The other day on Instagram, we reached out to our followers with the idea of turning our Airstream into an AirBnB and if anyone had thoughts on it. Lots of idea came in… from placing it on their land, to letting them borrow it for a summer to get a Read more…
Oh Mali Mish. Don’t let the little white fluffy clouds fool you. It’s supposed to sprinkle today. So, I am going to leave you looking a little dirty for our next adventure together. I’m so sorry. But you are in good company. The van is just as dirty as you. Read more…
Hmmm. I bet you are wondering how we did without any hook-ups last weekend at Thornhill Broome State Beach, huh? Well, we did just fine! I’m still alive and blogging, ain’t I? We tried our best to be Mr. and Mrs. Conservative on this two-night trip. Water Water-wise, we did Read more…
Hi there! Welcome back. It’s Day 6 of our road trip and we are still at The Shady Dell in Bisbee, Arizona with our Airstream, the Mali Mish.
Dan is in the dog house. He used my camera last night to take a sunset picture and forgot to change the ISO sensitivity back. So all my pictures today are grainy and just plain yucky. How embarrassing. But if you look on the bright side, it was a travel day for us and not a sight-seeing day. So I might forgive him by the end of the day… maybe.
After three nights at Catalina State park, it was time for us to head to our next destination… Bisbee, Arizona. It took a bit longer that expected to pack up and get the Airstream ready for the road again. I’m sure after a few more times, we will become old pros.
Our gray water tank, that holds our sink water, was full since yesterday. Because the dump station was located down the road, we decided not let any more water down the drain instead of attaching the trailer to the van and dragging it back and forth. It was going to be way too much work, especially since we would be dumping all of the gray water out in the morning before we headed out to Bisbee.
It never fails. Whenever we start a road trip, we can never get the inside temperature just right while we are sleeping. It takes us about three days to finally settle on a temperature that is neither too hot nor too cold, but just right. We sound like the Three Little Bears every morning. Once we all agreed that 65 degrees was just right, Yoda began being a bit happier. A bit like her old self. She even started bird watching outside of our bedroom window. She can now officially add the Gila Woodpecker to her Bird Life List. Whaaat? I’m not the bird dork. Yoda is!
Our first stop of the day was the historic Hotel Congress in downtown Tucson. The hotel is famous for its authentic 1920s beauty and for the fire which led to the capture of one of the country’s most notorious criminals — John Dillinger.
Yesterday we didn’t just give thanks for everything we have, we also gave our Airstream its name. And obviously it is ‘Mali Mish’. I bet you are dying to know how the naming ceremony went down. So here it is. Enjoy. over and out, dan
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?
I did some research before buying the Airstream about what kind of hitch to use to drag it around the country. Since I have only ever towed trailers that I can push around with my hands, the 7000 lb beast is a big change. With an 800 lb tongue weight, it is also 300 lbs more than what my class 3 hitch is rated for. Bad news right? Well, that’s where the weight distribution systems come in. By using a weight distributing system, my class 3 hitch can increase its capacity to accommodate up to 1000 lbs of tongue weight and 10,000 lbs of trailer weight. Magic!
Equalizer
Reese
Hensley Arrow
These hitches essentially use leverage created by solid metal bars that extend from the rear of the hitch to even the weight across all 4 wheels of the vehicle. There are people who will go on and on about how these work but I like to think of it as a wheel barrel. The handles of the wheel barrel are the metal bars and it takes the weight off of the back and moves it to the front. If you want to find out more, do some searches on the wide wide world of web. There are people who will tell you a lot more about it than I am willing to bore you to tears with.