Airstream | CasaRodante - Our House on Wheels

One trip we always mentioned that we wanted to do was a trip to the eastern seaboard for the fall colors. We thought we would get to the Northeast in the fall and let the weather drive us south. We mentioned this to our friends George and Marcia, they were on board. We left on September 10th and would meet them on the way as they usually travel faster than we do.

As with any trip from your home base, the first day or two is always familiar. The same route, same towns, and oftentimes the same campgrounds. Our first nite was one of our favorites, Homolovi State Park. We got there and it was pouring rain with high winds (normal for Homolovi). I just hooked up the electricity and no other amenities. Didn’t even disconnect.

More I-40 travel the next day. Our stop was the Native American casino at Sky City. You can get spots there for around $20/night IF you ask for the discount. It is a decent RV park except for the terrible road into the RV park, it is abysmal. The park is on a slight incline so if you head into a spot you need to disconnect to get your trailer level. However, if you come in from the other direction, you can lift the tongue, stay connected and be level! We also set up Starlink here for the internet, worked great!

Yet another I-40 day. When heading east, you don’t have too many options in the western states. That changes when you get to Texas. We made our way through Albuquerque and ate at a local place off the road, Vicks Vittles. It was pretty good and it is always fun to eat locally. We stopped at Ute Lake State Park for the night. We stayed here with George and Marcia the last time we headed east with them. It is a good campground, with loads of space between the sites but it usually has a lot of bugs. It had a great sunset:

Our 4th day on the road started with finally detouring from I-40 and heading NE a bit to the Oklahoma panhandle. We passed through Dalhart TX and I read something interesting in their Wiki entry.

One more night before a bit of a break. We ended up at an Army Corps of Engineers (ACOE) campground at Fort Supply Lake near Fort Supply OK. We had a site that backed up onto the lake that was very nice, a bit windy. The next day was eastbound entirely in Oklahoma. We had been on the road for 4 full days and nights without disconnecting the trailer at all. It was time to take a short timeout.

We got to another ACOE campground at Brush Creek Park. It was right on the Arkansas River, just below the dam at Keystone Lake. We were just west of Tulsa OK. The next day was a ‘down’ day, not that we didn’t do anything, we just didn’t travel with the Airstream. It was interesting camping by the dam, many people were fishing the river and a horn would sound repeatedly whenever there was a change in the water discharge amount.

We skirted around Tulsa as we left and headed NE to our rendezvous with George and Marcia at Twin Bridges State Park. We had lunch in Claremore OK, the hometown of Will Rogers. It was very obvious that he was from that area and a huge amount of everything had his name on it. They are even in Rogers County! We got to drive along Route 66 for a long stretch primarily because I am too cheap to pay for a turnpike and back roads are better. We met the Chens at the campground and got to visit a bit with them.

George and Marcia had some friends/relatives to visit before our next connection so we parted ways in the AM. We headed into Missouri for our next stop. We took a selfie at lunch:

The evening found us at a private campground called Ruby’s Landing. My parents owned a campground for 10 years so it is always fun to stop at a rustic campground. But, this one might have been a bit TOO rustic. We were there on a Saturday night that happened to coincide with some Halloween camping event. Many scouts were camping in tents. Many others running around making noise, some being chased by a guy with a chainsaw and mask. It wasn’t too noisy in the late hours, luckily. I am glad we weren’t there for 2 nights.

Our next stop was just north of St Louis MO at a county park. Very nice location, good sites, and lots of trails around a man-made lake/river overflow. An uneventful drive through some very beautiful areas. But we keep pushing on to our next meetup location in PA. Our satellite setup is working great, with the TV on the left and Internet on the right (one looks to the south, the other to the north). The top of the truck is a great location when we don’t disconnect.

Following our theme of skirting around towns, we did the same with St Louis and continued ENE to the next state. Staying on a US highway instead of an Interstate highway we ended up south of Terra Haute IN at a county park. It was a beautiful park, a bit tight for the trailer but we made it. There were numerous restored historical buildings around a nice lake.

Another day, another state. This is much different than traveling in western states. Go around Indianapolis and end up at the Buck Creek State Park near Springfield IN. This is a beautiful campground, with lots of grass and trees. We saw a couple of deer wandering around. The camp hosts were very friendly.

Ohio was next, I couldn’t find a better route so we went right through the gut of Columbus OH. It was not a real issue but as we got to Zanesville I saw there was a Texas Roadhouse so that is where we ate. Downtown Zanesville was much more difficult with the trailer as it seemed much older and narrower. The reward was better than the risk. We spent the night at Barkcamp State Park. It had a large camp area for horses and a large infestation of flying stink bugs. The terrain was beginning to remind me of what I thought West Virginia would look like.

The next day confirmed my suspicions, we drove through Wheeling WV on our way to Pittsburgh PA. Our final stop was Penn Wood Airstream Park. We stopped here in 2017, enjoyed our stay, and decided to come back. We were here for 4 nights, and George and Marcia were meeting us here in a couple of days.

We really needed to do some laundry so that was first on our list, along with a Chinese buffet. The next day we had our main meal at a local farm-to-table restaurant. Took a little walk to the Climax tunnel. This is an old railroad bed that was repurposed into a 28-mile walk/bike trail, we only did a small portion of it.

George and Marcia showed up right on schedule. We did a little drive on the back roads of this area of Pennsylvania and took them also to the tunnel to see the area.

The fall colors had not changed all that much in this area yet, not to the degree we were looking at. We continued moving NE, but that is in the next installation.

As I write this, we are coming back from our East Coast fall colors trip, but that is for the next blog entry.

Before leaving, I knew that my umbilical connector was not making great contact. I would get notifications in the truck that the trailer was disconnected but would immediately reconnect. I figured I should look at the connector itself. Here it is:

Just a bit of corrosion there. I don’t know how many years it has been since I replaced it but now was the time to do so.

This connector controls all the electrical (12v) that feeds back to the trailer when traveling (lights, brakes, charging). However, it does not control the next item I needed to fix. The last time we were in Texas, we had to get the trailer inspected as it is part of the registration process. The inspector passed the marker lights on the trailer but said I needed to get them fixed. On our east coast trip, we expected to pass through Texas on the way home and I might get an inspection going there, so I wanted to be ready.

Here is what they looked like:

Still functional, but barely. I have replaced one in the past and learned from that one so I attacked 5 of them this time.

Let’s start with an old one:

Take a small screwdriver and pry up the front and back ends. There are two clips at each end that will separate the bezel from the base.

You can see the Vulkem that Airstream used to seal the hole. Two wires are connecting under the skin. We have to cut those but NOT lose them inside the trailer. We also need to use some butt connectors to connect the new wires from the new lights. Two screws to remove the base and gasket from the trailer.

Time to clean up the area and prep a new light and its components. Here are the parts, the light itself, a chromed base, and a gasket.

The gasket goes right on the trailer, the chrome base on top of that and the light (bezel) tops it all off. Remember that we have to use some butt connectors to attach the new wires to the existing ones. The butt connectors are not really flush and the gasket is pretty thick. We have to make space. I put some relief cuts on the gasket and removed material in the center to accommodate the space the butt connectors will take up.