It sounds odd, but we cry a little bit when we return our Safari SE to Airstream, as agreed, at the end of our loan period. The nice folks at Camper Clinic II in Buda, Texas, where we’re dropping off our trailer, make it as easy as they can. They even try distracting us by letting us poke around in their massive inventory of Airstream models and wandering through the cavernous new Pan-American very nearly takes our minds off the pain.

It really isn’t until the paperwork is done and we pull away from the lot without that iconic silver bullet behind us that it sinks in: our Amazing Airstream Adventure is over.

But what an adventure it’s been! Nearly half a year of full-timing in a 23’ 2008 Safari SE has given us access to places and people we never would have encountered otherwise. It’s also meant that we’ve greatly extended the amount of time our Trans-Americas Journey has been able to spend exploring the US by saving us a ton of money we’d otherwise have had to shell out on motel rooms and restaurant meals. You’d be amazed how much that all adds up.

So our Trans-Americas Journey has lost its temporary travel trailer team mate. We’re sure there are going to be many times we’ll look into our side-view mirrors and long to see our Safari rolling along behind us, but the Trans-Americas Journey will roll on—into Mexico, then further south through all of Central and South America—as planned.

This blog will roll on too as a kind of living memory of some of our best Airstream Adventures. Feel free to pop by anytime you feel like checking out The Alabama Hills, or the Bonneville Salt Flats or the Black Rock Desert or the life on the rim of the Grand Canyon or the best campsite in all of Mount Rainier National Park or any of the other amazing places we’ve discovered in our Airstream.

It covers 800,000 acres and is one of the least visited parks in the National Park system so of course we had to visit Big Bend National Park! It’s also one of the few parks that pretty much shutters up in the summer, when temperatures can become not just unbearable, but dangerous too, so right now is a great time to visit.

Well, sort of. The Rio Grande, which runs through the park, crested more than 25 feet above normal two months ago and the flooding has left a trail of destruction and debris and silt behind. More than half the sites in each of the park’s two campgrounds remain closed. On the other hand, almost half of each campground has been re-opened, and we actually have no problem finding a home for our Airstream in Cottonwood Campground.

The Rio Grande River enters Big Bend National Park through Santa Elena Canyon. That's Mexico on the left.

As we drive through the park at dusk a family of javelinas, which look like a wild boar crossed with a warthog with a smidge of rhino thrown in, crosses the road in front of us—in no great hurry it should be added. They may be short but they’re dense and we give them the respect (and the brakes) they deserve.

That evening, back in the campground, we hear a group of coyotes calling very near our site. But it’s not until the next day that we realize that javelinas and coyotes are far outnumbered by the birds in this park. Over coffee we watch a woodpecker with a vivid red splotch on the top of its head and a neon yellow swipe down its neck bedevil a plain-Jane dove that seems to want to land on a tree that the woodpecker considers its own. Factor in the seemingly never-ending stream of birds of prey and Big Bend is a tweeter’s dream.

Out on one of the roads through the park we slam on the brakes and pull over to admire something that more often factors in people’s nightmares, not their dreams: a tarantula as big as a human hand. The prehistoric looking thing is slowly ambling across the road, and then it heads off into the rocky, dusty desert on impossibly fragile looking legs.

Why did the tarantula cross the road? We don't know, but the things are so big and so common in Big Bend National Park that we have no trouble spotting them as they meander across the asphalt.

The animals that really get us revved up, however, are far bigger and hairier than the tarantula. Staff and visitors report around 130 mountain lion sightings in the park every year, which is extraordinarily high. The park’s black bears, once common in the park’s Chisos Mountains, had disappeared by the mid 1940s when the park was created. However, since the 1980s, black bears have slowly repopulated the area by crossing into Big Bend from neighboring Mexico

This year they’re extremely active with many sightings and signs on the trails advising hikers to be vigilant. With all this big predator activity, the park is also peppered with tantalizing warning signs about how to behave if confronted with either animal.

We’d love to catch a glimpse of another black bear, but a mountain lion sighting would really be special since neither of us has ever seen one. With that in mind, we head for the park’s backcountry to hit the trial. At the urging of a fellow camper, we set our sights on the Pine Canyon Trail which is reached via about 10 miles of single track dirt road.

Beginning the Pine Canyon hike into the Chisos Mountains.

A wonderful sampling of the park’s diversity, the four mile roundtrip walk starts off through scrubby classic Chihuahua desert, working almost imperceptibly up Pine Canyon. The terrain quickly gets steeper, more narrow and more forested until we reach trail’s end literally at a rock wall which is the site of a dramatic waterfall whenever it rains. Though we see a big fresh pile of bear poop right on the trail (oh, you’d recognize it if you saw it too), we make it all the way back down to our truck without seeing a bear or a mountain lion.

In addition to the extraordinary number of mountain lion sightings and the rare mix of Chihuahua desert and Chisos Mountains and Rio Grande, the other truly unique thing we take away from Big Bend National Park is a reminder of the randomness of borders. Here in Big Bend the Rio Grande is the border and we can literally see Mexico from almost anywhere in the park.

Looking out over the Rio Grande near Boquillas Canyon. Mexico starts on the left side of the river and continues up into the hills in the background.

Craftsman from villages and towns on the Mexican side of the river used to be allowed to wade across with goods to sell to Big Bend visitors, and then return to their homes at night. Post 9/11 border crackdowns ended all that and now just a few intrepid souls sneak across the river, set up makeshift craft stands with donations boxes and signs in butchered English, then return to Mexico and hope that someone buys a carved walking stick or scorpion sculpture and puts something in their cash box (though park officials warn that buying these goods is against the law). At night these stealthy shopkeepers return to collect their unsold goods and any revenue.

We’ve crossed a lot of borders in our time and we hope we’ll be lucky enough to cross many more. But somehow it never seems right that a river/wall/line in the sand should be powerful enough to create such a divide.

Then we see site #12. Located on a huge corner parcel on the edge of the campground, site #12 has an unobstructed view of the Organ Mountains plus a private gazebo with a table and chairs and your own personal gas grill.

Beautiful site #12 at the Las Cruces KOA.

We’re sold, even though the site is $12 more than the standard site we originally reserved, and the cheerful KOA staff happily swaps our reservation so we can move into our new mansion of a campsite which literally has room for at least three of our Airstreams. We’re just getting settled in and deciding what to grill for dinner when a 32’ vintage Airstream bus pulls into a nearby site.

Out jump Michael and Judy and their adorable dog Rose and before long we’re all enjoying cold beverages in our gazebo. Michael and Judy have been full-timing in their Airstream, which they’ve lovingly named Bess, for a long time and we really relate to their attitude toward life on the road. Namely, don’t make too much of a schedule—it’s just going to change anyway, don’t let the idiots get to you and never, ever make plans with other people if you can avoid it.

Oh, and don’t be afraid to snag the best site in the campground. We suspect that as soon as we leave site #12 Michael and Judy will move in!

From Las Cruces we head for Van Horn, TX but first we make a mandatory pit stop at the Lucchese cowboy boot outlet in El Paso, TX where Eric tries on about a gazillion different styles of boots. The place is packed to the rafters with hundreds of styles from subdued classics to flamboyant colors and fancy skins. Eric finally settles on a deliciously soft, dark -caramel-colored handmade pair that fit him perfectly—and at a fraction of the cost of regularly priced Lucchese creations.

We’re not big shoppers, but we’re sure these are boots that will prove their worth for years to come just like the boots Karen bought at the Alberta Boot Company in Calgary, Canada almost two years ago, which have become treasured (if slightly scuffed) possessions. Besides, you just can’t drive around Texas wearing sneakers!

After a night in the Van Horn, TX KOA, where the night staff actually stayed late in order to greet us when we checked in, we begin making our way toward Big Bend National Park. Our route takes us directly through Marfa, TX a quirker of a town that’s become a magnet for artists, nature lovers and general urban refugees and harmless misfits from all over.

Like so many roads in Texas, the route from Van Horn to Marfa is two lanes of pretty much straight flat pavement with a speed limit of 80 mph, which means we cover the 75 miles between Van Horn and Marfa in no time flat—even with a stop at Prada Marfa, an art installation by German artists Michael Elmgreen and Ingar Dragset which opened in 2005 and that consists of a petite replica of a Prada story (complete with actual Prada handbags and shoes on shelves inside) literally plunked down in the middle of nowhere. Not sure why, but it makes us smile.

This Prada store 35 miles outside of Marfa, which is filled with real Prada shoes and handbags but is never open, was created by German artists Elmgreen & Dragset.

The minute we hit Marfa we can see the cool. There’s the Thunderbird Hotel (owned by the same folks who run the desert-chic Hotel San Jose in Austin, TX, they’ll let you borrow an actual vintage turntable so you can play something from their vinyl library right in your room). There’s the Pizza Foundation which earns rave reviews from hippies and hipsters alike. And there’s Maiya’s and the fairly new and much-hyped Cochineal (opened by two former New York City restaurateurs who used to run Etats-Unis on Manhattan’s Upper East Side) where even big-city diners marvel at their meal—and often their celebrity co-diners.

To fill in the gaps between meals and star-sightings there are tempting books stores and hardcore coffee shops galore and cheeky second hand stores. Not to mention the thing that transformed Marfa from an obscure, half-dead dustbowl cattle town to the Brooklyn of Texas in the first place: Art.

Downtown Marfa.

New York City minimalist Donald Judd (though the vitriolic Judd reportedly preferred the term empiricist) came to Marfa in the early ‘70s and soon began taking over massive buildings on an abandoned military base and other properties in and around town and turning them into galleries for his work. He eventually formed the Judd Foundation and opened the Chinati Foundation (named after Marfa’s neighboring mountain range) in 1976 and the influx of art-tourists his installations eventually attracted has been largely credited not just with Marfa’s survival but with its current boom.

Besides copious quantities of cool, the other thing we notice about Marfa is an amazing number of Airstreams. We count six without even trying on just one quick pass through town. Clearly art attracts art….

Sadly, we don’t have time to hang out and make our Safari SE the seventh Airstream in town, so it’s on toward Big Bend National Park!

Natural Bridges National Monument is a compact, focused park which makes it easy to wrap your head (and your time) around it. Created to showcase just three stellar examples of bridges formed by naturally eroded rock, all of the park’s geological wonders are easily reached via hiking trails off a short scenic drive.

The naturally eroded Sipapu bridge in Natural Bridge National Monument.

The naturally eroded Sipapu bridge in Natural Bridge National Monument.

Owachomo bridge in Natural Bridges National Monument.

Owachomo bridge in Natural Bridges National Monument.

Even with a lovely pit stop to make a sandwich in the Airstream we’re able to walk to all three bridges and enjoy all of the overlooks in just a few hours, then we’re off to Moab where we do something we’ve never done during all of our visits to the area: stop and take a tour of the Hole ‘n The Rock attraction just south of town.

Sure, from the outside it looks like just another cheesy roadside rip-off complete with a lame petting zoo and an overpriced gift shop (which is exactly why we’ve always driven right past it). But this time we stop and pony up the $5 each for a tour of the main attraction, a 5,000 square foot multi-room home with electricity and plumbing (not to mention some very, um, unique décor—more on that later) blasted, carved and coaxed out of sheer rock.

The tour starts in the kitchen, a cheerily painted room that was the first area built in order to serve guests at what was originally a roadhouse restaurant. Apart from the French fryer carved into solid stone and the cabinets that have been rounded to fit into the curved rock walls, the kitchen doesn’t seem that unusual.

Then you enter the home’s other 13 rooms. There’s the bathtub carved out of solid rock and the 65 foot chimney blasted through solid stone. Not to mention huge solid-stone pillars throughout. All told 50,000 cubic feet of sandstone was removed to create the Hole ‘n The Rock as it was expanded into a full-fledged home and art studio.

However, the thing that really makes this place unique is the way the creators, Gladys and Albert Christensen, decorated their cave home.

An avid painter and sculptor Albert’s work is everywhere—much of it focused on his hero Franklin D. Roosevelt. His other passion, taxidermy, is also represented in the form of the sorriest looking re-animations of various dearly departed pets, including the donkey who did most of the heavy lifting during construction of Hole ‘n The Rock and a sort of ethereal floating foal that’s more creepy than cute.

Fittingly, Gladys and Albert are buried in a rocky plot next door to their labor of love.

We can’t be sure that the 15 years it took Albert and Gladys to construct and decorate this boondoggle was time well spent, but we’re glad we stopped by for a little while.

After driving past this roadside attraction half a dozen times, we finally stop to tour the amazing Hole 'n The Rock cave home--and we're glad we did.

We’re also glad we stopped by the Star Casino in Santa Ana, New Mexico the next day. We’ve made it a habit to stop at casinos and take advantage of any free play they offer new club members. Usually it’s five bucks or so and we can almost always make a few dollars in a few minutes.

When we pull into the Star Casino, however, they’re offering an additional bonus to first-time club members. All we have to do is show our drivers’ licenses, then log onto their web site and use a code to play an online game that determines what our additional bonus is. We play the game later that night in the nearby Albuquerque Central KOA but one of the codes is expired.

When we return to the casino the next morning they tell us they can give us a new online game code to replace the expired one, but we’ll have to use our own computers to redeem free play. No problem! We just go out to our Airstream in the parking lot and fire up our mobile office. In the end, we get $70 in free play which we quickly parlay into almost $50 of pure profit. Now that’s time well spent!

A fresh dusting of snow makes the hoodoo formations of Bryce Canyon National Park even more gorgeous and other-worldly than usual. However, at 9,100 feet it’s so cold in the park that we stay just one night before moving on toward Grand Staircase Escalante National Monument and, we hope, milder temperatures.

A sea of hoodoos (tall thin spires of rock) are the main attraction at Bryce Canyon National Park.

It is, indeed, warmer by the time we reach the town of Escalante and drop our Airstream at an uninspired local trailer park before heading out to drive the Burr Trail, a 68 mile backcountry route through Grand Escalante National Monument and on to Capitol Reef National Park.

The red rock world of Grand Staircase Escalante National Monument and Capitol Reef National Park.

We’ve been warned that the road is not recommended for trailers, so we are confused when we hit the Burr Trail and realize it’s almost entirely freshly paved. Save for a few final miles of switchbacks and dirt road which would, admittedly, be an Airstream challenge, the entire Burr Trail is in better shape than much of the road we’ve been on lately.

Save for a group of cowboys on horseback and on truck coming from the other direction, we have the Burr Trail to ourselves and as the gorgeous scenery unfolds—including towering walls of bright red Navajo sandstone that out-wow all the dramatic rocks we’ve seen so far—we’re sorry we didn’t bring the Airstream with us. Even a wide spot in this road would make a vastly preferable camping spot than the dusty pull through we just left her in and since its BLM land we could have parked it almost anywhere.

Our Airstream in front of Chimney Rock in Capitol Reef National Park.

The next morning we head to Capitol Reef National Park via scenic Highway 12, but despite the gorgeous scenery we seem to be a bigger attraction for a European tourist who takes a picture of our Airstream as we’re pulled over in a turnout making a quick picnic.

Capitol Reef National Park, whose main feature is an enormous spine of sandstone that acts like a barrier or reef, is home to the remnants of cabins, schools and farms left behind by the area’s first white settlers who managed to find a way into the region. Weirdly, park visitors are allowed to pick the fruit that the settler’s old orchards still produce each season.

In Capitol Reef National Park the Waterpocket Fold, a 100 mile wrinkle in the earth's crust, creates an impassable reef-like barrier.

There’s no fruit around right now so we focus on the park’s scenic drive along a mostly paved road past pockmarked sandstone formations and side canyons and run offs. The road saves the really dramatic scenery for the last unpaved miles and then dead ends at Capitol Gorge, a pass through the imposing sandstone walls that Native American tribes and early settlers both used like a road.

The walls of Capitol Gorge still hold onto Indian petro glyphs and the inscriptions of settlers who passed through in 1911. The gorge is also home to some more recent arrivals: strange birds called Chukars that look like enormous quail but without the floppy head piece and with a hooked magenta beak and magenta colored legs.

We know all that because the things are nearly tame. As we walked through the gorge a flock of a half dozen Chukars walked right up to us, like dogs, and when we sat down on the ground they happily pecked and scratched all around us. We were charmed until the ranger told us that the Chukars are an invasive species that’s slowly but surely pushing the native quail out.

One of the friendly Chukars we come across in Capitol Gorge.

We’ve grown used to the rock shows that go on in this part of the country, but as we drive out of Capitol Reef National Park we are amazed at how the terrain changes like neighborhoods in a city—now red Navajo sandstone walls, now beige flat stretches, now pure white and pitted pillars, now grey sandy humps.

Sometimes the changes sneak up on us in gradual stages as we drive. Sometimes the change is incredibly sudden, like someone flipped a geological switch and the backdrop around us flipped to something totally different.

And, so, just a few miles south of the spiny, spiky neighborhood of Capitol Reef National Park the landscape looks like a lumpy moon—something that’s not lost on the locals who call their neighborhood Luna Mesa.

A full moon rising over Hite Overlook.

That night we get a bit of a boondock fix as we pull into the Hite Overlook where we’d intended to just enjoy the sunset with the junction of the Colorado and Dirty Devil Rivers as they join Lake Powell far below us. It’s so lovely and secluded, however, that we decide we’ve found our neighborhood for the night.

The sun rises on a red, red world at Hite Overlook.

Utah’s Zion National Park may be compact (less than 230 square miles), but it packs a lot in—from canyoneering to one of the most notorious hikes in the national park system to a crazy road and tunnel to abundant wildlife.

We’ve been through the park briefly before, but we make a return trip hoping it’ll be warm enough to hike The Narrows which requires some canyoneering through water. After moving into an enormous site in the Watchman Campground which, surprisingly, comes with an electrical hookup, we decide that the temperatures are already too cold for The Narrows (though other, heartier, souls are attempting it outfitted in insulated hip waders).

Sunset over our Airstream home in the Watchman Campground in Zion National Park.

Instead, we focus on some of the park’s hikes like Angels Landing which requires traversing a narrow spine of rock that turns some folks back. We’re even more tempted by the hike up to Observation Point which gains 2,000 feet in four miles of switchbacks pretty much straight uphill through a range of terrain, including some brief slot canyons and plenty of red rock, culminating in a great viewpoint over the park.

The trail that switchbacks up to Observation Point offers a great view of the Horseshoe bend in the Virgin River. Somehow this little river created Zion canyon.

The scenery is so gorgeous that before we know it we’re at the top munching on trail mix and enjoying the view. When someone points to the sky and hollers “condors” we are skeptical, but a quick check through binoculars reveals the giant endangered bird’s tell-tale wing markings and an identification number clamped to each animal’s wing.

Karen hikes through a partial tunnel blasted out to gain access to a small slot canyon on the trail up to Observation Point.

For the next 15 minutes we watch three California condors slowly circle and swirl above us, ultimately getting so low that we can see their markings without binoculars. We’d just read that condors are so comfortable with humans because they’ve learned that mammals like us often leave food behind and we wonder if these birds are hoping for some leftover trail mix.

Two of the three California Condors that soared above us at Observation Point before vanishing into thin air.

Then, as quickly as they appeared, the huge birds are gone. Vanished. As if they were never there. All of the hikers at Observation Point look at each other as if to confirm that we all just saw what we thought we saw. Buoyed by our condor sighting, we cover the four miles back down the trail and on to our Airstream in record time, almost like we’re flying ourselves.

Stunning views from Observation Point down into Zion Canyon.

The next morning we make a quick breakfast and head out to the Emerald Pools trail which threads together three different natural pools. On a sunny day, the pools each exhibit a different brilliant color. In the gathering grayness on the morning we’re there, the colors are not quite apparent but it’s a pleasant walk nonetheless.

Our journey out of Zion National Park is also an adventure. In order to fit through the tunnel in the road that exits the park all RV drivers have to buy a special pass. When we reach the tunnel in our Airstream we show our pass and traffic in both directions is stopped so we can drive in the center of the tunnel, straddling the dividing line, through the tallest point in the tunnel. It’s definitely a first.

Fall colors along the Virgin River.

If the North Rim of Grand Canyon National Park is the South Rim’s less famous sibling, then the Toroweap area (also called the Tuweep area) of the park is the long lost cousin. Whereas the South Rim can get over 15,000 visitors on a busy day, Toroweap rarely sees more than a dozen or two visitors. In fact, in 2004 3,314,226 people visited the South Rim, 306,926 people visited the North Rim, and only 8,066 visited Toroweap!

We didn’t know much about the area at all until Dave from the North Rim backcountry office started raving about how amazing it was and how he looks forward to spending half his year in Toroweap despite the isolation and the bad road. Isolation? Bad road? Sign us up!

Leaving the Airstream happily nestled in its desert home in the Paria Canyon/Vermillion Cliffs Wilderness, we head out to Toroweap for a day trip. As we turn off the pavement and onto the Sunshine Route to Toroweap we’re surprised at how good the dirt road is. Heck, for the first 50+ miles it’s more than good enough for the Airstream!

The first 50 miles of dirt road up to the entrance of the Toroweap area of Grand Canyon National Park are in decent shape and the Airstream could probably have made it....

However, just as we reach the ranger station and the official sign for the Grand Canyon National Park Toroweap area the road takes a pronounced turn for the worse with deep ruts, sand pits and huge rocks that toss us from side to side and up and down and forward and backward no matter how slow we go. These final six miles are so uniformly bad that it seems like someone’s come in with heavy equipment and intentionally made the road worse in order to discourage visitors.

... but things take a drastic turn for the worse over the last few miles to Toroweap Point and the canyon rim.

After many hours of driving (nearly a full hour just to get through the last six brutal miles), we finally reach Toroweap Point, a spectacular spot 3,000 feet above the Colorado River right on the rim of the Grand Canyon with views of light-and-color-bathed canyon walls, Lava Falls rapids and that iconic river snaking lazily along far below. 

The Grand Canyon and the Colorado River from Toroweap Point. The canyon here is narrow and drops nearly 3,000 feet straight down to the river which is about 90 miles downstream from the canyon most Grand Canyon National Park visitors see.

With the sun setting and neither of us looking forward to facing that brutal stretch of road again so soon we decide to camp for the night in the exquisite primitive campground just in from the rim where 10 sites with tables and fire rings are set along a flat shelf. We settle into site number five tucked into a gentle bend in the landscape (this is exactly why we always carry full camping gear and plenty of water with us in the truck) and once darkness falls the sky puts on a spectacular star show.

Sunset over the Grand Canyon from Toroweap Point.

The night is so warm that we don’t even put the fly on our tent, which allows us to stargaze right up until our eyes close. And did we mention that the campground has the cleanest backcountry bathrooms we’ve ever seen? Still, it’ll be good to get back into our Airstream home!

The Colorado River almost 3,000 feet straight below the rim at Toroweap Point.

On the sage advice of Bob, the Airstream-loving host of the North Rim Campground in Grand Canyon National Park, we head straight for Locust Point in a neighboring section of the Kaibob National Forest which is administered by the United States Forest Service (USFS) when our time in the park itself is done.

The USFS manages a huge amount of land on the canyon’s rim just on the outskirts of the park and, despite its less than enticing name, Locust Point proves to be a wonderful boon docking location, just as Bob promised—remote, private, slightly hard to reach (and even harder to leave—more on that later) and absolutely gorgeous. After 20 miles or so of well-maintained dirt roads we hit a turnaround marked Locust Point.

From there we branch off down a rough and narrow spur trail (to call it a road would be too generous) until we literally reach the canyon’s rim. With darkness coming, we slowly and carefully tow our Airstream to a stunning vantage point and park it. We end up camped so close to the rim that we’re thankful neither of us are sleepwalkers.

Panorama from Locust Point looking out over the Grand Canyon, just steps from the Airstream. (Click for Full Size)

From bed we can see the far wall of the canyon and the wind brings over the faint remains of our nearest neighbor’s nightly playlist of Bob Marley and traditional Native American flute music, which suits the mood perfectly.

Airstreaming on the edge of the Grand Canyon at Locust Point.

Because we’re on National Forest land we’re allowed to gather wood, which we do in anticipation of building a campfire in one of the lovely stone fire ring some thoughtfully left behind by previous visitors. However, when night falls a breeze picks up which carries embers from our fire straight over the edge of the canyon so we douse it before we start a catastrophic forest fire.

It’s out here at Locust Point that we discover another use for our Safari: wildlife blind. If we sit very quietly inside the Airstream birds and squirrels seem to forget we’re there and come right up to the Airstream—in some cases even wandering around on the roof and peaking in the roofline windows curiously.

The view from the rim of the Grand Canyon, mere feet from where the Airstream was Boondocked.

After a few contented days we really do have to leave Locust Point, which requires carefully extricating ourselves from our prime location. We are squeezed in between tree branches mere inches from the top of our Safari and rocks and stout brush on all sides. There’s no way to turn around, so we spend nearly an hour painstakingly backing up and around (and sometimes through) these obstacles until we’re back out on the main dirt road.

We prefer to think of the scratches that this adventure inflicts on the Airstream as battle scars of the best kind.

From Locust Point we head to the equally evocatively named Vermillion Cliffs National Monument then through a town called Cliff Dwellings which makes us think Native Americans must have settled here. We pull off the road, amidst an eerie flotsam of bulbous rocks perched atop way-too-flimsy looking pillars of earth until they look like geological toadstools, and we do, indeed, see Native Americans.

However, they’ve inherited this place and now use it as a roadside vending stand. The original inhabitant of Cliff Dwellings was a woman named Blanche who started building rooms and homes amidst the rock jumble in the 1920s after hear car broke down pretty much where we’ve parked the Airstream. Yes, wacky.

The next day we continue our extraordinary streak of good luck obtaining last minute permits by scoring a green light to hike into North Coyote Butte, aka The Wave in Paria Canyon/Vermillion Cliffs Wilderness. The swirling, sloping walls of tangerine, pale pink and taupe colored Navajo sandstone became so popular after being featured in European movies that the Bureau of Land Management, which administers the area, has had to institute a complicated lottery system to dole out the 10 permits given each morning for access to the area on the following day (you can also reserve one of 10 slots per day in advance, but we never work that far ahead).

We’d set aside three mornings to attempt to get a permit (some days hundreds of people show up for the 10 slots), never dreaming we’d score a permit our first time out. Now we’ve got plenty of free time to explore other less famous spots in the area which BLM staff make clear are just as spectacular as The Wave.

"The Wave" at North Coyote Buttes in the Paria Canyon/Vermillion Cliffs Wilderness.

But first we’ve got to find a home so we drive a few miles out a dirt road into the Paria/Vermillion Cliffs Wilderness and park the Airstream in a flat, clear turn around off the road. Voila! Then we head to Wire Pass/Buckskin Gulch for a taste of this amazing landscape.

When we hear the word “pass” we think of high mountain peaks that require long uphill slogs before reaching the “pass” onto the other side of the mountain range. In this part of the world, however, passes through rocky obstacles happen in the opposite way—way down low on the ground where water has worn away slot canyons which are used to “pass” through.

The resulting slot canyons, like Wire Pass and Buckskin Gulch, are narrow, high-walled and sinewy. In places light never reaches the bottom of the canyon and the walls are so close together that you have to turn sideways to pass through. Many areas of the canyon floor are strewn with big boulders washed into the slots during sometimes deadly flash floods.

The slot canyon called Wire Pass.

The most hardcore slot canyons require scaling mountains of these boulders and fording deep, dark, cold areas of collected water. However, Wire Pass and Buckskin Gulch are easy ambles once you’re over those tricky boulders early on. There’s very little standing water and what’s there can be easily skirted. The biggest hazards are pockets of saturated mud the consistency of chocolate pudding that would probably suck the boots right off your feet if you got in too deep.

Then there are the rattlesnakes.

No big deal. We’ve seen them before. But the one we come across in Buckskin Gulch is in a narrow place with sheer canyon walls on either side that prevent us from giving him a wide birth as we pass. No matter how we cut it, in order to move further into the canyon we’d have to walk by the snake within striking distance.

Karen hiking in the Buckskin Gulch slot canyon.

Despite the fact that the poor snake looks more than half dead from the cold and from the trauma of however he managed to fall or get dropped into the frigid slot canyon, risking a rattlesnake bite seems foolhardy so we turn around as the snake tosses us one last half-hearted flick of his sad little tongue.

The next morning we grab our coveted hiking pass and head for The Wave which involves a fair amount of climbing up and over the rounded shoulders of rust colored sandstone formations which is generally a pleasure since sandstone is so grippy and easy to walk on. What’s not so easy to walk on are the long stretches of sand. Since both sandstone and loose sand are hard to construct a trail through, the route is marked by the occasional Karin.

Eric in "The Wave."

We reach the mouth of the Wave formation just as the sun is getting high enough to really show off the color bands in its hot-pulled-taffy shapes that were formed by wind literally blowing the sandstone particles into the form of an enormous wave. It’s lovely and hypnotic and seems to change before our eyes.

Karen at "The Wave."

After sitting on the edge of a big sandstone bowl above the main Wave formation for a while we explore the rocks around The Wave. Weirdly, they are all pretty much just normal sandstone—except for a formation another hiker called The Hamburger. From the back it just looks like another lumpy sandstone ball. From the front it’s been eroded in a way that makes it look exactly like a big sloppy burger on a bun complete with tomato and lettuce.

"Hamburger Rock" that sits just above "The Wave" at North Coyote Buttes.

We are very grateful that we were able to get out to The Wave but as we leave the Paria/Vermillion Cliffs Wilderness we have to think the local BLM staff members were right—there are definitely other stars in the area.

It’s just the other side of a massive hole in the ground, but the North Rim of Grand Canyon National Park might as well be the other side of the planet from the more-visited South Rim. Fewer visitors mean you never have to wait in traffic or transfer to a people-moving bus or elbow your way to a rim view. And the canyon—which shows itself so freely from the South Rim—is largely hidden from the North Rim except to those who are willing to walk and/or drive a bit to a vantage point, which makes the canyon feel as mysterious, elusive and awesome as it is.

An additional 1,400 feet in elevation above the South Rim also means cooler temperatures and different flora, including Aspens. The North Rim even has its own squirrel that’s not found on the other side of the canyon. The Kaibab Squirrel sports a distinctive charcoal colored body and a silver tail which makes it look like two different squirrels got their halves mixed up. Though the Kaibab Squirrel can literally see the South Rim from most of its terrain, it appears to have decided that the hike down into the canyon then back up to the other side is just too much effort—and you can forget about the 220 mile road route between the two rims of the park—so the squirrel remains local.

Sunset over Bright Angel Canyon with the Grand Canyon in the distance.

Despite our late fall arrival, we find the lone North Rim campground is still open for business—though without water services which reduces the nightly rate to just $12, down from the normal $17 rate. Even the coveted rim-front sites, which normally go for a jacked-up $25 a night, are available for just $12 and we happily snag site #14 which rubs right up against the lip of a dramatic side canyon.

As we’re filling out our site registration form Bob, the campground host, comes by on his bicycle and asks if he can take a picture of our Safari SE. We’re used to this kind of Airstreamania by now and we’re happy to oblige. Then Bob, who camps in a 1970s Argosy, explains that he’s taken Airstreamania to a new level, documenting all of the Airstreams that have spent the night in his campground since he started hosting back in May.

Bob tells us that 10 Airstreams have been in the campground so far on his watch, ranging from a 1963 which the owners had dubbed The Frog (rivet, rivet—get it?) to a bunch of 2008s like ours and he’s diligently logged most of them with photos and details about length, model and owners.

Light streaking through Angels Window which we later walke over via a narrow trail.

Now, we’ve hiked to the bottom of the Grand Canyon and back from the South Rim during an earlier visit to the park, so we know full well that it’s a serious walk. Unlike the Kaibab Squirrel, however, we are so enchanted by the canyon that we decide we have to do it from the North Rim as well. But we don’t begin to seriously plan a canyon hike until after we miraculously get dorm room reservations at Phantom Ranch, the historic lodge down at the bottom of the canyon—something akin to winning the lottery.

That’s when we head to the park’s backcountry permit office where Dave sets us up with camping permits for Cottonwood Campground, mid way between Phantom Ranch and the North Rim and with permits and reservations in hand the only thing left is the walking. And more walking.

At Coconino Overlook, near the beginning of the North Kaibab trail, on our way down into the Grand Canyon. It's still a long way down to Roaring Springs Canyon then Bright Angel Canyon and finally the Colorado River some 5,600 feet below us.

As compared to the hike from the South Rim, the North Rim route to the bottom of the canyon and back is steeper (descending and ascending 5,600 feet vs. 4,400 feet to and from the South Rim) and longer (28 miles round trip to Phantom Ranch and back, vs. 17 round trip from the South Rim). But we’re not complaining. The walk is gorgeous from the first steps as the North Kaibab Trail drops and winds steeply through the rim forest then through the distinct rock layers of the canyon.

Karen heads down the trail just below the Supai Tunnel.

We hike, virtually alone, until we reach Cottonwood Campground with a handful of clean, flat sites near a stream—which is a good thing since the piped in water all along the North Rim trails has just been turned off for the season to avoid freezing pipes. We relax on the bank of the stream in the last of the evening sun and use our SteriPEN to purify enough water to re-fill our Camelbak backpack bladders and get us through the night before scarfing down a delicious (seriously) freeze-dried Mountain House meal and climbing into our sleeping bags.

Karen in The Box, a dramatic narrow, high-walled canyon on the lower section of the North Kaibab trail.

The next day’s walk down to Phantom Ranch is even more breathtaking, mainly because it’s so varied. Gone are the layers upon layers of rock that we descended through the previous day, replaced with surprisingly wet and green stretches along the canyon bottom. Then we reach a section called The Box—4 miles through an increasingly narrow and high-walled canyon crossing and re-crossing the stream. The water thunders off the rock walls and the trail gentles-out to a leisurely stroll almost inperceptably downhill. We could walk like this all day!

Phantom Ranch at the bottom of the Grand Canyon.

And then we’re at Phantom Ranch which appears very much like the oasis it is. Trees, grass, clear water, nearly-tame deer plus a warm bed in the dorm and a hot shower followed by a hot meal in the ranch’s dining hall where the truly delicious beef stew dinner with fresh, crispy salad, fresh-baked cornbread and chocolate cake fuels us up for the hard part—tomorrow’s return hike back UP the way we just came down.

After dinner we sit in on a ranger talk in the dark outdoor amphitheater near the canteen. As the ranger is wrapping up, she casually asks if anyone is interested in going scorpion hunting. As feared, scorpion hunting is really, really easy since they’re all around us. Scorpions glow in the dark, so the rangers at Phantom Ranch use flashlights fitted with a black light bulb to almost instantly reveal a disconcerting number of 2” long scorpions covering the rocks near where we’d just been sitting. One of the rangers specializes in scorpions and has been stung many times and her stories of pain suffering sorry agony and grief make us suddenly wish we still had our boots on instead of the open-toed sandals we wore to dinner…

The Colorado River with some rafters taking a rest on the beach.

We’re not the only ones taking advantage of the natural and gastronomic wonders of Phantom Ranch and of all the interesting folks we meet and see down there, two stand out.

The first is a white-bearded, big-bellied, crinkly-eyed smiler who calls himself Meadow Ed (google him) who easily holds court with his stories from a lifetime lived on the trail—from the Grand Canyon to the Pacific Crest Trail where he is, no exaggeration, a legend. Like we said, google him.

The second stand out is a guy we only exchange about 10 words with. The first time we see him he’s running (yes, running) past us on the trail up the North Rim side as we’re beginning to re-pack our Mountainsmith packs for our own return hike.

Most everything gets down to the bottom of the Canyon by mule, including food, mail, cases of beer, trash (on the way out) and even many tourists.

Later that day, as we approach the half-way mark, the same runner passes us again, this time on his way back down toward Phantom Ranch before continuing back up to the South Rim from whence he came. Still running, he has enough breath to inform us as he flies past that he’s on track to make the entire 42 mile trip from the South Rim to the North Rim and back again, descending and climbing more than 11,300 long hard feet, in EIGHT HOURS. That’s like running up and down a 1,150 story building spread out over 42 miles. Incredible.

We spend the next few hours on the trail simply trying to wrap our heads around what that guy is doing. At the same time, we’re also getting sucked into the addictive nature of the Grand Canyon. Incredibly, we finish our own trip into the canyon and back without even getting sore (possibly due to residual fitness left over from our recent Half Dome hike). This makes us begin to consider upping the ante ourselves with a hike from the North Rim to the South Rim in one day the next time we’re lucky enough to visit Grand Canyon National Park. Stay tuned.

Karen relaxes on the banks of The Colorado River at the the bottom of the Grand Canyon.

Many of you have met Grady, our beloved canine companion. However, since moving into our Safari SE full time back in June we’ve had another official inanimate mascot: a pair of pink plastic flamingos that have decorated our “front lawn” in places as diverse as the Black Rock Desert and the logo for this blog.

This helps explain why, as we pull into Las Vegas, we can’t resist the enormous neon flamingo that beckons to us from in front of the Flamingo Hotel & Casino. Now, we’ve been full-timing in our Airstream for more than four months which has allowed us to happily drive right past hundreds of motels and hotels, but we quickly make an exception and settle into one of The Flamingo’s recently renovated GO rooms after tucking our trailer safely into the hotel’s convenient over-size lot.

Flamingos can be seen all around the Flamingo Las Vegas Hotel & Casino, not all of them are as real as these.

“We own the pink!” is the slightly racy new motto of The Flamingo and the GO rooms make good on that promise with funky, modern, minimalist décor uses strategic touches of pink along with brown and white and cream and tan making the overall effect not unlike being inside a giant box of Good N’ Plenty (in a nice way).

Even nicer is the long and roomy desk (plenty of room for both of our computers), an empty refrigerator (we figure GO rooms have to be the only rooms in Las Vegas that don’t force an overpriced mini bar on you), a sexy/chic quilted white patent leather headboard, a huge fan over the bed, a small TV in the bathroom and an enormous flat screen in the room.

They even have a very small flock of live flamingos in an outdoor landscaped courtyard.

From Las Vegas, we head for the intimidating-sounding Valley of Fire State Park, just 55 miles northeast of the strip—but a world away.

Red rocks like these are what gave Valley of Fire State Park its name.

The park certainly has no flamingos, but it does have some seriously red rock formations, hence the name. It also has two campgrounds, though we highly recommend Arch Rock Campground which is more secluded and features much more dramatic terrain than its counterpart, if you can live without a hookup (there is a free dump station nearby).

An nearly full moon rises inside the arch.

For $14 a night Arch Rock Campground lets us park our Safari SE right amongst the namesake rocks with a level site, a fire ring and a lovely covered picnic table. It’s so nice we stay an extra night and even put our flamingos out.

It's a tight squeeze between the amazing rock formations in the Arch Rock Campground in Valley of Fire State Park.

Some towns just have it all—like Page, Arizona which was literally created out of thin desert to house and feed workers brought into the area to begin building the Glen Canyon Dam in the ‘50s. Today the sleepy town is home to about 7,000 and a great home base for anyone interested in exploring awesome Lake Powell, created when Glen Canyon (and many other side canyons) filled up with water behind the completed Glen Canyon Dam.

The 710 foot high Glen Canyon Dam created Lake Powell.

Part of the Glen Canyon Recreational Area, Lake Powell is famous as a house boating destination and rightly so since the lake’s awesome sculptural sandstone cliffs and hundreds of meandering finger-like side canyons are best explored on the lake’s deep (as in many hundreds of feet deep) and crystal clear water from a fully-appointed houseboat that lets you take a hot shower, cook great meals, sleep in comfy beds and even (in some cases) soak in a hot tub and watch a flat panel TV. Yeah, they’re nicer than our old apartment in Manhattan was.

House boating on beautiful Lake Powell.

Every fall Page makes good use of the air as well as the water with the annual Page/Lake Powell Hot Air Balloon Regatta. In its sixth year, the event attracted nearly 50 balloons plus their pilots and chase crews. Hot air ballooning is truly a team sport since no balloon would ever get inflated and airborne (let alone back on the ground safe and sound) without a small posse of wranglers and drivers who handle the balloon and literally chase it from a vehicle once it’s in the air to make sure they’re on the ground with it wherever the pilot chooses to land.

Karen helps pilot Chris ready his balloon, Heaven's Quilt, for a flight.

Before attending the regatta, we’d never been up in a hot air balloon and we’re surprised to discover how similar it is to scuba diving. Okay, you’re not wet or breathing bottled oxygen (hopefully), but the changing buoyancy and slow pace gives us a very similar relaxed feeling (thanks for taking us up Bill and Chris). As pilot Cheryl’s t-shirt says: “It’s cheaper than therapy.”

A few of the 50 balloons in flight with the Glen Canyon Dam and Lake Powell in the background.

Hot air ballooning—like most specialized, slightly fringe, certainly expensive and possibly dangerous activities—tends to attract fascinating fun loving people (remember: interesting people do interesting things). Everyone we meet during the three day Page/Lake Powell Hot Air Balloon Regatta (hi Bill, Mike, Chris, Travis, Hank, Deb, Frank, Trina, Lee, Jan, Sarah, Bryan, Cheryl, Sean and Gary) is a unique character with great stories, great generosity and a great desire to have a great time with other great people. We’re told that a few jerks sneak into the ranks every once in a while, but they don’t last long.

Pilot Chris at the helm of Heaven's Quilt.

With so many fun-loving people gathered in one place, it’s no surprise that once the early morning flights are done, the tailgating begins. And by tailgating we mean full on hot breakfasts of scrambled eggs and ham and unbelievably delicious ginger pancakes cooked fresh on huge grills and served in cut glass dishes (thanks Deb!). Seriously. Did we mention the homemade bloody mary’s, deep fried turkeys, Jell-O shots and kegs of beer?

The Ladybug and a halloween jack-o-latern balloon were the most interesting shapes at the regatta.

These folks don’t fool around when it comes to flying (okay, not much) and they’re certainly serious about having a good time. The whole post-flight scene reminds us of the impromptu gatherings and good times we always have when we go to music festivals and that makes us happy.

A heliopter ride gives us an aerial view of the balloons glowing on Page's main street.

Balloons line up and glow on the ground along Page's main street.

During this visit to Page we don’t have a houseboat to retire to each night, but we do have our trusty Safari SE tucked snugly into site A3 in the Wahweap RV Park which has perfect lake views (book a site in the low numbers on the A loop for best positioning), which we take full advantage of during sunrise and sunset when everything—rocks, sky, water—turns pink.

Our Airstream with a million dollar view of Lake Powell from the Wahweap RV Park.

Located right at the lake in the midst of the protected recreation area, the RV park is also home to rabbits, road runners and coyotes and, in keeping with its natural surroundings, all the buildings have been designed in colors and shapes that marry well with the sandstone terrain. The main office and store is also equipped with solar panels which help power the place. The RV park is noteworthy for a bunch of more basic reasons as well, including super clean facilities, the cheapest and best RV park laundry room we’ve come across yet ($1 washer s and .50 dryers) and a free shuttle to and from Page. All for $43!

Boondocking in The Alabama Hills, in the shadow of Mount Whitney (right)!

We’ve all been there. That perfect backcountry spot—away from everyone and everything—where you can park your Airstream in peace and quiet with all the comforts of home, but without the need for a hookup or a city water connection or an RV park or neighbors.

Since we got our Safari SE back in June we’ve done plenty of boondocking (the Black Rock Desert, Bonneville Salt Flats, etc), however, The Alabama Hills outside LonePine, California, offers something unique.

The Alabama Hills lie just above Lone Pine, CA and are in the shadow of Mount Whitney, the highest point in the lower 48 (not visible in photo).

Yes, there’s peace and quiet and solitude and privacy and the right price (free) and amazing scenery including rounded red rocks and arches that make us think of Utah, not California. You even get peek-a-boo views of the cloud-shrouded jagged peak of Mt. Whitney towering above.

Karen (and Grady) lounging in front of our panorama windows with The Alabama Hills outside.

But on top of all that, The Alabama Hills, administered by the BLM, also offers Gene Autry and Randolph Scott—or at least their ghosts. That’s because this small area was used as the set for hundreds of Westerns including The Lone Ranger, How the West was Won, Rawhide and Gunga Din and we arrive just as the annual Lone Pine Film Festival is beginning.

The Alabama Hills have been used as a western/desert/mountain location for hundreds of films dating back to the early days of Hollywood. Here a photo shows a location from The Lone Ranger.

Every year during the festival, organizers go out into the Alabama Hills and place temporary placards in front of various locations, showing specific rocks and gulleys as they appeared in a famous movie still. We’re not even big Western fans, but we’re fascinated right along with the busloads of festival goers who are wandering around in the wind. What they made of our Safari parked beyond the fray is anyone’s guess. Maybe they thought it was a movie star’s trailer…

Mount Whitney towers over The Alabama Hills.

It’s been a long time since we’ve eaten anywhere outside our Airstream—something that’s made us richer and healthier. However, who can pass up a gas-station eatery that gets rave reviews from gourmands? Not us. So, just outside Yosemite National Park near Lee Vining, CA we pull into a Mobil station and belly up to the Whoa Nellie Deli where white-capped chefs have replaced microwave burritos with gourmet meals including fish tacos and elk steaks. The place is packed, but the $13-$27 price tags are a bit too rich for our blood (even though everything looks and smells like it’s worth every penny), so we drive above the service station to a lookout point over Mono Lake and make a sandwich in our Airstream.

We’re not here to eat, anyway, since this section of the Eastern Sierra Nevada range is full of things to see and do. First, we head down to Mono Lake Tufa State Natural Reserve, the incredible inland salt lake (it’s 2.5 times saltier than the ocean) that for years had been shrinking as an alarming series of previous lake level markers illustrates. The Tufa formations, big knobby spires of calcium carbonate (basically, big piles of Alka Seltzer) deposited at various intervals where the shoreline used to lap are so strange they look manmade.

Tufa formations in Mono Lake.

Our next stop is Bodie State Historic Park, an incredibly intact former gold mining town. Still-furnished homes, stores with fully-stocked shelves and vintage automobiles parked on the street make it feel as if the residents just up and walked away one day—which is essentially what happened.

The eerily-intact ghost town of Bodie.

Still nursing stiff legs and sore muscles from our recent hike up Half Dome in Yosemite National Park, we make time to soak out the kinks at the Travertine Hot Springs near Bridgeport. The natural spring is located down a dirt road (if we told you any more we’d have to kill you) and locals have done a fantastic job of creating a welcoming, comfortable, clean and free outdoor soaking pool without intruding on the beautiful natural setting. Whether it’s the water or the views of the Sierras, our muscles feel much better after an hour or so of soaking.

Sixty foot tall columnar basalt formations at Devil's Postpile National Monument

This part of the Sierras is also home to Devil’s Postpile National Monument. It’s doesn’t quite deliver a stunning monolith like Devil’s Tower National Monument, which we camped at back in July of 2006 in the very beginning of our Trans-Americas Journey, but the short steep trail to the top of the 60 foot tall columnar basalt pillar formation affords a unique view of these hexagonal pillars which, from above, interlock perfectly like parquet flooring. It’s gorgeous and mysterious but not at all devilish.

The top of the Devil's Postpile formation looks like parquet flooring.

Like many small parks and preserved areas we’ve visited, the US Forest Service run Ancient Bristlecone Pine Forest in the Inyo National Forest seems to be bypassed by far too many people. The forest here boasts large groves of beautifully twisted bristlecone pine trees that grow slow, strong and long—more than 4,000 years. The single oldest known living thing on earth, the 4,700 plus year old Methuselah tree, can be reached via a four mile trail right from the visitor center which, sadly, just burned down.

The Patrirch Tree is the largest of its kind in the Ancient Bristlecone Pine Forest.

You can also drive 12 miles beyond the visitor center out a dirt road to reach the Patriarch Grove where young bristlecones (a mere 1,000-2,000 years old) flourish at 11,000 feet in the shadow of White Mountain. The landscape is strangely lunar and the twisted, tortured, slow-growing trees look more like wind-swept sculptures than something living. However, the rocky, arid soil here is dotted with tiny up and coming bristlecone seedlings which we hope will ensure a future for these odd trees.

Karen walking among the ancient bristlecone pines in The Patriarch Grove.

A dead bristlecone pine. Some of these dead tress have been dated back 7,000 years.

Before hiking up Half Dome we drive up to Glacier Point for an overview of the pain to come.

We’ve been to Yosemite National Park plenty of times over the years, but somehow we’ve never hiked up iconic, valley-dominating Half Dome. When Karen’s sister says she wants to do the hike as well, the deal is sealed and we steer our Airstream straight for the park’s Upper Pines Campground near Curry Village, where we somehow manage to get a weekend campsite reservation and backcountry permits to climb Half Dome even on short notice. The three of us spend a cozy night carbo-loading, binging on Karen’s sister’s famous pre-hike brownies, sitting out the rain and hoping the weather improves before we have to hit the trail.

Karen and her sister take a break about 3/4 of the way up to Little Yosemite Valley with Nevada Falls in the background.

We decide to do the 16 mile round trip hike from Yosemite Valley to the top of 8,836 foot Half Dome in two hard-hiking days instead of one insane day by camping for one night in Little Yosemite Valley just below the dome. This means we’ve got to dust off our tent, which hasn’t seen much action since we got our Safari SE, and pack up our Mountainsmith backpacks which end up weighing about 40 pounds each.

Karen's hefty Mountainsmith backpack.

Luckily, it’s barely drizzling as we head out and we credit Karen’s sister’s Magic Poncho (a yellow monstrosity purchased hastily at the Curry Village Gift Shop when it looked like the rain was here to stay) for the improvement in the weather. For about four hours we head up a section of the John Muir Trail which climbs steadily and steeply before reaching the top of Nevada Falls, then onto the Little Yosemite Valley backcountry campground where we are relieved to discover that we still remember how to pitch a tent!

It’s damp and cold, but a group campfire and some tasty freeze-dried Mountain House camp food warm us up before we climb into our sleeping bags with one ear cocked for the aggressive female bear that the ranger warned us likes to roam the campground in search of improperly stored food.

To reach the summit of Half Dome you have to climb up a nearly vertical rock slope using these cables. Note the ant-sized people clinging to mountain.

The next morning is clear and sunny and we get fantastic views from the trail during the hike up to the base of the final climb to the top of Half Dome itself. The last 400 feet of the ascent require walking up a nearly vertical granite rock face using massive steel cables to help pull ourselves up—and to keep us from falling off. It’s not for the squeamish and a few hikers seem to be re-considering their need to get to the top.

These cables assist in climbing to the top of Half Dome over this 45 to 60 degree rockface that feels pretty vertical when you're on it.

We, however, haven’t climbed 5,000 feet up from the valley floor just to turn back at the summit so we head for the cables. When we reach the expansive top of Half Dome we’re happy to discover that all of our feet feel great thanks to our new point6 socks. The same can’t be said for our pecs and triceps, however, as this is one of a precious few hikes we can think of that works the upper body as well as the lower body thanks to all that hauling up the cables.

Eric on a ledge on top of Half Dome with Yosemite Valley over 4,000 feet below.

Then it’s back down Half Dome and back to our campsite in Little Yosemite Valley where we quickly break down camp, don our packs (why do they never seem any lighter even after you’ve devoured most of the food that was originally packed into them?) and continue another three hours very steeply down the brutal granite terrain of the Mist Trail.

Some sections of the so-called trail remind us of ancient Roman roads and the uneven, sole-beating conditions prove, yet again, that going downhill can sometimes be even harder than going uphill.

Then we get lost. Well, not really lost but poor signage at a cross roads sends us up the wrong trail for half a mile before we realize our mistake. This unplanned detour eats up precious time with sunset fast approaching on a trail that shouldn’t be navigated in the dark if you can help it. So, despite our fatigue, we hustle, spurred on by visions of the hot shower, homemade dinner and comfy beds we know are waiting for us back in our trusty Airstream. 

Our Safari SE with Half Dome in the bakground.

Our only Yosemite regret? We spot the 1928 Graeme Page car driven by Candelaria and Herman Zapp, two Argentinean road trip adventurers we’ve come to admire after reading their book Spark Your Dream. If you guys are reading this: hola!

We’re just going to say it: the giant redwoods are much more breathtaking and accessible in Sequoia National Park than they are Yosemite National Park, its much more well-known neighbor.

Yes, Mariposa Grove is lovely in Yosemite. However, the walk to General Sherman tree (the largest known tree in the world at almost 275 feet tall and more than 100 feet around) and on to the Congress Trail takes you past stands of massive trees with names like The Senate and The House, one after the other. The redwoods are so thick here that even though it’s raining as we walk, we stay reasonably dry just by moving from dry patch to dry patch under the umbrella-like cover of the dense forest. In fact, this Giant Grove area of the park is home to five of the top 10 biggest known sequoias in the world.

The General Sherman Tree is the largest in the world, as evidenced by a very tiny Karen in front of it.

You can even drive through a redwood in Sequoia National Park and even in our big truck we manage to squeeze through Tunnel Log (sadly, the Airstream is too big).

Our truck barely made it through the Tunnel Tree, buy there was no way the Airstream was making it.

For a different perspective on the park, we climb to the top of Moro Rock via a steep quarter mile staircase that ascends more than 300 feet up to the top of the granite monolith for views out over the western half of Sequoia National Park and the Great Western Divide which divides the watersheds of the Kaweah River to the west and the Kern River to the east.

As if that weren’t enough, we see five bears during a single day in Sequoia National Park, including a mother and cub which is something we’ve only seen once before. Not to mention the fact that Sequoia National Park has one of the best NP signs ever.

The outstanding entrance sign at Sequoia National Park.

Not that we’re ever going to stop going to Yosemite. In fact, we’re headed there next!

.

Does the B in BF Goodrich stand for Badass? Because that’s how our truck looks with our brand new BF Goodrich All-Terrain T/A KO tires. We now feel like we can make it through no matter how bad the roads get in Central and South America during the next legs of our Trans-Americas Journey and we’ve got a ton more confidence on anything that’s rocky, mucky or slippery even with our Airstream in tow.

Faithful readers of this blog may recall a particularly embarrassing post a few weeks ago about a silly mistake that resulted in a pretty big hole in the window of our Safari SE. Well, hole no more! Thanks to the team at Airstream (thanks Jim) and the team at Sky River RV in Paso Robles, California (thanks Jana) we now have a new rock guard panel in place. It’s already a bit muddy, but that’s the way it should be.

At Sky River RV we also get the chance to walk through their huge inventory of Airstreams. They even have a SkyDeck—the big motor home/party mobile with the roof deck that has bench seats and umbrellas and everything—which we’ve never even seen before. It’s always so fun to see what’s inside other silver packages because it always makes us appreciate the smartest things about our model and covet smart things we see in other models. Anyone else completely in love with the Safari 23’ FB layout by the way??????

But it’s not all business. Paso Robles is a fantastic wine growing and wine making region and while we’re in town we discover a new label to love and confirm our love for an old favorite.

First, the newbie (to us, anyway): The Tolo Cellars tasting room is in a wonderfully restored 1880s farmhouse with exposed beams and the original (and working) old gas stove in the kitchen. Jennifer pours us tastes of their wonderful wines, descriptions of which are both clever and clear. For example, Tolo’s 2001 Asini is described as “Slap your well-hewn leather with a licorice rope! Bear with us: This wine evokes hints of licorice drops on a plate of rich cherry and blood red rose petals.” We describe it as delicious.

Even better? As we talk and sip it’s revealed that Jennifer lived and traveled in an Airstream full time for a few years. Cheers to that!

Our long-standing and all-time favorite winery in Paso Robles, however, remains Fratelli Perata Winery, where Carol and Gene and team farm 31 acres of vines and produce loudmouthed, personality filled wines (we have prized bottle of their Tre Sorelle red blend with us right now). Full disclosure: Karen’s dad helps bottle, top barrels, organize the wine library, build owl houses and do whatever else needs doing round the winery, but the wine was great even before he started pitching in!

Sadly, we are in Paso a few weeks too late for Fratelli Perata’s annual dinner for its growing number of devoted wine club members—an event that features food, food and more food all served with free flowing and perfectly paired Fratelli Perata wines. Have we made you thirsty? Good. But you’ll have to visit the winery or join the wine club to quench that thirst since it’s practically impossible to find a bottle of Fratelli Perata any other way.

It's a long way up to the Pinnacles up on the far ridge.

While in Paso we also carve out time for a visit to nearby Pinnacles National Monument which has some fantastic rock formations (hence the name) and a population of almost 20 endangered California condors. A ranger helps us spot three of the huge and, honestly, fairly ugly and menacing scavengers (picture a vulture, then double its size) perched in a tree on the hillside above the ranger station (click here to watch the birds in action via the park’s Condor Cam).

The odd rock formations called the Pinnacles.

Anxious to see some more of these huge birds, we head out on the five and a half mile Condor Valley/High Peaks Loop trail. It’s a blazing hot day and we literally drag ourselves up the first section to the highest point on the route which delivers us into the pinnacles themselves. Many of the smooth spires are used by rock climbers but the only climbing we do is on the trail as it negotiates its way over enormous rocks via a series of steep and narrow stairs which pass under low rock overhangs and up inclines so steep that the park put in hand rails (thanks for that, by the way).

Karen climbs along a stretch of very narrow trail that hugs the rock.

It’s a unique trail through even more unique terrain (there’s even a short tunnel through a huge rock), but we don’t see a single condor! If you’re in the area on November 1, however, you’re guaranteed to see condors. That’s the day Pinnacles National Monument officials will be letting the public observe the release of seven condor chicks—not as rare an event as it used to be but still something worth seeing for yourself.

Almost every time we check into a campground we’re asked the same question: how many children and how many pets? Which got us thinking….about getting a dog!

His name is Grady. He doesn’t bark. He doesn’t shed. He doesn’t drool (or have any other unpleasant bodily functions). He just sits quietly and adorably on the arm of the lounge in our Safari (which he’s color coordinated to match) and relaxes on our Astroturf front lawn right next to the flamingos which he never, ever chases.

Grady also loves to ride in the truck (which dog doesn’t?) and play in the great outdoors, so he’s the perfect pet for us.

Did we mention that Grady is stuffed?

Grady hanging out in the Airstream.

Grady trying to keep cool in the Black Rock Desert.

Grady enjoying Lake Shasta.

Grady visiting Canyonlands National Park.

It seems like we’ve got about a thousand modifications to make to our truck as we prepare to cross the border into Mexico this November and then begin the Central and South American legs of our Trans-Americas Journey.

We just knocked that number all the way down to 999, however, with the installation of a brand new hand-crafted Nicktane fuel filter installed by Ken Imler Diesel, the kind of legendary diesel engine guru that people drive for miles (we did) to visit so they can have their trucks worked on in his shop in Sacramento.

What our Nicktane filter does, essentially, is super-filter our fuel to ensure that any water or other gunk in it doesn’t reach the engine where it could do real damage. Don’t freak out. Dangerous fuel is not such a concern here in the US, but it’s something that could really derail us in Central and South America where dirty fuel is often the norm.

Now we’re heading slowly but sure to the border confident that our truck can deal with any fuel we throw at it. Whether we get through the 999 other things on our list is less assured…

Having our Nicktane Fuel Filter installed at Ken Imler Diesel in Sacramento.

We admit that we feel compelled to travel south down the Oregon coast in a bit of a hurry since we’re on our way to visit Karen’s parents in California, but that doesn’t mean we let much escape us. Here, a must-do list (from north to south) even if you’ve only got a few days to get from Astoria, Oregon to Eureka, California.

1.  Eat at Mo’s

It’s not even lunchtime yet, but we stop at Mo’s Seafood in Cannon Beach and get a cup of their “World Famous Clam Chowder” to share on the beach as we look out at Haystack Rock (which is a rock and is, pretty much, shaped like a haystack). It must be said, however, that we are skeptical (of the chowder, not the rock). How can a world-class chowder hail from anywhere but the east coast? Still, we figure if it’s good enough for Bobby Kennedy, who allegedly hauled gallons of the stuff onto his plane after a campaign stop here, it’s good enough for us. It’s also good enough for you. This chowder is awesome—not too thick (it’s made with milk, not cream), full of clams (not potato filler) and simply delicious. Cheap too at $4.95 for a very shareable bowl.

Haystack Rock.

2.  Sip a microbrew on the beach

We stop in Pacific City, Oregon anxious for a look at the famous fleet of Dory boats, a unique flat-bottomed contraption that’s brought ashore by launching it out of the water and landing high up onto the sand. Dramatic, to say the least. Sadly, there’s not a Dory boat to be seen when we arrive at the water’s edge. We do see a likely looking brewpub called the Pelican Pub & Brewery and drown our disappointment in a couple of very fine pints. As we sip, it occurs to us that this is the first brewpub we’ve ever been to (and there have been many, folks) that’s actually on a beach. It’s a nice combination that should happen more often.

Cape Blanco Lighthouse.

3.  Buy a lighthouse

Lighthouses can all start to blend together after a while: desolate wind-swept location, steep, narrow, windy stairs, white paint, big bright light. But the Cape Blanco Lighthouse north of Florence, Oregon stands out for a couple of reasons. First of all, it appears to be pretty much run by a bunch of passionate and knowledgeable volunteers who give a darn good tour. Second, most of the tour takes place right in the lens room about a foot away from the actual original Fresnel lens and it’s very cool to see a working lens so close. Then there’s the view which is jaw dropping, even among lighthouses which tend to have pretty spectacular views, that being a big part of their job. Anyway, we can only imagine how cool it must be in the lighthouse during the annual whale migration. While we’re wondering that, our tour guide explains that the Bureau of Land Management is planning to relinquish responsibility for running the lighthouses and Cape Blanco Lighthouse will soon be put up for sale for a song. Anyone can buy it, and turn it into a house or a B&B or a restaurant or whatever as long as you continue to maintain and operate the light since sailors of all sorts still rely on lighthouses, even in this age of the GPS. As our guide points out, technology needs to be recalibrated. Lighthouses don’t move.

The Fresnel lens at the Cape Blanco Lighthouse.

4.  KOA in the woods

As advertised, the Bandon/Port Orford KOA, a President’s Award winner in 2007, is incredibly wooded—so wooded, in fact, that it almost feels like pulling into a state or national park campground (okay, except for the laundry room and the hot tub…) We park our Airstream in cozy site D7 and even though there are other RVs on either side of us we’re insulated with a buffer of such thick trees that we never see or hear our neighbors.

5.  Help the California State Park System

We weren’t planning to spend much time in Jedediah Smith Redwood State Park since, by all accounts, the forest of old growth redwoods is too thick for many trails so there’s not much here but a campground and a drive through the trees which we figured we’d get enough of in Redwood National and State Parks further south. But we pull into the campground just to see what it’s like—and we never leave. The sites are literally in the middle of groves of coastal redwoods and the site we choose, site #3, provides a snug curved pull through with giants on both sides that seem to hug our Airstream. We simply can’t resist. Plus, it feels good to pump a bit of cash into the struggling California State Park System which has been the target of shut-down threats from Governor Schwarzenegger as he looks to close parks as a way to overcome a state budget shortfall. Our $20 camping fee covers entry into ANY state park in the region for 24 hours, so it’s a bargain to boot. But it’s the chance to literally camp beneath the redwoods that clinches the deal.

Our campsite among the Redwoods in Jedediah Smith Redwood State Park.

6. Gawk at The Redwoods

We know it’s not grammatically correct, but we feel compelled to call them The Redwoods as a kind of ode to the stature and impact of these most impressive trees. Anything that grows to be nearly 400 feet tall and more than 2,000 years old deserves a little nod, don’t you think? Before packing up our Airstream after a lovely night in site #3 in the Jedediah Smith Redwood State Park campground, we drive the Howland Hill Scenic Drive. We are disappointed that we have to leave the Airstream behind, but this five mile gravel road is too narrow and curvy for trailers of any kind and there truly are a couple of narrow S-bends that would have been an alarmingly tight squeeze with the Airstream in tow. It’s an awesome drive with The Redwoods so close you feel like you could roll down the window and reach out and touch them. However, unless you have an enormous sun roof, driving through The Redwoods always feels like half a perspective since you can really only appreciate the base and lower trunk. To get the full effect, we return to the campground and walk across a footbridge over the Smith River (the only major river in the state that hasn’t been dammed) and wander along the one mile long Stout Grove loop trail. Here we get the full effect of The Redwoods as we crane our necks and try to see the tippy top of the massive old growth giants all around us.

Barely enough room to drive the truck between The Redwoods.

In our pre-Airstream life (i.e., back when we had a permanent address before giving up our Manhattan apartment and putting everything in storage), we were Netflix addicts. We loved the movie selection, the cost-effectiveness and the convenience of home delivery in those signature red envelopes.

Once we got over our amazement at the fact that our Safari SE has a DVD player (??!?!?), we began looking for a viable replacement for Netflix that would work for us out on the road full time. We recently found the answer in another high-tech movie delivery system that uses a lot of red.

Redbox is a company that has installed bright red kiosks inside thousands of big chains (Albertson’s, McDonalds, Wal-Mart, etc). Find a Redbox, peruse their movie catalog, make a choice and the machine spits out your DVD—all for just one dollar per night. Key for us, shameless nomads that we are, is the fact that you can return your movie to any Redbox kiosk so you don’t have to stay in the same place to successfully return your movie. Even better? The company is constantly offering codes for free movie rentals. Okay, maybe that sounds a bit like an ad–but go to their site and sign up for these offers and soon you’ll be watching free movies like we are!

Okay. So Mount Rainier in Washington state isn’t actually called that because it’s “rainier” than most (English explorer George Vancouver named Mount Rainier after his friend, Rear Admiral Peter Rainier). But the Mount Rainier region does get an extraordinary amount of rain (about four feet a year). Then there are the years when things go just plain nuts.

Record rainfall in November of 2006 to the tune of 18 inches in 36 hours foiled our first attempt to visit Mount Rainier National Park since the catastrophic flooding closed roads, ruined trails, wiped out campgrounds and diverted entire rivers. The park is actually still repairing damage done by that monster storm, which becomes apparent when we head out of our prime site in the White River Campground (more on that later) and head out on the Glacier Basin Trail.

A flyer tacked up at the trail head warns that the first mile of the 3.5 mile (one way) route was washed away and dramatically re-diverted by flood waters caused by the November, 2006 storm. A new makeshift scramble through this devastated section has been identified by rangers and marked with yellow caution tape and walking through the area gives us a good look at the destructive power of so much water. The landscape only enforces our belief that water always wins.

Entering Mount Rainier National Park on a foggy evening.

Drizzle and cloud cover persist as we reach Glacier Basin itself. A five site primitive campground here is a favorite base camp for climbers summiting Mount Rainier, which remains hidden behind thick clouds the whole time we are up there—tantalizingly close, yet invisible.

We have no trouble at all seeing the most rambunctious marmot we’ve ever encountered. Unlike its usually-lazy brethren, this one is up and at ‘em, scurrying across the gorgeous meadow like a cat, nibbling grass and flowers from one end of the small lake to the other and scampering up the nearby hillside emitting its trademark squeak as it goes—like a noisy child’s toy that had been wound up too tight.

We descend in the same drizzle and begin to think we might have better luck getting a good look at the mountain if we stopped calling it Rainier and started calling it by its Indian name: Mount Tacoma. The rain has stopped by the time we return to our Safari happily at home in the best campsite in White River Campground and, perhaps, the whole park.

The best campsite in the park and maybe the best one in the entire park system.

Site D29 is a pull through literally right on the banks of the White River. That’s great enough. However, this site also offers an in-your-face view of Mount Rainier just upstream. If the clouds would just scram we can see it from the window in the bedroom of our Safari.

It’s so idyllic that we decide to stay for another night and the next morning we are rewarded with bright, clear and sunny skies and our first clear shot of the mountain. Airstream insulated coffee mugs in hand, we drive the 10 miles from the campground to Sunset Point for even better views (and shots) of Mount Rainier. By 7:30 am the clouds are already rolling back in, but after two attempts and two years of waiting, we finally get our hour with the mountain and we can now leave the park satisfied.

Worth the wait: on our second morning in the park Mount Rainier is finally crystal clear.

After a quick run up to Mt. Baker in the lovely Cascade Mountains of Northern Washington (made quicker by peak-obscuring clouds and a persistent drizzle), we steer toward North Cascades National Park, an amalgamation of four autonomously run areas with so many interesting trails we actually turn to a ranger for advice about the best all-around hike in the area.

His pick is the 7.5 mile Maple Pass Loop which is just outside park boundaries. Built by the Forest Service and originally intended as part of the Pacific Crest Trail, the loop begins in dense rain forest and heads up to the cut off to Lake Ann where we stick to the spur that continues steadily up the hillside, giving us an Osprey’s perspective on the fishermen dotting Lake Ann’s shores below us in stealthy pursuit of the steelhead trout she’s stocked. 

Karen heading down the Maple Pass Loop trail just outside North Cascades National Park.

As we switch-back our way up to Maple Pass—which is really more of a saddle than a pass— the terrain becomes steep, rocky and barren. We continue past Maple Pass along the ridge to an adjacent, much higher pass point and head back down the valley next to the one we just hiked up. This steep trail takes us above and then past jade-colored Rainy Lake and across hillsides dotted with huge patches of red, white, purple and yellow wild flowers which are still in high bloom since summer came so late this year. It’s a lot of color for nearly 7,000 feet.

Wildflowers on the Maple Pass Loop trail.

Once we finish the hike we begin to consider where we should spend the night and remember that other Airstreamers have consistently advised us to seek out President‘s Award winning KOAs whenever possible. Sure enough, the KOA in nearby Winthrop has snagged the award for many years running.

To get there, we leave the forest and head to lower ground. As much as we love mountains, emerging from the steep slopes and lofty peaks into a roomy valley always feels like that first, satisfying morning stretch and entering the Methow Valley is even more satisfying. If there were beauty contests for valleys, this one would be wearing a crown and a sash right now: wide, green, (benefitting, as it does, from rain generated by its mountain neighbors) and full of horses. It’s also got something we are not expecting: fantastic architecture.

The picture-perfect Methow Valley.

House after house impresses us with innovative design—half-submerged in the earth, angular roof tops, unexpected colors and materials. From small houses to obviously opulent vacation homes, each one shows signs of functional creativity. It’s hard to find just a simple box.

The valley delivers us into the small town of Winthrop which is an architectural marvel of a different kind. A strict architectural code was imposed years ago, dictating that all storefronts be designed in an Old West style so everything kind of looks like the set of “Gunsmoke.” Somehow, the town has managed to adhere to the rules without committing the cheese ball, theme-park crimes that other Wild West places like Deadwood, South Dakota are so guilty of (we’re pretty sure the unchecked proliferation of tacky casinos, crappy buffets and fake whorehouses has Deadhorse’s most famous residents, Calamity Jane, Wild Bill Hickok and Wyatt Earp, spinning in their graves).

Downtown Winthrop, WA in all its Old West finery.

It’s fitting that the Winthrop/North Cascades National Park KOA is also a sight for sore eyes. Grass everywhere! Big trees! Roomy sites! Helpful staff! We’re sorry we can only stay one night.

Our Safari SE on its very first ferry ride.

The 30 minute ride goes smoothly, of course, and that’s a good thing since Toby’s Tavern in Coupeville, not far from the ferry terminal, has some Penn Cove mussels with our names on them. We were at Toby’s a couple of years ago in search of the area’s world-famous mussels, but the day we stopped by a strange marine bloom meant that fishermen had temporarily stopped going out for the delicious shellfish.

The whole point of today’s ferry ride is to try again. This time we call ahead to confirm that the mussels are available and when the steaming hot bowl arrives at our table it quickly becomes clear that they are worth the repeat visit. They are small, taut, sweet, creamy and not at all sandy. In other words, perfect.

Confession time: extremes are irresistible to us. Put “st” on the end of it—highest/deepest/longest/widest/oldest/whateverest—and we’re there. Needless to say, the chance to get to the westernmost point in the lower 48 is too much for us to resist, so we head out to Cape Alava.

The seven mile (round trip) trail is a lovely rolling meander through coastal rain forest, almost entirely on a cedar wood boardwalk, sections of which are warped and twisted by the perpetual damp into gorgeous wavy shapes that make it feel like walking on a mini-rollercoaster.

Karen on a stretch of boardwalk that takes us to the westernmost point in the lower 48.

When we reach the cape itself we’re whacked in the face by some of the most pungent-smelling seaweed we’ve ever encountered. It’s low tide and the beach is strewn with the stuff, more than a foot deep in places.

The Rocky Beach at Cape Alava, the westernmost point in the lower 48.

Just off the coast, very vocal sea lions are sunning themselves on massive boulders that ring an imposing rocky monolith that you used to be able to camp on. A juvenile bald eagle throws itself off a massive tree on the inland edge of the sand and circles above us before landing (clumsily) again. Then a man approaches and tells us that an even more impressive animal can be seen further down the neighboring beach—a dead grey whale (the largest mammal on earth!).

After slogging through stinky seaweed for more than a mile we still see no sign of a huge dead whale on (something that you’d think would be pretty obvious), but a ranger assures us that it’s still further along “but probably pretty rank by now since it’s been dead for three or four weeks.” We are undeterred and, sure enough, we stumble upon a nearly flesh-free vertebra the size of a spare tire. Then another vertebrae. Then a rib. Then the entire whale—or what’s left of it.

A whale vertabrae.

Beaten by the surf, ravaged by time and the elements and picked at by countless animals, the poor creature looks more like a truck-sized mound of pink lard than one of the noblest, most mysterious beasts on the planet. What it smells like defies description. As long as we stay upwind it’s bearable but the day has still been the stinkiest ever.

What’s left of a beached grey whale after four weeks on the sand.

No, not the recent Phelps-fest in China (go Michael!). We’re talking about the Olympic Peninsula and Olympic National Park in Washington where it’s (surprise! surprise!) raining—which at least makes sense in a rain forest.

Entering the temperate rain forests of Olympic National Park.

The hiking trails through the rain forest are all so tempting that we make like a local and just gear up and head out despite the rain. Part of the pull of the trails around Lake Quinault, where we’re based, is a series of much-hyped “Largest Trees in the World” that we are determined to check out.

Call us skeptics, but whenever we see the phrase “in the world” we smell hyperbole. So it is with one eyebrow raised that we head for the “Largest Sitka Spruce in the World.” She’s big—55’ 7” around and 191’ tall. Then it’s off to the “Largest Douglas Fir in the World,” which clocks in at 40’ around and 302’ tall according to the National Forestry Association which tracks such things.

This 191 foot giant dwarfs Karen, but is it really the Largest Sitka Spruce in the World? .

The Lake Quinault area boasts four other largest trees in the world (a yellow cedar, a Western hemlock and a red cedar), but we’ve had enough. The thing is, to get to these anointed ones you walk past dozens if not hundreds of other biggies and it feels so unfair to celebrate just a chosen few.

One evening the rain lets up so we drive the scenic loop road around Lake Quinault in search of a secluded and scenic spot for a picnic dinner. After pausing to let a herd of Roosevelt elk meander across the road and gawk at us curiously, we find a tree-ringed turnout on the edge of the water and settle in for a tailgate supper of hamburgers and grilled corn. It looks and feels so much like bear country that we half expect a dinner guest.

Speaking of food, the next morning we order sweet potato pancakes for breakfast at the Lake Quinault Lodge at the urging of our Lonely Planet Northwest Washington and Oregon guidebook which gushes that the restaurant at the lodge has the best food in the area—especially the pancakes. And it’s no lie. They are sweet, but not too sweet. Hearty, but not dense. And the hazelnut butter served with them makes syrup completely unnecessary. They’re so good, we order them again the next morning.

The view of Lake Quinault from the dining room of Lake Quinault Lodge.

As delicious as it is, it feels weird and shockingly expensive to eat breakfast in a restaurant. Since we got into the Airstream we’ve been on a pretty strict diet of home cooked meals which means we’re healthier (weirdly, there’s no hazelnut butter in our fridge). It also means we’re richer—we’ve saved a ton of money on food simply by ditching restaurants in favor of our totally useable kitchen (though the oven remains a virgin). Plus we can eat what we want when we want it.

All that cooking does mean a return to supermarkets (why isn’t there a Trader Joe’s in every town?) and we’ve got a regular schedule of dirty dishes to deal with, but wild salmon with lemon basmati rice and sautéed spinach at a fraction of what it would cost in a restaurant makes icky chain supermarkets and dishpan hands worth it.

One of the unique things about Olympic National Park is that it includes world class rain forest right beside world class beaches—though some of them have not such world class names. However, we are assured that the unimaginatively-named Beach 4 has fantastic tidal pools so we head there to check them out. Sadly, we arrive at high tide and all the pools are well under water. We do spot dolphins in the distance and wander the rugged tree strewn beach before moving on up the coast.

Karen scans the horizon for dolphins on Beach 4.

Well, we just did and it involves reverse, a large piece of metal and a window.

The details are too mundane to bore you with here. Suffice to say, a particularly tricky back-in site got us into a jack-knifed position and while we were studiously watching the bumper to make sure it didn’t smack into our Airstream (as we’d been told to do be ware of), the top corner of the cargo box installed in the bed of our truck hit one of the protective panels in front of our panorama windows. Crunch. Smash. Big hole. Luckily the window itself is unscathed, but the same cannot be said for our pride.

As we leave the Portland, Oregon area it starts to rain (the first precip we’ve seen in months), forcing us to change our plans on the fly (not the first time, and not the last) and re-route to the coast—where gray, drizzly weather can be called “moody”—instead of toward Mt. Rainier where the clouds and storms will just make things gloomy and totally obscure any views or shots of the mountains.

So it’s off to Bay Center just off the Washington coast. Just a couple of miles from our destination, we make another brief detour into the parking lot of a local seafood market in South Bend, WA right on Willapa Bay which is peppered with signs declaring the place “The Oyster Capitol of the World.”

Willapa Bay, Washington, Oyster Capital of the World???

The woman who serves us at the seafood market tells us that one in five oysters eaten around the world comes from Willapa Bay and assures us that the salty delicacies are currently very good, even though August is a month that does not end in “r.”

We walk out of the seafood market with two dozen oysters ($10.50) and the fervent hope that we can find the shucking knife we’ve got squirreled away “somewhere” in the truck or in the Airstream. The only bad thing about so much storage space in our Safari is that sometimes we forget where we put seldom used items, like an oyster shucking knife! Luckily, we find the necessary tool quickly and easily (it was in the Rubbermaid tub marked “pantry” in the bottom half of the lock box in the back of our truck, if you must know), and Eric gets down to the messy business of lunch on the picnic table by our site in the Bay Center KOA.

Schucking oysters while trying to keep all 10 fingers attached.

The shellfish (and the Airstream) attracts the folks in the site next to ours. They’re shellfish fans too and have been successfully digging for clams every evening on the beach down a short path through the rainforest from the campground. By the time we clean up the oyster mess the rain returns so we retreat into the Airstream.

It’s our first real storm in the Safari and, man, rain is loud on an Airstream roof—but so much less distressing than a night of leak maintenance in a tent!

…we could totally live in Portland, Oregon.

It’s gorgeous, outdoorsy, full of great culture and live music and even has fantastic coffee which we enjoy at Stumptown Coffee Roasters adjacent to the lobby of the ultra-hip (in a good way) Ace Hotel (thanks for the tip, Miss J).

The place also has the best farmer’s market we’ve ever seen—it’s like having a meal just walking through it. The bounty almost makes us sorry we’re staying in the Hotel Deluxe, a Golden Age of Hollywood (think Kate Hepburn, not Kate Hudson) inspired luxury boutique hotel, instead of in our Airstream where we could go nuts and (over) stock the kitchen.

We can’t resist the peaches (juice down to your elbow) and a great crusty loaf of fresh baked bread and we turn those purchases into a light breakfast for the next few days—and we require a light breakfast with all the great food we’re indulging in the rest of the day.

So many compelling new restaurants have opened in Portland this summer (on top of all the great ones that already flourish in this foodie town) and we can now personally vouch for newcomers DOC (24 seats of inventive Italian bliss), belly (pleasingly heavy on the pig) and a place called 50 Plates that offers up regional favorites from across the country (Cincinnati Style Chili, Buffalo Tamale Pie, Hot Brown from Louisville to name a few). 50 Plates even has an absolutely delicious cocktail called The Road Trip and we may have had more than one of them…

Portland's Classical Chinese Gardens is a suprising oasis right in downtown.

We’re also lucky to be in town during a visit by our friend Justin who’s from Portland and we meet up with him one night to go see the Robert Walter Trio featuring Johnny Vidacovich, one of our favorite drummers, for a show at Doug Fir. In addition to a very comfortable little music venue, the Doug Fir runs an adjacent motel with a retro look but thoroughly modern attitude including a tremendously forward-thinking policy of discounted rates for check-ins after midnight.

While in town, we also get hooked up with access to the Columbia Sportswear employee store where we stock up smartly, exercising Herculean self-control in the face of shockingly good prices on gear from one of our favorite brands (thanks Leslie and Janis).

Not even an unusual heat wave, which makes Portland feel every bit as sticky and sweltering as August in Manhattan (our home town, if we must have one), can cool our enthusiasm for the place.

But none of our Portland fun would have been possible without Mike Rogers, Oregon Unit President of the Wally Byam Club 5452 who responded to our anxious post on Air Forums asking if anyone had any suggestions about a safe place to leave our Safari for a few nights while we ventured into Portland. Within minutes of posting, Mike had offered us the covered concrete Airstream pad at his home just a few miles outside the city. He’d be taking his Airstream (a 25’ Safari with a gorgeous wooden table the wood shop teacher made himself), out for a week of family fun leaving the pad available to us. We honestly can’t thank him enough.

On top of everything else, Mike teaches us an Airstream Secret: you can add a switch to your Fantastic Fans that lets one suck air into your Airstream while the other blows air out, creating more powerful cooling and venting. Genius. (Please don’t keep any secrets like that to yourselves! Hit the comments button and share what you know!)

Entering Mount St. Helens National Volcanic Monument with the volcanic mountain itself in the background.

When we (reluctantly) leave Portland, we head for Mount St. Helens Volcanic Memorial. We’ve seen pictures of the place, both before and after the catastrophic eruption of May 1980, but nothing prepares us for the reality. A dramatic, sound effects-filled film shown in the Johnston Ridge Observatory Visitor Center (just 6 miles from the crater) informs us that smoke and gas from the eruption shot 80,000 feet into the air within 15 minutes and debris, including huge rocks, that spewed out of the crater created a massive landslide that traveled at 70-150 miles an hour and had enough force to twist and snap giant trees for more than 10 miles in its path.

View of Mount St. Helens from nearby Johnston Ridge with trees that were snapped liked matchsticks from when the mountain exploded in 1980.

Yeah, it feels like not-the-smartest-thing-we’ve-ever-done to be standing there gawking at the still-active volcano’s base

Apparently Washington’s Cascade Mountains, and particularly the Mount St. Helens area, have a long history of Bigfoot sightings –but we’re pretty sure this one, right outside Mount St. Helens National Volcanic Monument, doesn't count.

We’re not sure how or why it’s taken us this long to spend a night in a KOA, but it has. However, that’s about to change. After a night in the Tumalo State Park just outside Bend, Oregon—where we add to our swiftly expanding Brewpub Coaster Collection with some new additions from the local Deschutes Brewery Brew Pub—we head to the Sisters/Bend KOA .

The place is in the final stages of what looks like some pretty big renovations and most improvements, except final landscaping (the grass isn’t in yet, as they tell us when we make our reservation, but there are plenty of nice big trees), seem to be done. It also has a small and basic putt-putt golf course ($2) and a pool, though the hot tub was closed. Its best assets are a little lake with some sites around it and one of cheapest ($1 per washer) and fastest (super hot dryers) laundry rooms we’ve ever used—a good thing since we’d really let the dirty clothes pile up. We also love that we can see the Three Sisters Mountains in the not-so-distant distance right from our campsite.

The Three Sisters behind someone’s creative meadow art.

Lee at the front desk is very helpful and full of recommendations of hikes and waterfalls and hot springs to check out. She also tipped us off to the fact that the road we’d planned to take over the McKenzie Pass was closed as forestry crews tried to get a beetle infestation under control.

Koosah Falls.

The nearby town of Sisters, while all-in-all a bit too cute for us, is home to the Sno-Cap, an Oregon homemade ice cream institution and the place we stop at 10 am on our way out of town for a cup of blackberry ice cream goodness. Hey, it’s got fruit and milk just like breakfast, right?

A highlight of the Newberry National Volcanic Monument, near Bend, is The Big Obsidian Flow trail which passes through enormous and beautiful chunks of jet black obsidian.

Paulina Lake in the Newberry National Volcanic Monument.

The Columbia River Gorge.

Waterfalls, rainforests, rivers and world class water sport winds. Well, three out of four anyway. We arrive in the Columbia River Gorge on a perfectly still day—not even a breeze—and it stays that way for our entire visit (it’s so calm that we go ahead and put our awning up), much to the frustration of people who’ve flocked to the area in order to get out on the water in the area’s famous winds.

642 foot high Multnomah Falls is just one of many dramatic waterfalls in the Columbia River Gorge.

One of those people is Timo who’s in the only other Airstream in the Memaloose State Park campground so, naturally, we get to talking. We are delighted to learn that, like us, Timo gave up his apartment and is living and working full time in his new Airstream which allows him to be in a lovely state part conducting business while waiting for the wind to pick up so he can go kite boarding.

Bridal Veil Falls.

The closest we get to the water is on trails past some of the area’s many waterfalls, which works up a thirst which we successfully quench at the Full Sail Brewery in charming, outdoorsy Hood River (the northwest really knows how to create livable interesting cities).

It is here, over a couple of cold ones, that we decide to start a coaster collection (i.e., we steal a few and put them in our pocket). We figure brewpub coasters are small, light, portable, useful and evocative. Plus we’re in American microbrew central so it ought to be easy to really get the collection going.

Tell us what you collect along the way.

The trail to Horsetail Falls takes you behind the falls itself.

Just inland from the Gorge is 11,240 foot Mt. Hood, where plenty of people were skiing on the mountain’s perma-glaciers even on this hot August day. We made lunch and opened the Airstream door for lunch with a view.

We’ve mentioned our love of music before and we make it a priority to get to as many music festivals as we can (everything from the High Sierra Music Festival to Christmas Jam to Mountain Jam to Jazz Fest for five years straight). So, we were intrigued (to say the least) when we heard of an annual music festival in Oregon that’s totally private and by invitation only.

With a cap of 650 guests, the Black Sheep Family Reunion, as it’s called, is the only entirely word-of-mouth festival we know of. It’s such a tightly kept insider event that otherwise plugged in people we know who live in nearby Eugene and Portland have never even heard of it.

We would have had no chance of getting in if not for the fact that our friend Mike Dillon was playing at the festival in two bands: Critters Buggin’ and Mike Dillon’s Go-Go Jungle, so he was able to get us in.

As the word “Family” right in the festival name would imply, this little gathering is super-friendly even to newcomers like us. The folks checking guest list names couldn’t have been more welcoming and almost immediately we make friends with Greg (a glassblower) and his wife Shannon (who owns a small regional chain of adorable baby clothing stores called Bambini), who are our neighbors in the RV parking area. The Airstream helps break the ice too and we host a pretty regular cavalcade of the curious who want to look inside our Safari SE.

Nice folks aside, the Go-Go Jungle late night show proves to be epic thanks to an awesome outdoor stage made largely from huge tree trunks, a fantastic sound system and full-tilt performances for the record books featuring of apple fritters, wicked free styling and, yes, onstage nudity. The fun didn’t wrap up until well past sunrise.

The biggest bubbles we've ever seen were being blown around the campfire.

Since we are unrepentant music hogs, we decide to follow the band to Zigzag (a real town name, we swear, and you have to drive through Boring to get there) to catch the Go-Go Jungle show at the Skyway Bar & Grill the following night. The Skyway is a funky cool roadhouse style bar/restaurant/music venue and the chef, Jason, used to roadie for one of Mike’s previous bands so it’s a little like seeing a show in a friend’s really cool rec room. Even better for us, the owners let us park for the night on the side of a quiet and wooded access road right behind the joint. No one can say no to the Airstream!

Yep, there really is a town named Boring.

We’ve been spending a lot of time in the mountains lately and the hills combined with mid-summer temperatures have added up to some big hot climbs. For the first time, now that we are towing the Airstream, our transmission temperature has begun to spike up as high as 250 degrees which is hotter than we’d like to see, so we switched to Amsoil synthetic transmission fluid which should keep the transmission temperature in check. While we were upgrading we decided to switch to Amsoil synthetic motor oil as well, which should allow us to extend our oil change interval up to 25,000 miles. If anyone’s got any other tips for keeping a hard-working transmission cool and happy, post them as a comment!

Compromising position? No, Eric is just busy changing the transmission fluid and oil.

We’re sure we’re not the first to notice the similarities between house boating and RVing. The thwump, thwump, thwump of the water pump. The incredibly efficient use of space. The need to tie even the paper towels down sometimes. The way the refrigerator snaps shut. The ability to go where and when you like (albeit very, very slowly on a houseboat).

Our first taste of house boating came on Lake Powell. We’d dreamed of getting out on Lake Powell for years and the experience did not disappoint thanks to some expert insider guidance from Steve Ward who grew up in the area as the Glen Canyon dam was being built and spent his childhood exploring the rivers and canyons of the area before everything was submerged.

His is a unique above and below the water expertise and his tips got us into a lovely mooring spot and into some gorgeous areas of the vast lake including a great canyon hike up West Canyon. Every arm of this lake seems to offer something new—unique rock formations or a different tint to the crystal clear water so deep (more than 400 feet in places) that it’s kind of freaky swimming in it. The lake even has Rainbow Bridge National Monument, the largest natural bridge in the world at 290 feet tall and 270 feet long, which we visited at 7 am one day and had the whole place to ourselves.

Huge Shasta Dam, the second largest dam in the US, created Lake Shasta.

With fond Lake Powell memories in our heads, we head out on Lake Shasta. It’s a very different lake and a very different boat—no flat screen TV, wine refrigerator or rooftop wet bar and hot tub like we were spoiled with on Lake Powell—but it does the trick. Sort of like how everyone can’t be lucky enough to RV in an Airstream but those SOBs (some other brands) get them where they’re going too.

One of the worst fire seasons in California history has left much of the state blanketed in smoke, including Lake Shasta. The Mars Hawaii, the largest flying tanker in the world with a wingspan of 200 feet, is stationed on the lake where it fills with water and flies out to help put out the fires.

Anyway, we benefit from a lake expert at Shasta too. Kevin Befford also has years of experience on the lake and his passion for it is contagious. He has personally created a network of more than 60 geocaching sites on and around the lake and knows the water and the shore like the back of his hand. Based on Kevin’s detailed recommendations, we head out toward the base of Shasta Dam for a humbling look up at the massive structure. Then we explore Pitt Arm, a canyon that was never logged before being flooded because World War II broke out and all the loggers joined up before they got to it. When lake water levels are low, like they are right now, the submerged forest in Pit Arm is really visible—and eerie.

It’s great terrain for bald eagles and ospreys, however, and we see a lot of both. Lake Shasta actually has about 20% of all nesting pairs of bald eagles in California, so spotting them is almost a given.

A bald eagle takes flight from the submerged forest in Pit Arm.

Then we head to Squaw Arm where we find a completely secluded beach to anchor on, just like Kevin said we would. Unlike Lake Powell, which has limited opportunities to get onto dry land because of the sheer rock walls of the canyons there, Lake Shasta has more rolling, forested banks with lots of hiking trails. Kevin told us about a trail out to an abandoned mine and mining town in the hills above the lake. With water levels so low (down more than 100 feet and dropping about a foot a day), trailheads have become hard or impossible to see or reach since they are now dozens of feet up the bank from where a boat can anchor.

Our beautiful anchorage up the Squaw Arm. The water level is about 110 feet below full (marked by the treeline) due to many years of drought, and dropping by almost a foot a day. The bare ground in the photo hasn’t been exposed for almost 30 years.

So instead of moving our houseboat and hoping to find the trailhead above us, we decide to bushwhack to the nearby mine site right from where our boat is anchored using our Garmin GPS to get us there. Off we head, across steep rocky hillsides and narrow cliff tops and through dense manzanita thickets along deer trails through the forest. Finally, sweaty and scraped, we reach a dirt road which we follow to the abandoned mine site.

After exploring the mine for a while, we decide to follow the road back instead of repeating our bushwhacking adventure (we’ve managed to avoid the poison oak so far and don’t want to push our luck) in the hope that the road might lead us toward where we left our houseboat.

It’s a lovely, shady, easy walk as the road winds its way around the hillside. In the elbow of a corner near a creek, both sides of the road are covered in blackberry bushes so laden with berries that the vines are practically bent to the ground. First we start filling our hands and our mouths with the delicious sweet fruit, but soon we chug the last of our water and begin filling our Nalgene bottles with berries.

As if we needed reminding that this is prime bear country and they love blackberries even more than we do, we see a huge pile of berry-filled bear scat on the side of the road right where we’re picking. Just to be on the safe side, we raise our voices to make it clear that we’re here (a startled bear is more likely to attack) and that’s about when we hear it—a sound like bowling ball slowly rolling through the underbrush. Then we feel a pair of eyes on us from across the creek on the bank to the far right of where we’re standing. It’s a California black bear watching us with a look on its face that practically accuses us of stealing his lunch. A couple of shouts of “hey bear!” and he turns tail and heads away from us back into the forest. And, yes, we do feel guilty for stealing his lunch but wild blackberries are not to be passed up.

Karen with a bowl of delicious wild blackberries.

Sure enough the road practically leads us right back to our houseboat door (we didn’t need to do all that bushwhacking after all) and the next morning we enjoy those blackberries for breakfast in the sun on the roof of our houseboat as flocks of migrating geese land and take off from the calm cove we’re anchored in.

If only Airstream made a Chitty-Chitty-Bang-Bang style amphibious edition……

We’ve been lucky enough to have spent time in dozens of National Parks since embarking on our Trans-Americas Journey in April of 2006, so we can say with some degree of expertise that all of them are amazing in their own unique ways—Yellowstone’s geothermal marvels, Denali’s wildlife, Wrangell St. Elisas’ summits. Then there are parks that offer a little bit of everything.

A golden-colored black bear in search of a snack along the road into Lassen Volcanic National Park.

Take Lassen Volcanic National Park for example. It’s got geothermals, wildlife and summits plus volcanoes (all four types) rolled into one diverse package and over three days of utterly perfect temperatures, we manage to see and do most of it from our base in the Summit Lake North campground.

Do not be fooled by the deceptively ambling trail that leads to the base of the long, steep slog up Cinder Cone.

As a warm up before tackling 10,457 foot Lassen Peak, we decide to climb Cinder Cone. During the drive to the trailhead we spot a honey colored black bear a few hundred feet off the road busy ripping apart dead tree trunks in search of a snack. The Cinder Cone trail starts off pleasantly enough (except for the disturbing new signs warning visitors about a recent river otter attach in the area), but becomes very steep and very exposed at the base of the Cinder Cone itself. To make matters tougher, the trail runs through deep black cinders, which makes it feel like we’re walking through sand as we inch our way up the side of the dormant cone (one step forward, two steps slid back).

As usual, the harder the walk the greater the reward at the top where Cinder Cone reveals a classic deep crater with a trail into it and a lovely trail around the rim.

The summit of Cinder Cone rewards hikers with an accessible inner crater and a trail around the rim.

Lassen Peak in a precious smoke-free moment.

The next morning it’s time for Lassen Peak. The trail is busy but not packed–we see maybe 40 other hikers—and, it must be said, it’s an easier walk than we’d anticipated (perhaps because Cinder Cone was so much tougher than we’d expected). At the top we find a couple of flat rocks and break out our gourmet picnic: bbq pork sandwiches on onion rolls, grilled corn on the cob and boiled then grilled red potatoes. Not bad for leftovers (thank you Airsteram refrigerator!).

As we eat, thousands of butterflies appear all of them flying around the peak in the same direction. It’s something we’ve never seen before and it makes us remember what it feels like when you’re scuba diving in a swirling school of barracuda—lucky and bewildered. What we have seen before are the swarms of chipmunks ruined by too many human handouts. The little beggars are shameless.

The last section of the climb to 10,457 foot Lassen Peak.

On the way down a doe and two frisky fawns cross the trail just a few feet behind us before scampering off (mom in pursuit of the two energetic wanderers) into a small meadow.

The next and final morning in the park we reserved for the Bumpass Hell trail where we learn that there really was a Mr. Bumpass (we presume he pronounced it Bum Pass) who used to guide visitors among the area’s sprawling fumaroles and boiling pots until he broke through the crust one day and burned his leg so badly they had to cut it off. Hence, the “Hell” part of the trail name.

Before we even reach the geothermal area we hear the action—a kind of airport runway jet engine roar and hiss that seems to be coming from all directions at once. After a few minutes of dumbly searching the sky trying to spot the planes making all that racket we finally figure it out.

Bumpass Hell.

Within Bumpass Hell itself are an array of steam vents and patches of bright yellow sulphur and boiling pools of colorful water and putty-colored mud every bit as impressive as what can be seen at Yellowstone (minus the bison and the elk, of course).

See you out there!

Karen & Eric

Trans-Americas Journey

www.trans-americas.com

One of the things we love about having an Airstream with us as we explore North, Central and South America on our Trans-Americas Journey is the flexibility it gives us. If we see something we want to check out, all we have to do is flip on the turn signal secure in the knowledge that home is just a hitch away.

So despite the fact that Lassen Volcanic National Park is the goal we set out for at 8 am, by early afternoon we are pulling into the McArthur Burney Falls Memorial State Park to see what this little park has going for it.

Turns out, quite a bit including a lovely sprawling campground with tent sites and charming cabins that almost give our Airstream a run for the money. Then there’s the falls which are impressively tall, refreshingly cool and unique in that natural springs actually emerge along waterfall wall, creating a kind of curtain of water.

The beginning of the Rogue River Canyon.

Beautiful formations, still growing in the Oregon Caves National Monument, one of many spontaneous stops along our way.

A stalagtite meets a stalagmite to form a floor to ceiling column in Oregon Caves National Monument.

Impressive 129 foot McArthur Burney Falls which charmed us into staying for the night.

See you out there!

Karen & Eric

Trans-Americas Journey

www.trans-americas.com

Entering Crater Lake National Park

Some things can be right in front of you but they don’t become obvious until you get even closer. Things like Crater Lake National Park, for example. The words “crater” and “lake” are right in the name of this park and if you think about it that’s pretty dramatic in and of itself. But when we arrive at the park’s Rim Village and look down into said lake, the full uniqueness of the place finally hits us.

The deep color of Crater Lake is caused by the depth and clarity of the water and may be the ultimate definition of blue.

First of all, it’s waaaaaay down there—inside the crater. Then there’s the color, a blue so blue that it defines the color every lake should be. It’s so blue that it seems like if you scooped up a mouthful of the water it would actually taste blue. There aren’t many opportunities to scoop up any water from Crater Lake, however, as 99% of the park happens way up on the rim of the crater. The one way to get to the lake itself entails a one mile walk down a wide dusty path, descending 700 feet to the water’s edge. Yep. It’s just as blue from down there and so clear we can see features dozens of feet down. You can go scuba diving in the lake, which is the seventh deepest in the world, but at just 50 to 60 degrees even in summer we decide to be satisfied with our shore and rim views.

Crater Lake is the nation’s sixth national park and we make the most of our three days in it with as many hikes as we can cram in. Even in July snow still has some of the trails closed and the Rim Drive itself only opened a few days before we arrive, but we are able to hike to the top of 9,000 foot Mount Scott where we should be rewarded with awesome views all around. Sadly, the state of California is blanketed in smoke from hundreds of still-raging wildfires and the stuff is so dense we don’t take a single picture. The next morning, however, we peek out of our Airstream with fingers crossed and the sky does actually look slightly clearer so we quickly hoof back up Mount Scott a second time and get some shots.

We know it’s sacrilege to many, but because ours is a working road trip we pretty much always need internet access and we really do wish the park system would just install routers in campgrounds across the board (hey, if you’re on a non-working road trip just don’t log on). After much painstaking searching nearly every nook and cranny of Crater Lake National Park, we finally find a turnout along the Rim Drive where we get a Verizon signal and a couple of times each day we park there and call it our office for an hour or so before returning to the trails or heading back to the Airstream to relax. It sure beats any corner office we’ve ever had.

After some diligent searching we find the one place on the Rim Drive where we get a decent enough signal to check emails and do some work – pretty sweet office!

Phantom Ship, a rock outcropping in Crater Lake.

Karen & Eric

Trans-Americas Journey

www.trans-americas.com

It’s an adventure just getting to Nevada’s Black Rock Desert http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Rock_Desert. First, you pass through the incongruous and charming hamlet of Gerlach (don’t blink), then there’s Guru Road just out of town on your left. Jutting off the main paved road, this dirt spur has become, over the years, a kind of impromptu sculpture and philosophy garden. The road is lined with boulders, stones and rock slabs chiseled with random bits of life advice and odes to beloved locals. Occasionally along the mile plus route there are larger pieces of more complex sculpture, like an abstract Elvis crafted from stacked rocks and adorned with a cape made by linking together hundreds of beer can bottoms—it bears an uncanny likeness.

The sign that greets you outside the lone store in Empire, a town just shy of Nevada’s remote Black Rock Desert, says it all.

One of our favorite sections of Guru Road is an area devoted to the Iron Butt Association http://www.ironbutt.com/about/about.cfm , a group of apparently insane long distance endurance motorcycle riders who do things like ride a motorcycle 11,000 miles in 11 days and ride from Canada to Mexico (or vice versa) within 36 hours. Yeah, our kind of people!

As we’re walking along the road we are tickled by a persistent playful wind that keeps making us feel like there’s someone behind us even though there’s no one in sight. The utterly dry but surprisingly refreshing wind persists as we travel on to the Black Rock Desert itself which (are you sitting down?) isn’t black at all! A close inspection reveals a sprinkling of small black pebbles on top of the powder-fine taupe dust but the overall effect is a desert that looks (and feels) like the spongy pale top of a par-baked biscuit.

The dusty, artsy turn off for Guru Road, on our way to the Black Rock Desert off in the distance.

It’s gorgeous here, but there’s not a lot to do so after exploring the desert around us we get down to work. Eric just got a new computer from Dell http://www.dell.com/content/products/category.aspx/notebooks?c=us&l=en&s=dhs&cs=19 (Eric has an XPS and Karen uses an ATG) which needs to be set up and Karen always has something she’s supposed to be writing (including this blog post), so right in the remote Black Rock Desert we end up with both computers going, thanks to our generator, in one of the most scenic offices we’ve ever worked in.

No need to worry if your site is a pull-through or not here in the Black Rock Desert where room to turn around is never an issue.

Every time we begin to think we’re totally alone out here, we hear the rumble and see the dust of another vehicle approaching in the distance—usually going around 100 mph. Once we’re even buzzed by a low-flying plane (we think the pilot just wanted a closer look at our Airstream). Still, it’s hard to imagine this place packed with the 30,000+ folks who gather here every year over Labor Day for the annual Burning Man Festival http://www.burningman.com/.

Forget cubicles! Hard at work on our hardcore Dell laptops in our impromptu desert office.

Sunset turns us into long, happy shadows after another great day of camping on the Black Rock Desert.

We go to a lot of music festivals and have always camped at them, so we knew that having an Airstream for our fourth time at the annual High Sierra Music Festival http://www.highsierramusic.com/ would be an upgrade—we just don’t quite realize how much of an upgrade until we get to our site and start setting up all of our toys.

Leaving Reno, the biggest little city in the world, in the biggest little travel trailer in the world.

First, we put up the awning (without breaking it this time) and roll out our green astro-turf lawn before planting a pair of plastic pink flamingos (thanks Doug!). Then we set up our comfy camp chairs, outdoor speakers (so we can listen to the radio simulcast of the festival right from our camp), two fully stocked coolers and our trusty Coleman grill.

The only thing missing? Guests! When we last had a home, so many months ago, we loved to have our friends over for dinner or just to hang out and we’re really looking forward to entertaining Airstream-style at the festival where some of our much-missed friends are in attendance.

They show up soon enough and that’s when the Airstream really becomes hospitality central. In between catching some fantastic bands as varied as Critters Buggin’ http://www.crittersbuggin.com/, Govt.’ Mule http://www.mule.net/ and Dumpstaphunk http://www.dumpstaphunk.com/ at one of the easiest, most enjoyable festivals around, we all naturally reconvene at the Airstream to spend time grilling up pork loin dinners , whipping up bowls of homemade guacamole and sitting in the shade catching up with people we haven’t seen in many months. It is heaven.

Even without a water hook up, careful (but not brutal) rationing gets us through four days of cooking and hosting with water to spare and everyone who pokes around inside the Airstream is amazed at what it can do. We even have our first overnight houseguest, our dear friend and awesome guitarist (he plays in RANA http://www.rana.com/, American Babies http://www.americanbabies.net , Bustle in Your Hedgerow http://www.myspace.com/bustle and Chris Harford’s Band of Changes http://www.chrisharford.com/ as well as other groups), Scott Metzger http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewprofile&friendID=203941833 who was at the festival performing in not one but two bands.

One particularly lazy afternoon we actually watch a DVD with the air conditioning on, but don’t tell anyone. Yeah, the Airstream performed like a rock star.

Welcome to our High Sierra Music Festival castle!

Don’t get us wrong. We’ve pitched a tent in plenty of places from the Himalayas to Baja. But when we arrive at the famed Bonneville Salt Flats http://www.utah.com/playgrounds/bonneville_salt.htm we practically kiss our Airstream.

You wouldn’t dare pitch a tent on this sea of salt, but our Airstream is right at home on the Bonneville Salt Flats.

A sea of white salt that hosts world-famous land speed trials (go rent The Fastest Indian), the flats are open to overnighters free of charge with only one catch: you literally have to set up camp on the salt, something that simply wouldn’t be possible in a tent. Us? We just tow our Safari out onto the flats until we feel sufficiently in the middle of nowhere, put it in park and call it home. Flexibility like that is one of our favorite thing about having the Airstream. So far.

The flexibility to call places like the Bonneville Salt Flats home is one of the best things about our Airstream. So far.

Surrounded by white, it looks like we’re on snow (though the 100 degree heat reminds us otherwise) and the damp, sticky salt even kicks up off the tires like snow leaving splatters of the stuff everywhere. The place is totally silent and totally black and white: white for the salt and black for the color of the surrounding hills. However, as darkness falls, we’re startled by a popping noise breaking the silence and when we look out the window we see fireworks shooting off above nearby Wendover—just one more surreal sight in a totally surreal place.

Exploring the vast whiteness of the Bonneville Salt Flats.

The chunk of land where New Mexico and Utah rub up against each other has to have the highest concentration of national parks, monuments and natural sites of any area of the country and the best way to get around to all of them is, obviously, with your home in tow. We begin our beautiful places buffet with a drive through El Malpais National Monument http://www.nps.gov/elma/ near Grants, NM as a fast moving summer storm throws lightning bolts around the darkening sky.

Window Rock, the capital of the Navajo Nation, and a monument to the Navajo Code Talkers.

It’s suitably moody weather for a place whose name literally means badlands in Spanish. That’s because much of the land here is not land at all, but twisted inhospitable hunks of lava. It often looks like we’re driving past a massive parking lot that’s had its asphalt chewed up by one of those hulking re-paving machines.

From El Malpais we head for El Moro National Monument http://www.nps.gov/elmo/ near Ramah, NM, a tiny park that’s biggest claim to fame is a series of inscriptions left by explorers who’ve stopped at the water source here since the 1500s. There are many breathtakingly elegant signatures and messages (some of the handwriting beats what we can do with a pen and paper), sadly, some park visitors think they can do better and during our visit a ranger discovers fresh graffiti reads “Alex + Bree = BFF” hacked into a stone wall that (Alex and Bree, if you’re reading this, so not cool).

Classic Utah scenery—perhaps that’s why both Lonely Planet and Rough Guide chose this exact shot (sans Airstream) for the covers of their recent Southwest guide books.

In addition to the inscriptions, the park also offers a lovely mile long walk to the top of a stony mesa and through the remains of an ancient Indian settlement. The views (and the silence) from up there are amazing.

Next? Utah’s Monument Valley http://www.utah.com/monumentvalley/, an area we’ve visited many times. We arrive near sunset and find the campground moved to make way for a nearly-completed new hotel. The new camping area is even better, however, as it sits almost directly under Monument Valley’s famous “Mittens” formations and we are able to park our Airstream in plain unobstructed view of the massive rocks.

Monument Valley’s famous “Mittens” formation looming just beyond our campsite.

The following morning we drive to Arches National Park http://www.nps.gov/arch/ near Moab, Utah where the temperature is nearing 100. After a few (very brief) hikes that were much more enjoyable in the cool fall weather the last time we visited the park, we carry on to nearby Canyonlands National Park http://www.nps.gov/cany/, which brings our park count to five in just three days. Not bad.

Balanced rock at Arches National Park.

We’ve dreamed about staying in the Willow Campground in Canyonlands since our last visit years ago. Like so many park campgrounds, the 10 sites at Willow fill on a first-come, first-served basis so we make a beeline for it with fingers crossed that there’s still a space for us. Not only do we get a space, but our site has a shady tree!

The Airstream in yet another scenic pullout in Arches National Park.

With our lovely new home secured, we unhitch and drive our truck to a few trailheads to explore the park on foot. As we move around from lot to lot, we begin to realize how many non-RVers park their tiny vehicles in spots clearly meant for oversize rigs. In many lots in Canyonlands we would not have been able to park at all with the Airstream in tow because of inconsiderate drivers like that. We’re thinking about printing up “friendly reminder” cards to leave on offending windshields but if anybody has a better solution for addressing this problem, log on to www.trans-americas.com and shoot us an email!

Landscape Arch in Arches National park is the longest natural rock span in the world, opening is 306 feet wide.

Sunset in Canyonlands National Park.

We’ve always wanted to see Chaco Culture National Historic Park http://www.nps.gov/chcu/, and we’re not about to let a bit of rough road stop us (actually, you have to drive 13 miles of dusty, bumpy washboard to get to the park, but who’s counting?).
Chaco does not disappoint, delivering some of the best preserved and most accessible ruins of ancient Indian dwellings that we’ve ever seen. Trails literally lead you through intricately constructed stone buildings (large rough rocks inside the thick walls for strength and insulation, delicate artfully stacked stones on the outside of the walls for aesthetics) and many seem almost ready to move back into.
Near the end of the day we move into the park’s Gallo Campground in a site that butts hard up against a huge mesa that has more ruins tucked under delicate natural overhangs. Some backyard! Since the days are nice and long and the scenery can’t be beat we decide that Gallo makes a great place to take some beauty shots of our new Safari and so we begin setting up our “front yard” with views of the natural backyard behind us.

In our excitement, we make a classic freshman mistake and assemble our awning incorrectly, jamming both arms into their housings. We push and pull for hours (probably just making the problem worse) until we give up and lash the awning down as best we can with bungee cords, resigned to our fate: a return trip back to Albuquerque to visit our new best friends at Holiday Travel Trailers http://www.holidaytraveltrailers.com/ to get the thing fixed.
Trying to look on the bright side of this unplanned 270 mile roundtrip backtrack, we remind ourselves that going back to Albuquerque also means that we can visit the Trader Joe’s there one more time for more of our favorite provisions (don’t miss the Veggie & Flaxseed Tortilla Chips).