Reflections

It still looks good after 10 years of travel

It's easy to reflect when you hand wash and wax an Airstream trailer over three, hot days.  Here are some of the thoughts that came to mind this year.

A Milestone
We're about to set off on our 11th year of travel and 14th long trip.  It's hard to believe we've been doing this for a DECADE.  Time has flown by.

What and Why?
Two good questions came to mind ... "What are we doing?" and "Why are we doing it?".  We enjoy exploring and we're getting to see things we've only heard about.  It helps that our parents exposed us to vacationing in travel trailers.

Travel Trivia
102,558 car miles
    1,948 Airstream service miles
  83,921 Airstream camping miles
         31 camping trips (13 long ones)
       395 trailer set-ups

Replacements
Air Conditioner (2 years ago)
Electric Hitch Jack (2 years ago)
Both deep-cycle batteries (5 years ago)
Both propane tanks (the safety certifications expired last year)
4 sets of tires (the 5th set went on last year)

Additions
Wood laminate flooring (4 years ago)

A Name
We toyed for many years with giving the trailer a name.  Others name their cars, boats, and trailers.  Why not us?  "Silver Bullet", "Silver Streak" and "Tin Can" didn't make the cut.  A few years ago we settled on "Badonkadink".  It seemed appropriate for our uniquely shaped trailer.  It's a private name.  It's not emblazoned on the back of the trailer.  You'll see why if you Google the word.

End of the Musings
Like the other posts, these musings are part of our Airstream experience.  Planning, cleaning, fixing, towing, driving, wandering, reflecting and sharing ... we enjoy it all.  Then again, maybe they're just a symptom of heat stroke.

Getting Ready

The trailer hasn't moved an inch, but there's stuff we "gotta do" and "spiff up" stuff we do to make the time go by until we can get on the road.

Gotta Do's
Replace all 5 tires ... done last fall when we returned from the Southwest Trip.
The on-the-road tires lasted 24,225 miles. The spare was used once in 10 years.  

Check and install the batteries.

Remove tire covers.

Install and test the TPMS sensors.

Create the travel blog.

Spiff Ups
Wash and wax the trailer.

Build a new hitch box. The old one has served us for 10 years.  It's just greasy.

Repaint hot water heater and furnace access doors.  The original paint has weathered over the years.

About the Trip

This will be our 14th long trip.  It'll be different from the previous long ones in that "long" doesn't imply driving and towing for lots of miles.  We've decided to drive fewer miles and to see more of Kentucky than if we were just passing through.  Some wandering into Tennessee is possible.

The itinerary is a bit odd.  We needed to carve out time for a return to Columbus for some important appointments and special events.  A warm-up outing to Rocky Fork State Park in Ohio (August 1st to 5th) will give us an opportunity to dewinterize and get into travel mode.  We'll head for Kentucky on August 18th for 41 days of exploring.

We'll leave with some ideas and figure out the details as we go.