Last Friday I pulled into the park and there was a 23 ft Airstream parked across from us. Hmmm, could it be Kyle? I knew he was making his way up through Oregon this week after visiting with Kevin and Laura, so I was thrilled that he stopped by to spend a few days with us at Tall Chief. We met Kyle last year at Alumapalooza (although mysteriously he’s missing from all 367 photos…) but we havent seen each other since, so this reunion was like seeing an old friend from back home. For those of you who might not know Kyle, he’s been on the road for 3 years in his International and his latest adventure is heading to Alaska for about a month before returning back to the States and joining us at Alumafandango in Denver in August. So what have we been doing all week? Well…

 Helicopter Flying

RC helicopters are fun and they don’t take up a lot of space. And you can freak out park neighbors and dogs.

There was also helicopter crashing.  My bad.

Shopping

REI. The Container Store. Ikea (Kyle wants these solar lights — take note gift givers). Target.

Computer Geek Stuff

There’s been a lot of talk this week about The Dish Network, Verizon, AT&T, antennae, boosters, satellites, RAM… I cant keep it all straight. Good news is we got an antenna that seems to work.

We ate a lot.

Chocolate covered biscotti (The Container Store took its toll).

Shopping at Ikea also took its toll.

Lying around in our Airstreams took its toll.

We also tried some new things like grilling grape leaves (Deke learned this at the Pike Place cooking school)…

and Smores with banana bread.

Baseball!

Sightseeing

By the end of the week, I think Lucy was confused… she kept going over to Kyle’s Airstream…

Kyle’s stopping for some repairs at the dealer this week and then he’s off to Alaska!

Where is Kyle now? He’s at our place. is a post from Weaselmouth - It's good to let go.

It’s not surprising to anyone out there that the standard mattresses that come with your Airstream (or any RV, really) is pretty crappy. Let me just say that after a year of sleeping on it, we could kick ourselves for not replacing it sooner.

The Good

I don’t know exactly when we realized the mattress would have to go, but I think it was sometime around Alumapalooza ’11. Kate and Al (of Mabel on the Move fame) have the same model as us, and I remember looking back into their bedroom and seeing this big, puffy bed and thinking — “Wow, that looks way more comfortable than ours.”

Like everything we do with large purchases (let’s face it, mattresses aren’t cheap) we researched and studied and tried out all the mattresses we thought might work (our 2nd choice was Keetsa — Brenda and CeCe have great things to say about theirs). We also needed to look at models that had some kind of mold and mildew resistant qualities, had very little (or no) off-gassing, and were easy on the carbon footprint. A lot to ask you may say, but we found all these things and more in one company: Soaring Heart Natural Bed Company.

You can see the mattress underneath the pillow top.

Soaring Heart has been building mattresses by hand in Seattle for 29 years with the philosophy that they aren’t just making beds, they’re creating a tool to make your life better (how many times have you woken up in a bad mood because you didn’t sleep well?). And they’re doing it with locally resourced wool (naturally flame resistant so you don’t need all the harsh chemicals) and organically grown cotton. Plus each product is made by hand in their local Seattle shop. Everything about this experience was great — from the showroom, to Jason and John who sat with us as we tried to draw diagrams for a custom mattress (which we scrapped when we decided just to rebuild the platform) to their website which is filled with a ton of information about their products and what goes into them.

The Bad

(which actually turned out to be The Not-So-Bad)

Deke’s 6’1″ and his feet hung off the end of the bed in the Airstream. If you’re spending 1/3 of your life in bed, you want to fit in your bed, so this was one of the first major problems to tackle. The Soaring Heart beds don’t need to have a regular box spring for support, but they do need some kind of support, so if we wanted a regular Queen (80×60 inches) we’d have to rebuild the bed platform to add support to the new mattress. If you know us, you know we’re not particularly handy, so before deciding to do this, I made sure I had the number of Chuck the Handyman here in Redmond, and one generous Airstreamers email address ready (Hi Kathy H!).

Rebuilding the Platform

The first problem we encountered was finding a piece of sturdy plywood large enough for the base of the new mattress. We had no idea this would be so hard, but Home Depot, Lowe’s and our local lumber place were no help. Turns out standard plywood size is 48″x48″which left us wondering if we could fit two pieces together and still have it be strong enough to hold the mattress when lifted if we bolted them together in the middle. This seemed too difficult, so I went to yelp.com and found Crosscut Hardwoods in Seattle. They have everything and they’ll cut it down to size for you!

Once we had the right plywood, we start taking apart the old platform and measuring where the hardware was, so we could transfer the measurements when it was time to screw the hardware back on to the new plywood.

This might be cheating, I don’t know, but since the new plywood was bigger than the old, we decided just to lay the old piece on top of the new, and using the old screw holes as a template, just drill through them to the new plywood. It’s probably not the preferred method of construction workers, but it worked fine.

Once the holes were drilled, we just reattached the hardware into the new holes and everything lined up perfectly!

As we learned from the Soaring Heart website, our new mattress needs air circulating around it. We should’ve done this sooner with the original mattress (we had a lot of mold on the old one) and I know people have found great ways to avoid the whole mold issue but we really didn’t want to screw up this new beautiful cloud of comfort, so we did what the guys at Soaring Heart suggested and screwed a series of 1″x3″ slats to the new platform at 3′ intervals.

Then we drilled little air holes into the plywood between the slats and placed a fan underneath for air. Hopefully this will work!

All done!

The Good: Part 2, The Mattress

We went with an Extra-Firm Organic Latex Mattress with a Deluxe Eco-Wool Topper and a Cotton Mattress Pad. We also go two Kapok pillows (from the website, Kapok is: a fluffy, silky fiber from the seed of the kapok tree (also called the ceiba tree), is incredibly light and airy, water-resistant, and 100% botanical). The wool topper is really soft and fluffy, so we felt the extra firmness of the mattress would be a good balance. Originally we were going to have the mattress delivered, but since it was ready on a weekend and we have the truck, we just decided to pick it up. Unfortunately, I dont have a photo of the mattress in the truck (I just forgot to take one), but it was folded in thirds and wrapped in plastic, so we just tossed it into the back. This is the topper in the back seat — I had no idea it would be this big:

Here’s the topper on top of the mattress:

In the end, it all fit perfectly and we’ve been sleeping so well for the last week. Besides the truck, this is probably the most expensive Airstream-related item we’ve purchased, but living in it fulltime, I think the cost will be worth it. Two other important things:

Deke fits.

And, even with extending the bed platform out to 80 inches, we still have plenty of room to walk around the bed.

The Ugly

Besides being really uncomfortable, the Airstream mattress is ugly in so many other ways. They’re foam with a Teflon treated cotton cover. They also claim to be waterproof and dust mite resistant, which they may be, however, I really don’t want to be smelling those chemicals every time I sleep. And ours got moldy on the bottom. Gross.

New Mattress for the Airstream!! is a post from Weaselmouth - It's good to let go.

I feel the need for a road trip to happen soon and realized I never finished posting from our big trip. My excuse is Im now one of the working…. a fulltime job really puts a damper on fun!

Finally Washington!

See it out there? Its Big. And Narrow.

But first I had to get over The Bridge, The Astoria Megler Bridge. Ugh. As we learned from me holding my breath on the PCH, Im not nuts about driving on tall, narrow things, especially over rough water. The bridge is the longest continuous truss bridge in the US and is 200 ft above the water. AND, about half way over it turns into a terrible rollar coaster-like ride:

And then its just a straight drop to a floating bridge.

I wasn’t crazy about this, but we made it.

We slowly made our way for about 3 hours or so up 101, just enjoying the ride, but the weather was getting pretty miserable, so we decided to stay at Ocean City State Park (I kept calling it OCMD as an homage to my Senior Week trip in’90) which was 20 minutes west of Hoquiam, right on the ocean.  The park is huge, and every spot is really spaced out, plus it was just about empty. We grabbed a nice paved, pull-through by the beach and walked (what seemed like a mile) to the Park Host to buy some wood. The campsite was $21 and right next to our spot was a path to the beach.

Ocean City beach path.

The path goes over some grass covered dunes

Dunes.

Ahh the ocean.

After a few days here, we headed to the Olympic National Forest, which we were really looking forward to. Our chosen path (not that there were many paths to chose from) was to hit Lake Quinault (an hour away from Ocean City), by way of Humptulips. For you nerds out there, Humptulips is Terry Prachett’s favorite place on Earth (he said so in a talk), and is the home base for a group of assassin monkeys in Tom Robbin’s Another Roadside Attraction. For a town of 250, it’s famous!

My friend Kiersten told me about Lake Quinault, and said the lodge was one of her favorite places to go, and I can see why. It’s a beautiful town and the lodge looked fantastic. We parked and walked around a bit, just taking in the scenery.

Lake Quinault.

From the lake, we went to Queets, and the only thing we saw on the way was this:

Logging trucks galore.

The only thing in Queets is a gas station, please stop there, because you won’t see another one for a long, long time. In the  gas station is also the Post Office, the town bus stop and possibly the only grocery store for miles. We bought a bag of popcorn.

Welcome to Queets.

Right up the road is Kalaloch which is definitely worth a stop. The beach has a large campground but they recommend a 21ft limit on RVs, although they have a few spaces that can fit larger models.

Kalaloch.

Educational zone and bridge to the ocean.

I’ve seen photos of Kalaloch in the summer, and it looks totally different — and apparently it books up fast!  Next stop, the Hoh Rainforest!

Ocean City and Kalaloch, WA is a post from Weaselmouth - It's good to let go.

We originally looked at C classes and the more people we talked to, we realized people don’t really fulltime in those a lot because if something happens to the engine, you’re also without a house while it’s in the shop. Then we started looking at trailers and really LOOKED at all kind of models and sizes. Then we went to an RV show in Illinois and saw the Airstreams…. Deke’s parents had an Avion in the 70s and I think all those memories just came flooding back and our decision was made! We started researching, looking at resale value and how they hold up over time with heavy use. We really couldn’t afford one, so we knew it would have to be a used model so we just kept looking until we found one in good shape!

Weekend trip to Dinosaur Valley.

 

Long lost weekend at Atlanta State Park.

 

Fishing weekend to Ft Griffin.

 

Halfway to Seattle and doing great.

 

Q4 - Your husband looks like he drives a F150, is that correct?  If so, how does he feel his ½ ton performs and would he prefer more truck?

Deke loved that he could name the trip on the truck computer.

Checking out New Mexico.

Exploring Oregon.

Snowshoeing!

Double stack grilling. Sometimes a necessary evil.

Q & A time! is a post from Weaselmouth - It's good to let go.

Back in November, we were finally driving through the Pacific Northwest. Between Cape Blanco and Cape Lookout (6 hours on 101), you’ll find a BOUNTY of ocean front parks with killer views at every one. If you’re in the mood to stop and take your time, this is the day to do it. To be honest, we stopped at so many, I kind of lost track, but I’ll mention a few.

The first park you’ll hit going north on 101 is Bullards Beach. It’s also the last ocean front park before 101 heads east for a bit. It’s also on the lighthouse tour!

Very New England-y.

When 101 heads back west to the shore, you’ll come upon a very picturesque town — Winchester Bay which also borders the Oregon Dunes National Recreation Area.

Not my best photographic moment, but you can see the dunes, right?

I LOVE that several times on this trip we’d see these heavily forested areas pressed up against enormous sand dunes… it was such an awesome sight. There’s a nice little RV park right on the bay called Winchester Bay RV Resort — we didn’t stay there (we’d only been on the road a couple of hours) but we drove around it  and made a note to come back — it looked immaculate.

Beverly Beach access trail from park campground to ocean.

We decided to stop for lunch at Beverly Beach — great parking lot, and really nice campsite with ocean (and dog friendly) access. After many, many beautiful parks and lighthouses we reached Cape Lookout State Park, just south of Tillamook (cheese!!). Please click on the link and watch their video of the park — it’s so much better than any photos I could post.

Our Cape Lookout spot.

The Beach.

Beach Waterfalls.

Cape Lookout State Park, Tillamook, OR is a post from Weaselmouth - It's good to let go.

I miss art. I miss the paintings and photographs that used to be on my walls and are now under the bed or at friends’ houses. But the more I miss it, the happier I am when I see something really interesting!

That’s how I felt when I saw Matt McCormick’s video and photography installation at the Tacoma Art Museum’s 10th Northwest Biennial a few weeks ago. It wasn’t obvious what the installation, The Great Northwest, was about — just several large photographs of photographs, a video screen playing a scene of cows walking a long a road (they weren’t fenced in) and a display case with a large, dark red leather bound scrap book curatorially listed as “ephemera”.

It wasn’t until I read the wall text that a big smile came across my face and I said to Ingrid and Dante “Now this is an awesome idea”.

This installation was about two separate adventures. The women who took the original adventure were Bev, Berta, Sissie and Clarice and in 1958 they went on a road trip together through Washington, Idaho, Montana and Oregon, and had the foresight to keep a scrapbook of their journey.

Matt McCormick found this scrapbook at a thrift store, and, much like I would’ve done, bought it. There were ticket stubs, black and white photos of themselves (in pajamas smoking cigarettes) and brochures of the landmarks they visited — some which would change only a few months later as the Interstate Highway System began construction in these areas. I can only assume that as he paged through the scrapbook, Matt McCormick got The Idea; to follow the same path — recreating the adventure himself. He would retrace the steps of these four (undoubtedly) sassy ladies and document the changes in the landscape they experienced.

As a traveler, I love everything about this piece. I love that these women took the trip, I love that they made a (detailed, with typed labels) scrapbook about their journey, I love that McCormick found it and bought it and did something with it that allowed me to see it as well. It’s just what I would’ve done.

Four Ladies on the Road, 1958. is a post from Weaselmouth - It's good to let go.

Our first rally with our new WBCCI group was held at the Silver Spur RV Park in Silverton, OR a few weeks ago and it was so much fun! (I’m really behind on posts!!)

A lot of silver.

And some blue.

First, you might be wondering why we joined the Oregon WBCCI group and not the Washington group (or maybe you’re not really wondering that at all…). We know a few people in the Oregon group who we really like (Rhonda, and Laura and Kevin) and their rallies seemed to be in some interesting parks and not too far from Seattle, so it was a-go!

Silverton is 229 miles from where we’re parked in Fall City, WA, just on the southeast side of Portland. It has a nice downtown area, the Oregon Garden complete with the only Frank Lloyd Wright house open to the public in the Pacific Northwest,

It's like being back in Oak Park!

and a brewery called 7 Brides.

Everyone planned to be outside, but we're glad the lodge was there.

The Silver Spur park is nice — but as you can see in the photos, don’t go expecting privacy. It seems to be well maintained and they have a really nice lodge that we used for all the dinners.

The biggest fall.

Seventeen miles southeast of Silverton is Silver Falls State Park. The park has 10 waterfalls ranging in height from 27 ft to 177 ft with trails of different distances and difficulty.

Lots of moss.

The South Fall (above and below) trail actually goes behind the fall, so be prepared to get soaked!

Silverton, Oregon is a post from Weaselmouth - It's good to let go.

As many of you who follow our blog know, we relocated from Dallas, TX to Seattle, WA last November. It was NOT your typical move (to say the least). We took our time, avoided major highways where possible, and tried to make the most of what would possibly be a once in a lifetime opportunity to Airstream up the West Coast.

The Path

View Moving to Seattle, November 2011 in a larger map

We started in Dallas on November 3rd. After a couple days visiting friends in Austin, we made our way west through Texas.

We veered a bit to see Marfa and Marathon, brushed Mexico as we drove through El Paso, and passed through the southwestern tip of New Mexico

before hitting Tucson, AZ.

From Tucson, we set sights on Los Angeles (or rather, how to avoid Los Angeles traffic) as a launching point for our northern route up the Pacific Coast Highway.

We rolled up the windy PCH to and through San Francisco until we hit the other side of the Golden Gate Bridge. We decided the lower half of the PCH was all the excitement we could handle and that the 101 would be a “less tense” route for the remainder of California.

At the northwestern corner of CA, we drove through the Avenue of the Giants on our way to Oregon’s coast – one of the highlights of the trip for us both.

After leisurely exploring the coastal campsites of Oregon, we finally made it to Washington, but our trip wasn’t over yet.

Once we hit the Washington border, we continued up the coast until moving inward to visit the Hoh Rainforest.

After narrowly escaping the “biblical flooding” that threatened to close the road to Hoh, we circled back and up the Olympic Peninsula.

You could say that we dragged our heels a bit on the last few days, trying to soak every last drop of fun out of this amazing trip. On November 24th, our journey ended as we parked in Fall City, WA – our new home.

The Numbers

Total time – 21 days

Total time spent driving – 53 hours

Average driving time per day – 2.5 hours

Total Miles driven – 3077

Total Campground Fees – $467.49

Total Gasoline – $1311.25

Total Food – $569.15

Total Propane – $71.46

Total Trip – $2419.35

The Jist

Most Expensive Park – Marin RV Park ($44.55 per night)

Least Expensive Park – TIE – Painted Rock Petroglyph State Park AND a Friend ($FREE)

Worst Park Overall – Marin RV Park

Best Park Overall – Cape Blanco State Park

Best Boondocking Park – Painted Rock Petroglyph State Park

Scariest Point of the Trip – TIE – Watching grass blades touch the side of the Weas as we made tight turns on the PCH AND almost getting flood-locked at Hoh Rainforest.

Goofiest Point of the Trip – Getting taken out by the Oregonian coast’s humongous waves

Most Memorable Campsite – Humboldt Redwood National Forest – squeezing the Weas in between the redwoods to camp was AWESOME.

How Much Does a (half) Cross Country Trip Cost? is a post from Weaselmouth - It's good to let go.

Last night the temperature dipped below freezing … our windows were frozen shut this morning in the car and I almost killed myself falling down the ice covered stairs when going out to walk the dog. After 13 years in Chicago, you’d think I’d be used to the cold — but you never get used to it! It was then I realized how happy I am to have these two things:

Electric Mattress Pad Cover

Thick enough that you can't feel the coils.

Yes, it's a king. More on that below.

I’ve never had an electric blanket or an electric mattress pad heater, which is amazing because I’m always cold at night. I was unaware that these items had progressed from the terrible and weird electric blanket I had at my grandmother’s house in the 80s, so I’d written them off, until Rich Luhr suggested checking out the electric mattress pad heaters when I (probably) complained incessantly about how cold the mattress is due to the fact our 27 ft layout places it directly above our outside storage area. After spending a few weeks in Oregon and Washington in December, I was cold enough to head to the closest Macy’s and pick up this Slumber Rest (sorry, that’s a terrible photo of the packaging) in the only size they had available — King. I really didn’t care if it was going to be loose, I’d have at least one sheet over it anyway holding it in place, and that was good enough for me. The only review of the product on Amazon gives this version a bad rating, but I disagree with them completely. I can’t feel any of the wires, and neither can Deke, there are a few ways you can heat up the pad (we prefer a little Pre-Heat setting to slowly get it up to speed) and it’s really easy to use. The Low setting just warms things up enough before you dive in, and 2 is really the most we ever have it at. Once we accidentally put it at 5 and almost sweated to death. Luckily you can set it to turn off automatically after a few hours. Oh, and each side control itself, so I’m a 2 and Deke’s a Low. I’ve never regretted buying this, and when it dies, I’ll buy another one immediately!

Portable Electric Heater

One small heater.

I really didn’t want another gadget around, but after seeing the power of these little things, I caved. The Vornado person heater is about $30 and so far really worth it. I move it around the Airstream depending on where I want it, it’s got two speeds and it turns off automatically if its not totally level. And it’s small (I couldn’t think of a device we all shared as a size comparison, but I figure everyone kind of knows how big an iphone is).

Small and powerful.

I Need To Be Warm. is a post from Weaselmouth - It's good to let go.

There are a lot of capes in Oregon, and we stopped at them all, but Cape Blanco was my favorite. Located a few miles north of Port Orford, the Cape Blanco State Park sits on a cliff overlooking the ocean,

Im standing on a trail at the park looking front....

and standing at the same place looking behind me at the Airstream.

with hiking trails,

Trail through the park....shared with horses sometimes.

and beach trails,

Ahh, a man and his dog.

a lighthouse,

View of lighthouse down the path from our spot.

Driving into the park.

and a pioneer cemetery with graves of the Irish who settled here.

Pioneer cemetery.

We stayed in spot #44 for 3 days ($12 a night)– in addition to RV sites, they also have cabins for rent and a special section for campers with horses. Even though the park was amazing, we had just as much fun venturing into the town of Port Orford to eat at the famous Crazy Norwegians, get some groceries at Seaweed Natural Grocery and Cafe and do laundry:

Definitely check out Duds-n-Suds in Port Orford,

It's clean, and they have really nice new washers and dryers!

We also checked out the fishing docks:

The rest of the time, we just hung out at the beach…..

Cape Blanco, Port Orford, Oregon is a post from Weaselmouth - It's good to let go.