Whirlwind weekend.

I flew out on the redeye at 12:15 am last Thursday for the Cherry Blossom Rally in Upper Marlboro, MD and arrived local time at 10:25 am. Rob and his family picked me up from the airport in Washington DC and told me they wanted to go to the mall.

I was wondering why they wanted to go to the mall, I just wanted to see the White House. Well, turns out that’s what they call the mall. It includes the White House, Washington Monument, Lincoln Memorial, etc….

Here is a photo at the White House. If you look close you might see Marine 1 in the air carrying the President back to the White House.

Continuing on down the mall we went by the Washington Monument. It was huge. You can actually go inside of it if you get tickets early enough.

Next up is the Lincoln Memorial. This is cool. It is a 19 foot carving of the President.

Next we walked down to the Vietnam Memorial wall. This wall contains the names of those who died in that war. One thing I noticed is that all of the other memorials you can hear people talking and making noise. When walking the Vietnam Memorial there was a silence that was very distinct.

After what seemed like several miles of walking the mall in 90 degree heat after my being up over 30 hours, I was ready to crash. We drove on to the rally site at the Rogers farm and found many aluminum homes setup for the weekend.

That picture was taken the last day of the rally when the rain clouds came around. The previous days were hot and muggy.

Colin arrived a day late so I had to find a room elsewhere. Luckily Dave Morrison had a nice spot on his gaucho which was just reupholstered. Nice and comfy. Thanks Dave!

After Colin showed up I moved my stuff in his trailer since he was there by himself. Colin had recently turned 50 and we teased him about needing a walker to get around. A fellow Airstreamer Steve brought a walker to hide in Colin’s trailer for a joke. Only Colin thought it was mine since I had just moved in. It was quite funny.

But I did happen to snap this photo…..

At the CBR they always have entertainment for Saturday night. Some how the scheduled band did not show up. So theVAP was fill in. We recorded a show in front of a live audience in the tent. Once again Dave Morrison to the rescue with his pro audio gear and had us sounding great. You can check it out in theVAP Episode 68.

Here we are setup doing the show.

Here is a shot of all of us with Frank. Frank is a dedicated listener to theVAP. Frank was responsible for getting me to the CBR in the first place. He challenged Rob and Colin to see who would have the best bathroom restoration by the time of the rally.

From left to right: Tim, Frank, Rob, and Colin.

Traveled 3000 miles and didn’t even win a t-shirt. Are you reading this Steve H.? !!!

I want to thank Rob and his family for the help with the flight out to Washington and the hospitality at the rally. I also want to thank Colin and everyone else at the CBR.

It was a fun time talking with everyone about their trailers. Lots of fun folks. If you have the opportunity to go to the CBR I highly recommend it. Too bad its so far for me. I’d love to have my family and trailer there.

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Since I don’t really have anything to add to the restoration portion of this blog apart from maintenance and repairs, I decided to update it with our camping trips.

We recently took our longest trip with the trailer to date, a full seven nights in the trailer. I think it went quite well. We covered a lot in those seven days.

First stop was Pismo Beach in Central California. We found a nice full hookup campground right on the beach. The problem is about a million other people did to. Cramped sites, busy kids, it was a mad house.

Here is a shot of our site. It was tight backing in. I found a nice audience in my attempts…

This place was a good location despite it being crowded. It was just a 2 minute walk to the beach, and an hour drive to Hearst Castle.

Hearst Castle is a beautiful place full of history. Nice location and a great place to visit. It’s a castle that was built by William Randolf Hearst starting around 1919 and it took the better part of 15 years.

Here is a shot of the main entrance.

Another shot of one of the two pools. This one was built and torn down and rebuilt three times until they were satisfied.

Next stop was our first courtesy parking experience in Simi Valley. We stayed at the Bounder Buddies place! Thanks Bounder!

From the Bounder Buddies place we were close to Hollywood. We went to Grauman’s Chinese Theatre, home of the red carpet movie premiers, and walk of fame.

Complete with hand and foot prints in cement.

Lots of interesting characters all around. Mostly wanting a $1 to take your photo with them. And they were busy….

Next stop was the Ronald Reagan Library. Very educational stop complete with replica’s of the Oval Office and the real Air Force One used by Reagan, Carter, Clinton, and Bush. You can even tour it!

We can’t get this close to Disneyland with making a stop. So we moved to a campground near the Magic Kingdom and paid the Mouse a visit.

We did see another Airstream nearby…

Goofy being… well… goofy.

Here is a shot of the Mark Twain boat. This boat is original to the day Disneyland opened putting it just a few years older than my trailer. So its vintage!

All in all the trailer did great. We did our first camping without hookups when we were courtesy parking. That is when we found our first little glitch. Its the first time we used the water pump extensively. The pump would intermittenly stop during a shower. Then without reason, it would startup again. I have not had a chance to check it out yet. I hope its the relay I’m using to power the pump. I’ll let you know.

Otherwise everything else ran great. We used the TwinTemp for a furnace for the first time as well. It worked great and we had nice quite heat. Can’t say enough good things about it!

So now we have an idea of what it may be like to camp without full hookups. Might be interesting if we find the right place. I think with the five of us we could make two nights with our tank capacities. Now battery power thats another issue….

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