L&K Take America

Some of you might be thinking, “Wow…this trip seems to be going awfully smoothly, especially for Katie. She never has this kind of luck.” Funny, I was thinking the same thing until I hit a wall…literally. That’s right, I hit an actual wall, with the airstream. Best part of it, I didn’t even notice when I did it!! So now you’re probably thinking, “how bad could it be if you didn’t notice it?” Well, it can be preeetttttyyy (Dr. Carlow voice) bad…

I noticed it when I was parking the trailer at the hotel in Seattle. It took me like 20 minutes to back it into one of the teeny tiny parking spots in front of the hotel with about 500 little soccer players and their parents as my audience. So as I get out and I’m running around the camper to get it unhooked from the Jeep, I screech in my steps (imagine the “ERRRRRRRRRRRR” screeching sound of my sneakers and my unsteadiness from the inertia) as I notice a huge scrape down the side of the camper. “What the what!!???!!!” then my eyes widen as I follow the scrape back down the side and notice I’ve managed to tear off the spigot for the city water intake. CRAP! So what’s running through my head, because I didn’t realize how I had done it yet was “Did I do this on the highway and NOT notice?!?!” So of course I’m questioning my mental awareness and a million thoughts are going through my head: “Did I hit another car? A truck? A jersey barrier? An animal? A person???” Pretty much internally freaking out as I try to remain cool and collected in front of the crowds of small people and soccer moms. Uggh! Then I realize that there is stucco dust in the scrapes and my eyes go to the corner of the building. Holy moly…the spigot parts are on the ground!! I nonchalantly speed walk over and do the walk by swoop as I pick them up, race over to the camper to fumble to see if I can possibly jam it back in to fix it. No dice. Then my eyes follow the camper down and I realize I have also ripped off the black tank flush spigot! Are you kidding me?!??! That was my favorite feature of the awful task of emptying the black tank. The idea that the magic spigot cleansed that vile receptacle. Of course, that wasn’t all that I broke, I also cracked (and pretty much tore off) the cover for the electrical outlet. Oooohhh myyyyy!!!

Still, you’re wondering, “How they heck did you not notice this???” It happened when I was pulling into the hotel. The trailer makes quite a bit of noise when I turn, so I must have just thought it was normal ear piercing metal grinding noise, and I was paying attention to the height of the trailer and the portico entry thing, not the side and I must have just cut it too close.

So…I take a few moments to compose myself and stop the jerky body movements and start to think clearly. Ok…not ideal but, luckily nothing critical was broken. I could still fill the water tank and use water from the tank rather than having a constant flow. Not ideal, but not the end of the world. The black tank flush is a nice-to-have. The electrical outlet cover wasn’t completely broken off, so I’m thinking duct tape. Alright alright…this is ok. So I go about my day as you read in the previous post.

From Seattle, Jackie and I headed south towards Oregon. We were headed to Lincoln City, which is on the coast. I knew we wanted to take Highway 101 down the coast, so I asked a few people and they made it seem like I should have no problem spotting the highway. They gave me a few landmarks and off we went. After the aforementioned landmarks, we see the sign for highway 101. Excellent! Well, unfortunately, it was for North only. Crap! Around the same time, I saw a sign for an RV center. Woohoo!! Maybe I can get the parts to fix my oops. We stop in and a guy comes out to take a look at the damage. His response “Eeessshhh….that’s going to cost you A LOT to fix that panel. And our parts department isn’t open because it’s Sunday.” Gee…thanks buddy. Way to knock the wind out of my hopeful sails. He did tell us some additional landmarks to look for when looking for highway 101 south and off we went.

We finally made it to Highway 101 and it the coast and it was breathtaking! So worth the drive. We caught Highway 101 around Cannon Beach. We missed Astoria, but from talking to people, that may have saved us several hours of driving. We took Luna on the beach and she had a blast being a nut.

We stopped quite a bit to take photos and to have dinner. The views were amazing and well worth the drive. Highly recommend it.

Unfortunately, I broke that golden rule of never arriving to a campsite after dark. Of course, it was the first campsite for my first guest. Before Jackie arrived, I felt like I had it all together. I have been doing this for about three weeks on my own with only minor hiccups. I was feeling good and thought setting up at night wouldn’t be that big of a deal since I had set up so many times. So we pulled into the campsite and I was a little flustered because it was after 10pm, it had been a long day of driving and I was tired. I had called ahead to let them know that I would be a late check in, but two men met me at the door when I approached. “Ohhh…we have a late check in!” Then one of the men, a big burly guy  (picture Lenny from Of Mice in Men) in overalls looks at my rig and said “An Airstream, huh?” looking back at me, back at the rig, back at me. “You’re driving that??”

Me: “Yup”

Big Burly Guy: “You’re driving?”

Me: “Yup”

Big Burly Guy: “You need help?” looking at me very suspiciously.

Me: “Nah, I got it.” I may as well did the old, dust off my shoulders, overly confident move. I’m sure I had the “I’m soooo good at this” smirk on my face. He then proceeded to insult my vehicle, make a few other comments about how far I had driven, before walking away and going into another building and the older man who also met me at the door had me sign some paperwork. Off I trot to the Jeep, get in and proceed to start to back up so that I can maneuver. I was cutting the wheel and all of a sudden a huge POP, BANG, CLANG happens. Ut oh…what have a done now?!! The big burly guy comes rushing out of the building with another guy and the older guy comes out too. UGGH! How embarrassing. So I sheepishly pop my head around the corner and ask (not really wanting to know the answer), “Did I break it break it? Like really break it?” My whole body is visibly cringing through this whole episode. ALL of my confidence has been knocked out of me. I have jack knifed the trailer (first time) and one of the stabilizer bars has gone FLYING across the campground. I scurry over, pick it up (it’s pretty heavy) and fumble with it only to realize that I have to maneuver the Jeep to get it back in place. Of course they are all asking if I need help and I’m now really emphatic that I know what I’m doing. Luckily, no damage was done other than to my ego.

I finally get us parked, but now I have to set up. So I send Jackie off with Luna while I scurry around. It’s dark, there are weird men around and I get myself worked up into a tizzy as I am cranking down the stabilizer jacks. I’m bent over with my back to the wilderness and realize I’m in a pretty vulnerable position, especially after showing these guys what an overly confident fool I am. So I call for Jackie. No response. Great…my heart is racing as I dart the flashlight around looking for them, only to have it stop on a man creepily sitting in the dark in front of his camper, not moving. That’s it, I’m officially freaked. Then I hear Luna’s pitter patter and curtly ask Jackie to come over. When they get back to the trailer, Luna starts growling and a very large shadow moves in my peripheral. HOLY CRAP!! “Everyone in the trailer!” so we rush into the trailer. Once I have caught my breath I realize I really HAVE to do stuff out there. We have virtually no water in the tank, and you have to have water in the tank to run the pump, which I now have to do because I broke the city water spigot…WAY TO GO KATIE! It’s now seeming like a much bigger deal.

So Jackie comes out to be on watch as I rush around. I hook up the electric, finish putting down the stabilizer jacks, hook up the hose to start to fill the tank, turn it on and it’s spraying everywhere. Seriously, everywhere. I’m getting wet, the ground is getting flooded. It’s pretty much going everywhere but in the tank. I hadn’t bothered to attach the easy fill thing-a-ma-bob, and I was paying the price. So I regrouped, got the attachment and filled that sucker. As I’m waiting for it to fill, a man starts walking towards us down the hill and it looks as though he is carrying a dead wolf. I’m not kidding. In my mind, he was carrying a very large dead animal. What is this place?!?! Who are these weirdos?!? As he gets closer I realize it’s in fact not a dead animal, but feel the need to tell him “Wow, thought you were carrying a large dead animal.” At this point I just lose it. Uncontrollable laughter ensues. Better than crying, right?

We get into the trailer, turn on the water and I immediately remember why I hate using the tank. The pump sounds like someone is holding a jack hammer on the side of the trailer and rattling every pipe and screw in the thing. This happens EVERY time you turn water on. Then, even though I have just filled the tank and the system monitor said it was full, after we got ready for bed, it said it was empty. EEK!!! This usually takes me several days to go through. Something is not right, but I decide to deal with it in the morning.

The next morning, I call Dad. We walk through it, fill the tank again. I shower and it does the same thing. I refill it, Jackie showers. Same thing again. Something is definitely wrong and I have yet to figure it out. It doesn’t appear that water is leaking, so the assumption is that the sensor is faulty. Womp womp….

Luckily, Mike was able to find an airstream dealer not too far from where we are staying in California who had the parts to fix the city water inlet and has put them on hold. Until then, we have to deal with the jack hammering and faulty water sensor.

It’s been a rough couple of days, but as Dad put it, if I wasn’t going through this, I wouldn’t be learning so much about the camper. At the moment, I kinda think I would prefer to be ignorant, but that is not a choice I have. Here is to learning new things!

Oh and that creepy guy sitting in the chair last night? It was fake. Who puts a fake person in a chair at a campground?????

Lesson of the Day: Feeling confident? Check yo’self. There is definitely a wall or mannequin just waiting to shake that confidence. Never let your guard down.