manipulation on them.  I was able to get a copy from him and we love it!  Here it is:

Sequoia RV 02

 

We had a very fun and uneventful weekend.  The only problem is that I dropped our awning lights (see above) and broke one of the bulbs.  Ouch.  Don’t know if I can find them.

We went home on Monday with the knowledge that we were going out again the next Saturday!  Do we ever rest?

The Airstream and Antsy

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I have been listening to Antsy McClain and the Trailer Park Troubadours for years and have thoroughly enjoyed their music.  I particularly have a soft spot for “KOA Refugee” since my parents owned a KOA in Redding for about 10 years.

We had seen Antsy without the Troubs but with Edgar Cruz at Alumafandango in August.  That was entertaining but it was a bit short so I have always been wanted to see a full show.  I finally bought some tickets to see them in Tracy, CA at the Grand Theatre.  When I got the tickets it wasn’t a problem.  It was on a Saturday so we would just go up, see them, spend the night somewhere and head home Sunday.  What got problematic was the Saturday now turned out to be the weekend RIGHT AFTER us getting back from the Alumafiesta trip!  We get back and then need to head out again.

Time to make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear.  We had some items that needed to be fixed on the Airstream, such as our microwave died  and the tongue jack makes a horrible noise and others.  I arranged that we would head to Toscanos (110 miles from home), drop off the Airstream and go on to the concert in Tracy (about another 60 miles).  This was great but what to do about after the concert.  We could have driven the 170 miles back home.  Toscanos came to the rescue.  They offered that we spend the night on their lot at one of their hookup spots.  Done!

We got to Toscanos about 11am so we could drop the trailer and go over the list.  They told us the code to their back gate so we could get in later and moved it to a hookup spot.  We headed on to Tracy.  We had no hurry to get there so we took CA33 through some small towns that I5 has forgotten.  We had another pleasant surprise ahead of us.

Roxie got in touch with Hannah (our daughter) earlier as she and her boyfriend were at Six Flags Vallejo.  Since it was only 60 miles away we asked if they wanted to join us for dinner.  They agreed!  This was great.  We ate at a very good Chinese restaurant with them then they had to leave to get back to the city.

We were here for:

GrandTheatre

 

This is a fantastic theatre.  The lobby and facilities are very modern and clean.  The theatre itself is very beautiful and preserved fantastically.  Our seats were stage right and up high.  I thought they would be great but weren’t that wonderful.  However, since the theatre was not sold out, we moved to another set of seats that had a much better view.

The concert was very fun and entertaining.  The musicians were very impressive.  Ansty was sweating quite a bit so I suspect he might have been a bit under the weather.  He persevered and put on a fantastic show.  We will definitely see them again.  Some of the attendees have been to almost 100 Antsy shows.  We also learned you don’t want to go to the bathroom during the concert.  They will see it and ‘wait’ for you unless you are having prostate issues.

Here is a shot of the whole band performing with Max dancing.  I am not quite sure who Max was but he was very outgoing and entertaining.

AntsyTroubsMax

 

We got out of the concert well after 10pm and still had our drive to Toscanos.

We got back to the trailer around midnight.  The lock on the gate was tricky to get opened and once we were inside I knew that I could not open it up again so we were in for the night.  That was fine with us, we were tired.

We got up and were released from prison, leaving our Airstream behind.  Had a nice breakfast at Eddie’s in Los Banos.

We got home that evening after a dinner stop in Fresno with Aaron and thankfully had nothing to do the next weekend.

As I am writing this we are at an AirForums get together in Three Rivers.  That will be the next blog post.