Airstream Tales and Trails: April 2015

"Thanks to the Interstate Highway System, it is now possible to travel across the country from coast to coast without seeing anything."

-- Charles Kuralt

Hey Folks,

Margo and I have been in Provo for a little over 3 weeks and only now have I gotten to posting the "epic" cross-country trip pics and prose. Shame on me. I do hope you - faithful reader - are not too upset. I realize the responsibility we have with the blog to provide timely entertainment in a virtual entertainment desert that is the internet. Now, minimize the cat videos, silence the tweets and let's get to it.

As many of you remember, Charles Kuralt was the original RV road-tripper. Starting in 1967 he began traveling the country, avoiding the Interstate highways, reporting off beat stories for CBS News. The airing of an episode of his "On The Road" series always stopped me from doing whatever childhood activity I was involved in at the time, so I could plop in front of the TV to watch. He went through 6 motorhomes in the course of that series and saw many things. His above quote rang true then and does even more so today.

Our trip this year from Nashville to the Salt Lake Valley was quite uneventful as compared to our last two cross-country trips. No wind, storms, sick dogs, bee bites or anything. The weather was perfect. The only hazard to speak of were some outrageous potholes in Tennessee caused by the ice storms. Uneventful is a good thing though when you're traveling at highway speeds with your house, mere feet from semi trucks and texting SUV drivers.

We chose the same route as last year, I-40 west. It's south enough to stay out of potential winter storms and fast enough to get us to our destination in a reasonable amount of time. Yes, we dreamed of traveling the back roads like Charlie did but this time reality said, 'you have a meeting to attend in Salt Lake City Monday', so we put the hammer down so to speak.

That isn't saying we didn't get some enjoyment out of it once we took the exit ramp for the day. We had some great overnight stops. Lake Eufaula State Park in Oklahoma on night two was memorable. We had a beautiful state park, with lake, all to ourselves for $20.00 a night. Santa Rosa, New Mexico - a great stay at a small privately owned park. The owner, Chris, would have been a perfect candidate for Charlie to interview. A no nonsense guy taking a small struggling park and making it his own, complete with attached Bar-B-Que restaurant. Moab, Utah saw us staying at a true RV resort. It was fancy but also the only stop on the trip where I had to unhitch for the night. RV resorts, you see, don't have very large sites. They need the extra space for the resort stuff......

Margo took a ton of pics while on the "super slab" but really - we didn't see anything. A theme developed though. Signs, signs everywhere........