Ava is still to small to sleep on her own on one of the beds in the Airstream. Since she still sleeps in a crib at home, I have a feeling that she would roll right off of it. So, having her sleep on one of the beds in the Read more…
On Sunday, Ava and I were awaken from our long long afternoon nap by the sound of Dan slamming the Airstream door closed. Does anyone else have problem? Not the problem of having a husband that can’t for the life of him shut a door without waking the dead… but the problem with shutting an Airstream door without pulling muscles you didn’t know you had? Well we do and I have the sinking feeling that it’s completely normal and I better stop complaining about it. Whoa is me.
So after giving Dan the evil eye, Ava put on her wild wild west poncho and we drove over to Silver City Ghost Town.
Just after taking Ava trick-or-treating for her first time around the neighborhood, we packed ourselves in the van and headed out of town for our VERY FIRST ROAD TRIP in the Airstream. Yeah! We decided to break up the drive into two parts, in order to make the drive more enjoyable for Ava, and therefore… for everyone.
Just around midnight, we arrived at a Walmart that sits on the outskirts of Bakersfield. It’s not the “ideal” place for our very first night in the Airstream, not even close, but it was the most logically place to stop prior to heading up the winding road to Lake Isabella. Walmart is known for letting RVers spend the night in their parking lots. It’s a win-win situation for everyone. RVers get to boondock for free and Walmart usually gets their business… because who doesn’t forget to pack a thing or two for a trip. Not us. We weren’t really sure where we should park when we arrived. A helpful security guard was on the scene and gladly guided us to a private corner of the parking lot. We decided to park just shy of the dirt patch designed for RVs due to the impending storm that was headed our way.
At 6am, we were awoken by a light drizzle. The sound of the rain on the Airstream made waking up just perfect. There’s nothing like sleeping in a warm cozy bed when it is raining outside your window. After a few minutes of drizzle, it started to pour outside. And on the inside? Well, on the inside it sounded like we were being bombarded by machine guns. Rata-tat-tat-tat!
We finally got the Airstream onto the driveway the other night. Yippee! But no thanks to me. All I did to help was a lot of oohing and ahhing. Dan did most of the work. All that previous sailboat trailering really came in handy. He squeezed that sucker in with room to spare. Well, not much room. The Airstream sits 5 inches from the palm tree and 10 inches from the house. Pretty damn tight. But it works… with one little teeny weeny issue. We can’t open the door. Every other section of the Airstream is accessible from our driveway except for the door. Can you believe it?
Knock knock. Who’s there? Your first visitors. Your first visitors who? Your first visitors with a bottle of wine so let us in before we drink your gift right here on the sidewalk. Cha-ching! Thanks for the bottle of Happy Camper wine, David and Carrie! We’ll be happy campers ourselves Read more…
On Sunday, we left the Airstream parked in front of our house so we could spend the day mopping its dusty floors, inspecting every nook and cranny, and admiring its beauty from our dining room as we decorated Halloween cookies with Ava.
I swear that more frosting and sprinkles ended up in her mouth and on the floor than on the cookies she decorated.
Last Saturday was supposed to be the day we bring our Airstream home. Yes, I said supposed to because things are not working out as smoothly as anticipated. Big surprise, huh?
We got a call a few days beforehand from our sales guy saying that our Airstream was all ready for us to pick up. They were supposed to reinstall the television, replace a missing bathroom fixture, replace the propane cover and detail the inside and outside of it. But when we got to the lot and found our new baby, we shook our heads. Not only was the propane cover not replaced, the entire thing was dirtier on the outside than the last time we saw it. Sure the TV was hanging off of the wall and we got a new light fixture but the interior was no where close to being detailed. AHHH!
So, why did they lie to us? Not sure. They had an excuse and it was a decent one but I still don’t like being lied too. Especially since we had to drive 4 hours through LA and find a babysitter. AHHH! There was a huge RV show going on at the Pomona Fairgrounds and most of their manpower was over there.
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The Airstream we thought was officially ours was snatched up from under us and relocated to a new dealership. You must think we were pretty pissed off. Yes we were… but have you ever seen a pissed off toddler who had her road trip dreams squashed by the man? Boy, this dealership is in BIG trouble. BIG BIG TROUBLE. So a couple weekends ago, we headed down south to find out where our Airstream was hiding.
Come out come out where ever you are.
HA! I found it. Follow me.
… and it has Airstream written all over it.
So, I have a little story to tell. It’s about ‘our’ Airstream. You know the one. The one with the cheeks that I want to squeeze? Yeah, that one. Here it goes…
After visiting a couple dealerships, we narrowed down the specs of the Airstream we were hoping to buy but none of the dealerships carried our choice. So we were back to window shopping via the internet. And low and behold, we found it on craigslist. A ‘new’ 2007 Airstream International Ocean Breeze 25FB and it was sitting on a dealership lot down in the San Diego area.
The good news was that is priced ridiculously low. The bad news was that it is a bank repo. Ughhhhh. A repo? Come on! But it didn’t end up being as bad as it sounded. The bank repo’ed the trailer from a going out of business dealership and not from a family who had their road trip dreams squashed and then decided to booby trap the toilet with firecrackers (ouch!) and write profanities all over the aluminum exoskeleton (might sound cool to you now but Ava will eventually learn to read, people!).
Isn’t she just so so cute? I want to squeeze her cheeks. I want to hug her until she wiggles out of my arms. I want to put a cherry on top and eat her up with a spoon. But, I guess I have to settle on incessantly staring at Read more…
(If you haven’t read Part 1 of our shopping adventure, click here.)
So, as you recall, we were in the market for a used Airstream International Signature Series 25FB. I guess you can say we were pretty specific on what we wanted. We preferred to buy a used one from someone who was looking to part ways with theirs but strangely enough there weren’t too many on the market. So we headed to one of our local dealerships in Southern California to check out their inventory. And low and behold, they had a 2007 with our specs. The modern interior was clean, slick, and accented with orange.
Could this be the one? We can’t buy the first one we looked at, right? Would that be responsible of us? I would normally answer these questions with a ‘Yes, we bought it on the spot anyways!’… but not this time. We told the kind salesman that we could not buy the very first one we looked at… even after he knocked off $12k on the spot without us even asking.
A man and woman walk into an Airstream dealership. The man kicks the tires, makes sure he can comfortably sit on the commode, and carefully inspects the cost breakdown spec sheet. The woman opens all the cabinets to try to figure out how all of her their stuff will fit, Read more…