Airstream Tales and Trails

Saturday, June 6, 2015

Elvis Slept Here

Hey Folks,

Not the REAL Elvis. I'm talking about Elvis the dog. He's a little gray poodle that I spent the week with - but I'm getting ahead of myself.

Elvis

As most of you know, I'm assigned to a large gas line inspection project here in Provo, in the South Salt Lake Valley. Our client, Questar Gas, services the whole valley but also all of the small towns scattered throughout Utah and even into Wyoming. These little towns need to be inspected on a regular basis so plans are made early in the survey year to send technicians into these places. These jobs usually last 4 days, 10 hours each, and we're through by Thursday evening. This past week five technicians and myself were sent with a Questar foreman for a 4 day project to survey Carbon and Emery counties in Southeast Utah. We all used an RV park in the town of Price as our base of operations and branched out from there each day. LuLu stayed at home in Provo since Margo was working at the KOA and I bunked with another tech - Pat, his wife Nancy, and their little dog, Elvis. I've known Pat and Nancy since working together in Nashville over a year ago and consider them to be dear friends. Elvis was a puppy the last time I saw him and he hasn't changed a bit. He's one of those one in a hundred dogs you come by with a ton of personality and uniqueness. Well behaved and mischievous at the same time and always the center of attention. He's a little force to be reckoned with, especially when we made our way back home at the end of the day and were greeted as only a dog can do. Nancy went all out every day, having a huge meal ready for us. Thank you so much Nancy, I actually think I GAINED weight on this trip.

Elvis sleeps here - I did too

Carbon and Emery County are located in Southeast Utah and contain little towns with only a couple of hundred to perhaps a thousand or so people each. Towns like East Carbon; named after the large coal (carbon) deposits in the area. Castle Dale; named for the local geologic formations that look like castles. Elmo; named after.... well probably not the red puppet we're all familiar with but named for something. I'm not sure about that one. My point is, these are small places with miles of nothing in between. We each were assigned an area and went to it. I had the town of Castle Dale. Like most of the towns in Utah the street grid was laid out by Brigham Young's standards. The center of town is always the intersection of "Center St and Main St". All streets spreading out from there are numbered by 100 with the corresponding compass heading. If you can count by 100 and know the four points of the compass you can find any address quite easily. The streets, even the residential streets, are extremely wide. A local told me it's because they wanted each street to be wide enough for 2 teams of horses (or oxen) and a wagon to be able to turn around and head in the other direction.

Typical W-I-D-E residential street

Miles of nothing .......

...... in between towns

Pat heading back from East Carbon

Castle Dale City Hall

Fire Department for the whole Castle Dale "Metro"

By the end of the week the 6 of us had walked over 341,000 feet of gas main, that's 64 miles. We collectively walked up to and checked 3,162 individual gas meters. Our Quesar foreman, Scott, was running around almost as frantically as Elvis to keep up with us since invariably I would have an issue at the same time another tech 35 miles away would have one. In the end though - and as always, our client seamlessly took care of things. I was the lead for our other 5 techs but there was no need for supervision with these people. With their experience and devotion they just went out and took care of business.

Scott, Our Questar foreman. More than just a client.

The Crew

Pat, Nancy and Elvis

Large and in charge on the dashboard

I want to thank Pat, Nancy and Elvis, for having me as their guest. I do have to say that the best part of this job are the people (and dogs) I work with.

Sunday, May 3, 2015

I'm New To KOA

Hey Folks,

For those of you not initiated, KOA stands for Kampgrounds of America. It's a franchise with around 500 locations throughout the country. We've stayed at them many times, both short stays and long stays. We're actually staying at one now. The Springville/Provo KOA is a particularly good fit for us because it's close to where I'm working, affordable, modern and very clean. Best of all though is the staff - especially the new girl.

Yes, Margo's working at the KOA. She started a few weeks ago, donning the trademark yellow shirt, and jumped in with both feet - 40 hours per week. Working the front desk she checks in the guests and figures out where they should be parked throughout their stay. She gives advice on things to do in the area and directions while simultaneously working the camp store and handing out basketballs and ping pong paddles. Oh yeah, she takes reservations over the phone and sorts the guest's mail - and that's only the inside stuff. Outside, she does daily site checks. There's a lot more to running this place than I ever knew but she picked it up quickly - even the KOA Komputer system.

Her commute is a piece of cake. The two old dogs, Shiloh and Pepper, aren't exactly thrilled with their mom being gone but get a visit every few hours so are doing fine. Actually, they sleep so much now it probably seems to them she only steps out for a minute or two before coming back.

As for me, with her working full-time I'm considering retirement.... Wait a minute..... I've just been told there's no retirement in my future for quite a while... Oh well, I tried.

Front office


Kamp store

My favorite part - the ice cream case

Site checks on the scooter

The Wasatch mountains are always in view

Sunday, April 12, 2015

All Signs Point West

"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........