Category Archives: New Airstream

Alumafandango trip – Day 15

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We haven’t been to Reno for 29 years.  The last time was shortly after our son was born, he will turn 30 soon.  We thought we would take a short trip and have my parents watch him all those years ago.  We were supposed to stay two nights but Roxie could only handle one.  She missed him.  I thought we would stay a couple of days to see Lake Tahoe and then some other things in Reno.  We started by heading through Truckee but got sidetracked at the Donner Memorial State Park.

We all remember the worst part of the Donner party’s episode.  Cannibalism.  However there is much more interesting parts to their journey as we saw in a very old film they showed in the visitors center.  It reminded me of the films we used to see in elementary school.  It is a very nice state park there with a campground that we will have to visit in the future.  Here is a picture of the Donner Memorial.  The base of the memorial is the same height of the snow drifts they had to contend with:

Donner Memorial

We had lunch in Truckee at the Squeeze In.  We thought this was the same restaurant (Squeeze Inn) that we had eaten at in Sacramento and Lodi.  It wasn’t.  That was disappointing because Roxie was thinking about their burgers and really wanted one.  The food was very good, however.  Probably the best garlic fries that I have had.

We started the drive on SR89.  We followed the Truckee river and saw many rafters and a very nice bike path.  This appealed to Roxie and she put it on her mental list of things to do in the future.  One fact I did not know about Lake Tahoe is that the Truckee river is the ONLY outlet from the lake and it empties into Pyramid Lake.  However Pyramid Lake does not empty anywhere, it just evaporates.  So Lake Tahoe is the only lake in the US that does not eventually empty to an ocean.

We reached the lake and initially I was just going to go around the north part and head back to Reno.  But we had time and nothing else to do so we went south and around that end, back to the north side and up through Mt Rose and down to Reno.  It was a very pretty drive but surprisingly busy and commercial.  Here is a gallery of pictures:

We completed our day trip.  The campground was windy and smoky for the second night because of fires in California and was not too pleasant.  But it sure did cool down at night, which I like.

The trip is winding down, unfortunately.  I have to get back to work but this was a good precursor to retirement.

Alumafandango trip – Days 13 & 14

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I will put these days together in a blog post since they were both pretty much travel days and I don’t have any photos!

As previously mentioned I was worried about having enough diesel to get to a fill up.  I figured I would get as far as I could and then call AAA to bring some more.  However there was another issue that we noticed when arriving in the park.  Our hitch was making a horrendous noise.  We have an Equal-izer 1000 hitch.  We are told they are supposed to make some noise when turning.  We did hear that when we first got it and I greased it up pretty good so the noises when turning sharp in a campground were minimal.  According to literature, by greasing what I did would counteract any sway control the hitch would provide.  I don’t have an issue with sway before or after greasing so that did not matter.

On the way to the park we heard no noise from the hitch but we were only making gradual turns.  When we got to the campground and made tighter turns it sounded like metal gouging metal!  Terrible.  Prior to hitchup I checked some of the nuts on the hitch and they appeared to be a bit loose so I tightened them up and greased the HECK out of that hitch.  Result, no noise.  I am happy for now.

We started on the downhill and oddly enough the fuel gauge did not move much.  We comfortably made it to Klamath Falls and fueled up there.  We also got some groceries and headed toward the ultimate destination, Reno.  Actually more like Lake Tahoe but I could not find anywhere to stay and not being familiar made it harder to find something.  Crater Lake NP to Reno is a longish haul, 308 miles.  A bit more than we want to do in a day on this trip, except the first and last legs.  I decided to go to Susanville and we could spend the night there.  That was only 222 or 257.  Why the difference?  Choice of routes.

Once you get to 299E you get to choose if you go down State Route 139 directly to Susanville OR head east to Alturas then south on 395.  The latter route is longer but might have been the better choice.  Here is why.

139 is an OK route for a single vehicle, it requires a lot of concentration with a trailer.  The worst part is the last hill into Susanville.  About 4 miles of 6% grade that is pretty curvy.  A lot of braking, engine braking with tow/haul mode and a lot of turning.  I don’t think it was the worst downgrade I have ever been on with a trailer.  That title goes to old route 66 just east of Oatman, AZ.  Roxie’s worst are the New Priest Grade near Groveland, CA.  She also does not like CA 180 down from Kings Canyon NP.  We made it down as we always do but shortly after that we got a check engine light!!  Great!  Something else to worry about.

After we setup the trailer at the local RV park, did some laundry and I stopped at the O’Reilly auto parts.  I asked them if they rented the OBD II code readers.  They said no but if I went to the oil changers down the street they would do it for free.  OK.  Now a project for tomorrow.  We had a dinner at Lassen Steaks and a nice conversation with the owner of the establishment.

The next day we stopped at the Oil Changers to get the code read.  The technician cheerfully came out, read the code and erased the code.  It turned out to be some innocuous code related to the downhill.  I felt MUCH better.  I gave the tech a bit of cash and told him to help buy lunch for everyone that day.  We hooked up and headed to Reno.  A nice easy 395 drive.  We ended up at the Boomtown KOA for 3 nights, at least that was the plan…