Tag Archives: Trips

A night of firsts

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We made it to the Portland area (actually around Oregon City) in 2 days.  A bit of driving for us but we were on a mission!  Our mission was to get our new Airstream.

We arrived on Sunday evening and checked into the hotel.  It is really hard to pack for a trip in a trailer when you don't have a trailer with you.  The next stop was to drive by the dealership, that was now closed, and look for the trailer.  We saw it and it looked like an Airstream.

We got to the Airstream Adventures Northwest on Monday (MLK holiday) and started the process.  The first thing was to do the walkthrough.  We are pretty experienced in travel trailers with a speciality in Airstreams and we might have known most of it but I told myself to let the service person explain everything to us.  Not to cut him short by saying we know that, etc.  By doing this I was able to learn a few things myself (something about an old dog and new tricks).

During this time we were getting a new hitch installed.  We will give the old one to Aaron with the trailer.  The old hitch had undersized equalizer bars.  We got an Equal-i-zer 1000 setup.  It seems a bit easier to hookup than our old one but there are a lot of cotter pins and clips that could be misplaced.  We will have to watch that.

After all that we got to do paperwork.  Oh joy!  Surprisingly it only took about 15 minutes since we worked most of it out before we even arrived.

The next step, driving it away (for the first time).

We only drove about 10 miles to a Pheasant Ridge RV park.  I wanted to stay close to handle any issues that might come up overnight.  More about that later.  The drive was uneventful other than I could tell the extra weight behind me.  Our old trailer's GVWR was around 6300lb but this one is 10000lb.  My truck is rated to tow 12500lb so it will handle it.  Perhaps I just got used to the overkill and what I feel now is what others normally feel when towing.

It is REALLY cold in this area so we only hooked up the power (50amp) to the trailer.  We filled the water tank but there were warnings of freeze so we did not hookup the water hose or sewer.  Here is Roxie filling the water (for the first time) at the site last night:

1st time filling water

Don't be fooled by the nice sunshine.  It was COLD!  See, Roxie has her little head wrap on.

We went out to get dinner and some groceries and were met my what I call 'Frog'.  It was a freezing fog.  We had seen the trees on the way up all coated in frost and this is what was going on here.  It almost looked like fine snow coming out of the sky.  A weather person called it 'Snog' for snowy fog?  This is what was on the trailer when we got back:

First 'Frog'

Wow!  What a way to start!  The heater handled the cold very well, as the propane ones normally do.  However this unit has two Air Conditioners and the both have heat pumps in them but I could not get the heat pumps to go.  Our measly electric heater did not cut it either, time for a new one.  Sleep (for the first time) was OK.  The heater was cycling on and off so we were cycling between hot and cold but we DO NOT plan to stay in this type of cold anywhere we are going

In the AM we got up and had breakfast (for the first time).  It was nice to have a dinette ready to go.

Right now we are at the dealership to have some items address and to learn how to use the thermostat correctly.  We think the next stop is the coast where we hope it will be warmer!

Only 2 hours from some nice places…

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Yes, another three day weekend trip thanks to Roxie's employer.  Since it was just after the 4th of July I thought where else should we go but to somewhere that would be HOT!  We had already done the cool areas, coast, mountains, etc.  Did I choose some exotic location?  Not really, we went to Stockton! 

I like to stay on the water, as you can see in the previous post.  But is there water in Stockton?  Sure is.  There is a canal that brings in largish ships to drop supplies.  They come in all the way from the ocean.

Previously the only stops in Stockton had been brief to refuel or relieve.  The one item that got me to try it out was a blog post from Aluminarium.  I loved that picture and got some reservations to the RiverPoint landing and off we went.

Here is my attempt at recreating their picture:

Sunset in Stockton

That is a JetSkier in the picture.

The daytime temperature there was mid to high 90's so we found things to do indoors.  HOWEVER, the evenings were wonderful.  The back of trailer has our bedroom in it so we would open up the windows on 3 sides and let the cool breezes just waft through the trailer.  Made the days worthwhile.

We saw many pleasure craft going up and down the waterway.  Saw some rowers in long row boats, saw a sailing class for young sailors.  A very wide variety.  However one evening it got exciting.  We heard a very LOUD horn sound.  We look toward the ocean direction of the waterway and see a very large ship heading our way.

As it got closer we see a smaller boat in front if it.  Here is that boat:

CoastGuard

It is a Coast Guard vessel.  The guy in the front is manning a machine gun.  We wondered what is going on?

Here is the large ship behind it:

EupenIn

It is pretty impressive to see a large ship go by in relatively close proximity.  I wondered why this one had a Coast Guard escort since there was another 'gun boat' guarding the rear of the ship.  I looked it up on the Internet and this ship is hauling Liquified Natural Gas (LNG).  I guess the US does not want any type of attack on this ship.

The next day we wandered around Stockton and got a good feel for the town.  We even ate at a Vietnamese restaurant (a first).  We also went to visit a very nice museum, The Haggin.

That evening we were sitting by the water and enjoying the cooling breeze and we heard the loud horn again.  We looked in the same location but there was no ship.  Suddenly, from the other direction came the large ship again.  This time much higher in the water and without any escort.  Here is a pic but not quite as nice since it surprised us and it was getting pretty dark:EupenOutbound

Thus ends our stay at Stockton.  Time to go back to the grind.

I almost forgot to tell you about the title of my post.  In some of the meetings are people that live or work in Stockton.  One of them made the comment that Stockton should have the motto of "It is only two hours from some nice places".  I don't know if I totally agree with that because Stockton was not as bad as it could have been.