Highest Paved Road in North America

Next stop was Colorado where we spent a week with family staying in a house in the mountains instead of camping.  We had a great time just spending time together and doing all sorts of sightseeing.  One road-trip item worth mentioning here on the blog was the drive up the highest paved road in North America to the summit of Mt. Evans. Just west of Denver off of I-70 this 14 mile scenic drive is a bit scary but worth checking out, it's one of the few places you can drive to a destination that is over 14,000 feet above sea level. Be sure to stop and check out the Bristlecone Pines along the way and to leave the trailer at the bottom!  

Lincoln Highway Centennial

Continuing west we kept off the Interstate traveling for a good part of the day on a section of the old Lincoln Highway. Shortly after crossing the Mississippi and entering Nebraska we caught up with a dozen or so Model A Fords who were likely traveling to the Lincoln Highway Centennial at the Great Platte River Road Archway. Over the next 10 miles you could feel the history as we represented the progress of the late 50's and early 60's as we passed the 1930's vehicles with our trailer. I was also aware that a group of TIn Can Tourists was traveling some of this same stretch of the Lincoln Highway in route to the Centennial, but I couldn't get our itinerary line up with theirs so we were a couple of days ahead of them. You can read about their tour at Cool McCool's Garage. Later in the day we had a great conversation with nice guy with a very cool hot rod in Grand Rapids, NE while stopped for lunch at a supermarket parking lot. Our stop for the night was at Lake Maloney State Recreation Area in North Platte, "just park and camp anywhere you want". 

3 Days, 6 States, and 2 American Pickers

The first day of the trip we left Buffalo, NY and headed west. Quickly passing through the corner of Pennsylvania, then heading across Ohio. Watch out for that 90 degree left turn on I-80 in Cleveland!  At the end of the day we ended up once again at Pokagon State Park which is just over the border into Indiana. Pokagon is a 6 hour drive for us and is in just the right place for the first night when we are traveling west. That night we had 3 to 4 inches of rain which drove some the nearby tent campers to pack up their stuff and head home and reminded us of one of the reasons we started shopping for a trailer in the first place. Based on experience in our previous trip west we we decided to avoid the Chicago area traffic so the next day we drove south to Fort Wayne and then crossed Indiana and Illinois via US 24 which worked out extremely well, we also got see a few small towns along the way instead of just pavement. We stayed at Jubilee College State Park just west of Peoria that second night. Jubilee has a large campground but was pretty empty early in the week. From there we headed north a to Davenport, Iowa were we stopped to check out the Antique Archeology shop which is just off I-80. The shop was closed for filming, but we did get to see Mike and Frank drive out of the parking lot in their van while filming an episode of American Pickers. I was hoping to get a few photos of our Shasta in front of their shop, but there was an RV was blocking the alley, turned out it belonged to the film crew. Later that day we made camp at Prairie Rose State Park in western Iowa, the same place where we had stayed on our 2010 trip.  

Another long road trip!

We recently completed another 3 week, 5,000 mile road trip with our vintage Shasta!   

Starting from our home in the western part of New York state we traveled through 8 states spending the majority of time in Colorado and at several National Parks in Utah. We stayed at 10 different campgrounds as well as spending a week with family in the Rocky Mountains.  We all had a great time and the trailer continues to work well for our family of four with practically no issues. We did a lot of prep for this trip including re-packing wheel bearings, installing new tires, and creating a planned itinerary that included several options for where we might camp each night depending on how each day went. We made reservations far in advance at campgrounds in the National Parks and for potentially busy Friday nights, but stayed in first-come, first-served sites for most others. Overall a fantastic trip!

As I recover and dig through our photos I'll try to post some highlights here on the blog over the next several weeks.

Jalousie Window Repair

This will be 5th year of camping with our Shasta Airflyte since we restored it. While the blog has been pretty quiet we've been making plans and doing some work to get our trailer ready for this years adventures. One of the things that needed attention was a louvered jalousie window on the front of the trailer. Late last season we found that one of the windows no longer operated, a post had broken off of a cast linkage between the crank and the vertical piece that each louver is attached to. Luckily I was able to fix this without removing the window. I removed the crank assembly then drilled out what remained of the post and replaced it with a simple pop rivet and short section of plastic tube that you can see in the photo above.  Overall this seems to be a good quick fix that hopefully will last. 

Fall in the Finger Lakes

Once again we made it out late in the season for a long weekend of family camping in New York's finger lake region. Although the weekend started out with a lot of rain on the first night this year proved to have no disappointments. This year we made stops at the Corning Museum of Glass and several wineries along eastern shore of Seneca Lake. I've posted about the virtues and the luck-of-the draw of fall camping before, always memorable and often great time!

2012 TCT NE Regional Rally

Another year and another Tin Can Tourists Northeast Regional Rally! We are amazed at how fast time seems to be moving along these dates. This was the 5th year this rally has been held at Sampson State Park on Seneca Lake in central New York state and for us this this rally has become a "must attend" annual event. We enjoy seeing friends, swapping stories, and checking out a range of vintage trailers that have been fully restored, renovated with modern touches, or have just been pulled out of the woods. We had fun prepping for the rally this year with a new "family game night" theme" that included an outdoor bowling ally, a handmade checkers board, vintage scrabble, and other card and board games. This year it seemed like the Airstream crowd was back after being down in numbers a bit for the last two years. I'm always amazed at how many nice vintage Airstreams there are in the area. There were a number trailers at the rally for the first time this year, some of our favorites included our friends 1958 Trotwood that we saw earlier this year in the ADK's, an perfect 1954 Aljoa, a 1961 Hi-Lo that you could crank down like a pop-up, a 1964 Shasta 1500, a tiny Metzendorf, and a 1972 Apache tent trailer. For a while now I've been thinking that we ought to start seeing a few more tent trailers showing up at  vintage events and am starting to see some hints that it's starting. Several recent issues of the TCT newsletter Tin Can Tales has included a multi-part article about the history of Popup campers. A big thanks goes out to the Fletchers who have organized this rally since it's start and to the others who've helped make this rally a success over the years.  This year as we saw last year there were quite a few day visitors who heard about the rally and stopped in to take a look. I've included a few photo's above but if you want to see more I've created a 2012 TCT NE Regional Rally set on Flickr.