Work Day

I'm still stuck in a mode of not being able to go camping nor able to do the work on my Airstreams that I would like to thanks to the weather.  But, there are moments of greatness with the weather and last Sunday was one of them.  I took advantage and went to the barn to work on the Argosy.  I hadn't really planned on doing all of the pin-stripes, but as it turned out I did.  Parker decided to join me.  After I finished a section of the pin-striping, I was quite happy with my results so I asked Parker to go and get the camera.  I expected that he would come back with the usual family camera, but instead he came back with his camera and decided to take many, many pictures.  Many included me in them which is weird because most of the family pictures are taken by me and therefore I'm not in them.  So, a summary of last Sunday's work on the Argosy from the perspective of a 5 year old...

You know you're an Airstreamer if you're holding a rivet in your mouth while getting ready to pull another one...

Another popular Airstreamer pose with drill in hand

 Incredible that a 5 year old managed to capture this.  I'm sure many of us have had this look on our face.

The picture that I had wanted when I originally asked Parker to go and get the camera

Parker admiring my work

Camping fever

My intent with this blog is to keep posts centered around family camping.  Well, camping fever has bitten the entire family.

A small moment of my own camping fever...  I started up the motor home on Saturday and moved it out of the barn and over to the garage so that I could work on it with power tools.  I had just completed an extensive tune-up on the engine and it felt great to fire it up again.  Just driving from the barn to the garage put a huge smile on my face.  Unfortunately the biting cold of the wind while working on the exterior of the motor home did not.  The moho was returned to the barn with only minimal work done as a result of many unexpected roadblocks on the route to the planned work.  I shut the barn doors and sheepishly returned to the warmth of the house only to be hoping for warmer weather and/or less wind next weekend.

So on to the kids.  Our first trip this year will be to an often visited location by us, but to a campground that we only stayed at for the first time last October.  That being Newport News City Campground in Newport News, VA.  The kids have been begging to go camping for some time now.  They have new sleeping bags and "headlights" to try out.  We told them where we were going, which of course means nothing to them until we start describing the things that they get to do while there.  We described the park and Parker says, "You mean the place where we get to run around like idiots?"  [chuckles from Andrea and I] "Yeah, that place."  The "place" is shown below.  There's a playground among them thar' trees!  And a big one at that.  

The first trip will be with our trailer, not with our motor home.  I expect the site to be the same, so it should look much like this.

Nothin' better.  Family, campfire, grilling food, traveling.  Now, if I can just figure out a way to get cheap gas...

School schedule

I love my kids, but their school schedule interferes with the family's travel abilities.  Before this year, both of my kids were too young for organized school (kindergarten) so we could basically travel whenever we wanted.  Now, the oldest is in kindergarten.  Yeah, I know, "take him out for family vacation...it's only kindergarten."  We've done that and will do it some more soon.  But even with that option, we can't just load up and go like we used to.  Bummer.  I guess that means we're now on the plan of about 50% of the rest of the USA in that we will be vacationing from June-Aug and during school holiday breaks.  Say YEAH! for busy season fees and gas prices!  If only our school district would go to one of those neat schedules where there's 2 months on, 2 weeks off, no summer break.  Ahh, I can dream to camp and travel more...

Bacon

Bacon.  It's not the healthiest option for food, but it tastes really good; so we eat it occasionally.  Those occasions are usually during our camping trips.  We typically purchased the better cuts of pre-packaged bacon at the grocery store.  However, this year we added to our carnivorous freezer stash by purchasing a whole pig. One of our primary reasons was so that we could cure and smoke our own bacon.  Wow, was that a great decision!  Andrea did the preservation side of things, then the smoking was up to me.  This morning, despite not being on a camping trip, we tried some of our own bacon.  That's great bacon!  Even the kids which were watching cartoons in the living room knew it was cooking.  The flavor...exquisite.  It will be tough to reserve this as a special treat only for camping trips, but it is in limited supply so that will help.

Conversation with my 5 year old today:

Parker: I don't want to go home until tomorrow (we're at Oma's right now)
Me: Daddy needs to work on the camper
Parker: But I don't want to go home until Sunday!
Me: You know how you tell me all the time while waiting for the bus that you want to go camping?
Parker: Yes
Me: Well, Daddy needs to work on the campers so we can go camping when the weather is better
Parker: [thinks for a few seconds] OK, let's go home.

First Post

I've wanted to share and document the travels of my family in our camper for some time now.  The purpose of this blog is going to be to document, for ourselves, where we have been and what we have done.  Hopefully our friends and family (and maybe even some strangers) will find entertainment or interest in what we post here.


First, everyone should know that we camp in Airstream products.  While our experiences and things we talk about will apply to whatever you camp in, it is worth noting that many of the posts and pictures here will involve our Airstreams.  Please take no offense if you don't camp in one, but understand that we wouldn't camp in anything else.