Off to Arizona with the Airstream!

We decided to take off after Christmas to visit my 84 year old mother in Arizona.  This is a good time for me since I get a few holidays during this stretch so I don’t have to take as much vacation time.  We decided to take the Airstream and make a vacation out of the back half.

We knew the first day was going to be a long haul as we wanted to get some distance under our belts.  I also wanted to avoid unhitching the truck and I wanted to be cheap!  I had a few places lined up on the way and it all depended on how early we got out and, hence, how much sunlight was left.

The total distance to my mom’s house is 578 miles and we have done that in one day in a car but not the trailer.  I wasn’t about to start now.  That makes halfway at 289 miles.  The first candidate was 288 miles and was the ‘Dharma Tower‘.  I have seen this on Aluminarium’s blog a couple times and it looked interesting.  Two negatives about this.  Roxie was not too sure about staying there and we also had a LOT of daylight left when we passed.

Another option was 330 miles, actually the turn off was closer than the 3rd option but it was farther off road.  This was Hole in the Wall campground in the Mojave National Preserve.  It was a bit too far off the road for me and we still had sunlight!   Onward!

Option 3 was a truck stop just off the freeway at 318 miles (exit 107).  This was my least favorite option and would only be exercised if I was exhausted.  I wasn’t.

The ultimate destination was 374 miles from home.  Exit 9 in Arizona where highway 95 heads south the Lake Havasu.  There are two truck stops here, a Pilot and a Love’s.  Roxie had some trepidation about a truck stop also but we were game.  We chose the Love’s as it was a bit better lit.  Here we are:

Love's Truck Stop 01

 

All by ourselves.  No one around.  I had a great nights sleep.  We had our white noise machine going and we would hear trucks coming in all night and their idling was very soothing also.

We woke up sandwiched by big rigs.  This was fine with me as it was like being wrapped in a big metal blanket.  The blocked noise, headlights and wind.

Love's Truck Stop 03 Love's Truck Stop 02

 

I almost neglected to talk about the truck.  This was the first real test of it with the trailer.  We did the Tehachapi’s on this route.  It was pretty impressive.  I tried to stay at 60 when towing.  It maintained 60 easily up the hill and was able to give me more when I needed it.  Very nice.  On the flat ground I have been getting right around 13mpg.

We made it to my mother’s that day and stayed a  55+ RV park in her area.  They allowed us in as I told them I am a very old 53 year old…

A pair of maiden voyages

We took care of two maiden voyages during this camping weekend.

The first was with our new truck:

One Maiden Voyage

 

 

Compare that to the pic from our ‘End of an era‘ post:

Last tow

 

 

The other maiden voyage was for our son, Aaron.  This was the first time he was towing his new, our old, Airstream:

Aaron and Paige

 

 

We decided not to go too far for either of us.  That way if there were any major issues we could very easily bug out and head home.  Roxie and I had did some scouting a while back in the area and discovered Club Royal Oak outside Kingsburg.  This was ideal as it was virtually right in between Fresno and Visalia.

We got there about 4:30 which meant we could let Aaron and Hanna (his girlfriend) in when they arrive.  The RV park is totally gated and needs a key card to get in.  A lot of sites, including ours, are right on the Kings River.  Unfortunately the river was very low at this time.  We will have to come back here sometime when the river is running high.

We had a few problems unhitching where I had to jack the trailer and truck to a point where its rear wheels were off the ground.  After analyzing it a bit I adjusted the legs that hold the equalizer bars to the tongue.  Hooking up when we went was much easier.  I will have to go back and check this rig at the scales like I did with the other rig.

Aaron and Hanna showed up around 6:30 and I helped him get ‘his’ rig in the spot.  The spots here are HUGE!  They are wide enough to park your trailer sideways if you want.  We had Aaron just pull his trailer straight in.  That way our doors faced each other:

Spots

 

 

He quickly learned how to hook the utilities up and we were eating dinner in no time with a campfire later that evening.

The next day was just a take it easy day.  I never left the campground the whole day, trust me that is a rarity for me!  It was nice to just relax and take care of a few small projects on the truck and trailer.

The campground had a car show on Saturday, which we didn’t know about but went to see anyway.  They also had Elvis performing but we opted-out of that.  We could still hear it at the sites.  We also bought some fresh kettle corn.  Here are the top three winners at the car show, alas I forget who got first:

Car Show

 

 

We had a simple dinner of dogs, sausages and burgers, with Roxie’s masterful potato salad.  We then watched Ironman 3 in our trailer and retired shortly thereafter.

Sunday started slow and calm without Aaron.  He was still sleeping and did so for quite a while.  We hatched a plan after he woke up.  We would hookup his trailer, follow them to Fresno, drop the trailer, go have some Teppanyaki for lunch.  Here he is backing out the trailer and just missing the garbage can:

Backing around the corner

 

Roxie took a family shot of Aaron, Hanna, Paige and Maggie:

Family Shot

 

Here is a couple more shots Roxie took of them on the road back to Fresno:

On the road 1

On the road 2

 

After that we would come back and hookup our trailer and head home.  This only worked because the park had no one coming in on Sunday evening.  The management let us stay as long as we needed.  We came back to get our trailer and there were only 2 RV’s there.

The road home was uneventful and short!  The usual stop at the dump station.  I did another time lapse of the drive home here: