First Officer’s Entry:
The captain
made an interesting observation today.
She said, “America is on the move!”
She was
observing all the campers and RV’s on the highways. Once she said that I started really observing
and realized, “Yeah, there’s a bunch of us!”
The RV/Camper
spectrum is wide and varied. Everything
from Mom and Pop and the kiddles in an SUV with a cargo pod on top, to
tear-drops, to pop-ups, to little trailers, to big trailers, to toy haulers, to
5th wheelers, to Class C’s, to Class B’s, to the gasser Class A’s,
and on to the monster diesel pusher class A’s.
The biggest difference in the rigs is the number of occupants. It seems the smaller the rig the more campers
(eg: Mom and Pop and the Kiddles) and
the larger the rig the more likely it will only house the retired Gran-Moms and
Pop-Pops.
In addition
to being wide and varied, the RV/Camper spectrum is very ecumenical. For the most part RV parks put folks wherever
they can fit. True that the big rigs
need 50 amp electrical along with water and electric, and the smaller rigs are
happy with 30 amp service, and the little rigs need only 120 ac/20amps, but
usually all of these voltages are on the power pedestals anyway, so other
than the length of the rig vs. the length of the spot, all rigs are treated
equally.
The
cross-spectrum interaction continues into the camp sites. Once you are out of the rig and walking
around no one knows what your camping “status” is. So social interaction is simply a matter of
how social you want to be. Surprisingly
I am (usually) more social than the captain.
Yeah, mean old, grumpy, pessimistic me.
I don’t know what happens, but get me out in the RV camp environment and
I turn into Johnny Glad Hander. It’s a
mystery!
OK. Now let’s go back to grumpy me. Today I re-learned that important life lesson
that one should NEVER fully trust the sweet tones of the woman in the GPS who
my brother loving refers to as the BIB.
(B**** in the box.) I first learned
this lesson way back in I don’t remember when, when the BIB took us into the
heart of Philadelphia City (the Tioga District) rather than to the town of Tioga,
Pennsylvania.
Today, when
we were about 70 miles from Quincy, she tried to take us a hundred miles into
California and up and down some dirt roads.
Fortunately I had really remembered the last part of this trip’s route,
and I stopped at a rest area and examined what she was trying to do. For some reason she was fixated on phantom
“RV Length Restrictions” that she swore were on the way to Quincy at distances
that ranged from four-tenths of a mile to 520 miles ahead of us. We tried putting in false way-points in order
to trick her into letting us use the direct route, but to no avail. So we went back 30 years in technology and
used a PAPER MAP!
Let me tell
you that was a very trying experience!
Imagine Cheryl reading the map and giving me directions and me not
believing what she was saying. Too much
of that could seriously damage a marriage. But everything
worked out OK, and we are safely in Quincy, all set up in our 60-foot, pull-thru
with 230 volts, 50 amps, water, sewer, and cable TV, roughing it in the style to
which we have become accustomed. Life is
good.
Just FYI,
here’s a link to some really cute “retro” campers.
End First
Officer’s Entry
Captain’s Entry:
It’s
wonderfully cool and breezy here at the excellent Pioneer Campground. We’re
camped under a big old cottonwood tree where we’ve spread our outdoor carpet
and set up our comfy chairs next to the picnic table. I guess I won’t be flying
home with the Lindbergh’s after all.
Our campground is close enough to the fairgrounds where most of the Norton Rally events will take place that we’ll walk a path through the sunny woods to get there. I really love being among all these old cottonwood trees and tall pines! It’s a different world up here. Both of us are enjoying a lazy afternoon and evening, knowing we won’t have to pull up stakes again until the 19th. It’s like breathing a big sigh and feeling as if we’re “home” at last.
I took a
look over some of our past blogs this afternoon, and I’m amazed at all the
travel we’ve done since we started out with our trailer in 2008. That year we
emailed our adventures to friends, so we have no record of that trip to the
Pennsylvania Norton Rally. In 2009 we began our “Trailer Spam” blog to cover
the Colorado Norton Rally. In 2010 it was Lumby, British Columbia and then the
Catskills in New York in 2011. That’s as far as I went, but I know we
changed the name of our blog to “Arrowstarship” in 2015 a ways into our first trip in
the Newmar coach when we suddenly realized, “We aren’t in the trailer anymore,
Toto.”
The ride
over here took us on some winding mountain roads, while gusty winds tried to
move us over a lane or two more than once. We passed a group of six or eight
wild horses on the far side of the river next to the highway and just beyond
saw a sign for California in a town called, what else, Bordertown. Soon
thereafter we pulled into the state inspection station and declared our ½
watermelon. The agent let us keep it, and Frank joked with her that we promised
to eat the rest of it today.
We kept our
promise . . .
End
Captain’s Entry
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