Two months of Airstream travel
The magic and the maintenance.
This newsletter: Airstream life, Faces from the Road.
Hey there, Traipser! Dakota here with Traipsing About, my no-AI-slop newsletter exploring living an intentional life while reclaiming creativity as an adult, all spiced with experiences from rolling around in our Airstream.
Thank you for being here. I appreciate your time and attention in this harried, headline-every-minute world. May today’s newsletter helps ground you in the sea of chaos.
In case you missed it: Last time I wrote about five years of trading drawings with my college roommate and dear friend. Since then, I decided to (finally) try watercolor pencils, which I’ve been really enjoying…even if I have no idea what I’m doing.
The contrast of travel
Somehow we’ve already been kicking around in the Airstream for two months. Our little silver house has frolicked behind our truck for almost 2,000 miles, from Bend to San Diego, then east into Arizona.
A friend asked me if the days have become routine. Have the exciting “wow, this is special!” corners been sanded off?
Uh, hellll no. Seemingly every day has a moment of awe. The magic moments are piling up! Here are a few:
A rocket launch over Anza-Borrego during a full moon.
Stargazing during a meteor shower in the Alabama Hills.
A sunset coyote serenade (←video) in Saguaro National Park.
Of course, like folding into a pint-sized airplane seat for a long flight to see Italy’s Duomo, there are tradeoffs. Towing on potholed roads makes me so tense I get headaches. Moving solar panels around or dumping gray water bucket by bucket when dry camping is time consuming. So is doing laundry in a portable washing machine, then hanging everything outside.
Cue the world’s smallest violin. I’m not complaining! Really!! (<--Two exclamation points.)
Indeed, we chose this lifestyle with eyes open. Luckily, the balance tilts strongly in favor of the positive experiences. While it’s nothing special—any fool can hitch up a trailer and tow it around—it’s enabling what we want right now.
Finding a balance
But we’re keeping this in mind: how much contrast is worth it? How can we find a pace and style of travel that keeps things interesting, but doesn’t feel like endless transitions and require copious travel planning? If memories primarily consist of hitching and unhitching the trailer, moving solar panels, and highway driving, we’re doing it wrong.
Oh, but the benefits. The elation of pedaling or stomping off into a new landscape; witnessing a desert bloom fill an entire valley; a bobcat staring at us for minutes, or the swooping, hooting great horned owls at Catalina State Park.
Above all, the feeling of being a small speck in the universe, whether in the Pacific Ocean or all alone at the top of a remote canyon in Organ Pipe National Monument.
Even when we’re not out exploring, we love how the Airstream’s big windows immerse us in nature. (Two quail are dust bathing outside right now.) We watch birds, bunnies, and also all the incredibly fit seniors crushing workouts in campgrounds.
Meanwhile, warm weather allows meals outside—or playing piano with a vista. Snowbirding is working for us.
After a year of taking it a bit easier due to my myocarditis surprise in 2024, feeling fitness coursing through my body is intoxicating. During a recent mountain bike ride, the steep rocky trail turned into a creek-filled canyon. I rock-hopped and bushwhacked for an hour, sometimes carrying my bike over my head through cacti. Stupid as the outing was, I felt totally elated to be fit enough to enjoy it.
As much as I enjoy conversations with other campers, we definitely miss our community back home. That deep comfort of time with people we know well is irreplaceable. A big tradeoff with being on the road.
The silver lining is the opportunity to see far-flung friends and family, plus hang out with Traipsing readers who aren’t friends yet.
On a recent evening, I attended a stellar piano performance at the University of Arizona by Grammy winner Víkingur Ólafsson with George, a long-time reader. After the show, I stayed up late talking with him and his two adventurous friends, a travel nurse and the Mosquito Lady, who does natural bug eradication and lived in Bali for 14 years. A serendipitous experience, and one of my favorite parts of travel.
The morning after, I was on my stomach repairing the trailer’s sewer outlet pipe with ABS cement, then wrestling with a drawer that loves to pop open during travel. Afterward, I hauled a couple buckets full of gray water across the campground.
Worth it? Absolutely.
Variety, the spice
Strangely, these contrasts serve to make each situation fresh and new. Nothing is forever with Airstream travel: five days of conserving power and water while boondocking flow into the luxury of full hookups. Long(er) showers, for one—though we only have six gallons of hot water. The occasional barking dog next door is a minor irritation because that canine is soon moving down the road to somewhere we aren’t.
When we bought the trailer, in zero ways did I expect to say the following: RV parks aren’t too bad. We’ve only stayed at a few on this trip, but they’re quiet, convenient and perfect for refueling the trailer after dry camping. Like a tired long-distance hiker rolling into town to scrub dirt off their face and eat all the food, RV parks are a place to cook/store up a reserve in the freezer and get dialed.
Our goal with the Airstream was to stay places longer than we did during van life. More days in one place is life-supporting versus careening from place to place. We aren’t sure what the right pace is, but I suspect it’s about two weeks in each place. We’ll see fewer mountain ranges, but feel the ones we spend time in more.
As English philosopher John Ruskin penned,
“All traveling becomes dull in exact proportion to its rapidity. A fool wants to shorten space and time; a wise man attempts to lengthen both.”
Also, the longer stays allow for routines and rituals. I want to write consistently and keep my piano practice going, but both those fall away when we’re rolling too often. Plus regular physical therapy and strength training! Now that we’re over 40, no consistent PT = bodies collapsing like saggy birthday balloons.
So, after two months, I can safely say this is what we want to be doing! Every time we hitch the trailer up and pull onto the open road, the feeling of “this is awesome“ courses through my veins. I watch our little silver house behind us and feel excited to pull into our next location, to soak up the next moment of awe.
Then the road reminds me that I’m towing 7,000 pounds and I get back to avoiding potholes.
Faces from the Road
As Carolyn Muegge-Vaughn told ever-more incredible stories, our dinner table kept glancing at each other, “who is this woman?!” stenciled on our faces.
Competing in the Iditarod dog sled race...the summer after she first saw a dog sled. An expedition to Antarctica with her 89 year old husband… to climb a mountain named after him. (Here’s the YouTube documentary.)
Now, she’s currently solo traveling around North America in her DIY camper van between stints overseas with Doctors Without Borders (DWB).
Oh...did I mention she’s 83?!
After her husband died over a decade ago, she assessed her life and decided to enroll with DWB, which she’s continued ever since with stints in Sierra Leone, Bangladesh, and Myanmar, among others. She’s managed 77 Land Cruisers in Malawi for a measles campaign where there were no roads and run an entire operation in Sudan when things went, shall we say, awry, with the government.
Dear Carolyn, thank you for showing me that we can reinvent and challenge ourselves many times in the span of a life. You’re an inspiration. Happy trails!
This Traipsing About newsletter is motoring onward. But first, a quote for the road that I aspire to live up to:
At its best, travel is embraced not as a flashy backdrop for our lifestyle ambitions, but as an act that touches every aspect of our being. Travel is not a swaggering declaration of self, undertaken to impress other people; it is a quiet inquiry, requiring awareness, resilience, and openness to change.
Rolf Potts, The Vagabond’s Way
Onward,
Dakota
Great stuff. I love that you are an artistic type, which we need more of, and that you are out there taking it all in, digesting it, and finding the beauty in nature. Keep going!
Tradeoffs. Oh ain't it the truth! 😂🙂