Airstream von Soich

After another night on a mattress that seems much more uncomfortable this year than it did last, we woke up, had breakfast, and got a kind-of late start to go to visit Brookville, PA, and some features of Cook State Forest.

For those who don’t know, I’m told that I spent a couple of years of my life there, when I was 1-2 years old. As I was researching what there was to do around this park, I saw that Brookville was not too far from here, and it was coincidentally on the way to the forest, so we decided to try and find my old house, based on the sketchy information my sister gave me. (To her credit, she was only 9, and it was 39 years ago. Oh, whoops, did I just give out her age?)

I called her on the cell phone (since we were not in the campground’s “dead zone”) as we took the exit toward the town, to get any final clues. “Wood street,” she said, “I’m pretty sure it was Wood street.” Pause. “or maybe Oak. But no, I’m almost positive I’m remembering Wood street.”

So, I drove through the town, describing features of Main street to her, and she was telling me that it wasn’t off of Main, that I had to go up on the hill to the “left” of town.

I stopped at a convenience store after I got out of downtown (at which point I’m sure we’ve gone too far) and asked the clerk if she knew where Wood Street was. She didn’t know, and neither did the next customer in line, when she asked him. She directed me to a map of Brookville that they have posted in the back of the store.

Sure enough, there was NO Wood street, but there WAS an Oak street, and it was up on the hill to the “left of town” and it didn’t connect directly to Main, so I set the GPS to “go here”, and turned around.

Some twisty minutes later, we’re on Oak, and I’m on the phone again. “It had a garage on the left,” she said, “and it had a second story balcony.” Talking to a resident who happened to be out doing lawnwork, we verified that a neighbor my sister recalled did indeed live on this street.

A few more houses, and we saw this:

As far as I can tell, this is it.

With that matter resolved, we stopped for a quick lunch at a BBQ hut that some other campers recommended, then headed up toward Cook Forest.

An interesting thing about Cook Forest is that it’s an old growth forest, meaning that it’s never been clear cut for timber. Because of this, there are almost no ground plants under the trees. (Kudos to Kaley who was the first to answer this correctly. Yes, we quiz our kids on vacation. Doesn’t everyone?)

We took the dirt road to the fire tower and lookout point, which were both picturesque:

Tomorrow is Camden’s birthday, and he’s insisting we go back to Applebee’s, since yesterday, the waiters sang to Alec and gave him ice cream.

Finally! Tuesday morning we managed to get out the door, and head off to Penn Wood Airstream Park, leaving around 11:30 or so.

I had decided to head up route 66 (no, not THAT one), because it seemed like that would be the most straightforward way to get here, since 66 goes right past the entrance to the park. I found all the resources I needed to get a google maps route into our Magellan eXplorist 500 GPS.

We managed to get here, but there isn’t a checkbox in google maps that says “minimize hills”, so there were times that we were in first gear, going about ten miles per hour. We’re going back a different way…

We arrived at PWAP around 2 pm, and were greeted by the nicest camp hosts you’d ever want to meet. Unhitching went off without… well, you know.
I had some problems opening the gray and black water tank valves, but with some WD-40, that was fixed (somewhat).

After the unhitching, we left Alec at the camper to do some important setup tasks (hooking up the XBOX360) while the rest of us went to the Wal-Mart to get the groceries that we didn’t think would survive the trip. On leaving the store, we were greeted to a downpour that lasted until just after we had it all unloaded.

Cam and Kaley made some friends with (the only other) family with children, and spent the remainder of the day riding bikes and fishing in the pond.

The next day was pretty uneventful. We had a birthday cake for Alec, the gray water tank backed up into the tub again (briefly; I didn’t have the valve open enough…), and the kids played in the stream and playground.

Ironically, despite being two hours north on Pittsburgh, there are people here from Latrobe, more people from Latrobe that live in Greensburg now, and people from North Huntingdon.

Tomorrow, I guess.

Yesterday, I installed the refrigerator and microwave in the airstream, and did some tidying up in preparation to taking the camper this morning to get it inspected.

I seemed to remember how to hitch it up OK, and didn’t have much trouble getting the trailer out of the parking spot at my in-laws (aside from picking up some branches in the stuff that sticks out of the roof), and slightly bending the FM antenna.

The inspection went OK as well, with the major problem being that the garage ran out of lightbulbs trying to replace all the running lights, and the left turn signal not working. (Turned out that it was a loose connection in the harness that runs from the car to the trailer.)

I brought the Airstream back to our house, and parked it in a VERY narrow alley. Nobody’s complained yet that I parked it there, blocking the alley, but really, they can go around the block…)

I’m having to pause in our preparations (hence the time available to write this post) because between my wife and I, one of us has to be on baby duty, and right now she needs to go to the bank and grocery store.

Our current plan is to leave as soon as possible, drive the two hours to the campground, and hope the office is still open when we get there. The weatherpeople say that there’s a cold front moving in, and it will bring cooler temperatures, right behind lots of wind and thunderstorms. Not exactly the kind of weather I want to be driving in… Oh well.

More updates as we get a chance.

Let water freeze in it.

I got back over to the airstream today, with my supplies for soldering the pipe, since the compression fitting wasn’t… fitting. After some problems with the solder joint also being too small for the old pipe, the saqme as the compression fitting, I finally got it on and soldered.

For the other side of the pipe patch, I thought i’d still use the compression fitting, allowing for future repairs, and possibly allowing a spot for water drainage next fall.

I went ahead and torched the pipe, and applied probably too much solder to the joint. Looks OK, but really, that’s not saying much at all. it could still leak. I then attached the compression fitting to the other side, and went to turn on the hose.

I ran back to the trailer (since the hose shutoff wasn’t near the camper) and looked under the sink. No water from the joint, but i still heard something spraying, and saw dripping water.

It turns out that the water pump has a plastic body, and some residual water had stayed in the pump, after I ran the water out of the tank last fall, and when it froze, the body cracked.

Well, I removed the pump, and went to Lowes to get a shutoff valve to attach to the cold water feed where the pump had attached. I apply that, and turn the water back on. No leaks from where the pump was, but I STILL heard “pssssssss”.

Remember that compression fitting?

I ran, turned off the hose, and then scrambled for a wrench and pliers. As I was trying to tighten down the nuts, the whole pipe came out of the fitting, and SPLOOSH, I got soaked with residual water spraying out of the pipes.

That joint is now soldered.

In  other news, after an extended examination of the LP gas lines, which all seemed to be working, I got the water heater to light (on the ninth attempt.) The water got hot. Oh, and the faucet in the kitchen leaks.

We’re going to have to put off our departure until at least sometime Monday, since we weren’t able to get the camper in for inspection on Saturday. And, we’re totally not packed, or otherwise prepared to go on vacation.

We’ve decided to go to Penn Wood Airstream Park, outside of Clairon, PA, since it’s close and relatively inexpensive. Unfortunately, this was the first day I got to go to the Airstream and check on the systems.

I planned on accomplishing the following:

• Refilling the air in the tires, making sure the tires hold air after sitting 11 months slowly going flat;
• Connecting the water lines, and firing up the water heater (which I’ve never done);
• Re-repairing the torn vent tubes;
• Testing the (electric-only) refrigerator, and reinstalling it if it works;
• Cleaning out the interior, to clean out the mouse-signs and sand from last year.

There’s a warning sticker on the air compressor that cautions you to only plug the compressor into an outlet, never an extension cord, and boy, they weren’t kidding! I ran 3 lengths of extension cord from my in-law’s house to the trailer, and tried starting the compressor. The noise it made was of the “aChug Hummmm…” variety, so I wheeled it back toward the house (and two of the 3 extension cords). There, I got an “aChugmmmmChugmmmmmChugmmmm…” I can’t really figure out how, but somehow the compressor just KNEW I was trying to cheat.

So after I plugged the compressor into the house outlet (where it worked fine), I ran the lengths of hose to the airstream to pressurize the line. When I went inside, however, I found that the trailer had grown a shower under the galley sink. Apparently, my plan of blowing out the water lines to avoid putting antifreeze in them didn’t work out so well.

Sure enough, there was a split in the 1/4″ cold water supply, right where the sink fitting was soldered into the cold supply. I hacksawed the split section out and took a trip to Lowes. I decided to go with compression fittings, since I’ve never soldered plumbing before, and seems like it would be easier to fix future breaks with compression fittings.

It seems that the pipes either expanded slightly all along it’s length, or the pipes from 1977 were made slightly thicker, because I wasn’t able to get the compression fitting on the sink side, despite cutting the pipe back several times. I think I’m going to have to learn how to solder plumbing, and quick, since we’re suppoed to be leaving next weekend, and I still don’t know if the hot water tank works, which is important, if we’re going to be using the shower.

I gave up on the sink for the moment, and went to fix the torn vent stack hoses. That turned out to be another problem, since removing the old tape revealed that one of the hoses was torn way below the level of the floor, and to fix that, i’d have to remove the belly pan to access it.

That problem put me way behind schedule, so I’m going to have to find time this week to catch up.

I hauled our air compressor over to the in-laws today, to help winterize the Airstream. It was kind of sad, since this made it clear that we were done using it for the season, even though we had wanted to do one final fall camping trip.

The first step was to plug in the inverter to top off the battery, and to power the water pump. Then I turned on the pump and the galley sink faucet, and let the water pump drain the fresh water tank. While that was going, I opened the grey tank and let the water drain right out. (the black water tank was already empty.)

After the fresh tank was empty, I shut off the pump, opened all the faucets,  pulled the shower hose off the wall and laid it in the bottom of the tub, and attached the compressor to the city water hookup with a short section of hose that has a male garden hose adapter clamped to one end, and the other end with a air-tool quick release fitting clamped to the other end (just using hose clamps.) I was using pre-compressed air at 60 psi; the compressor blows the breaker that leads from the shed to the trailer.

When I attached the air to the fitting, the remainder of the water, plus a lot of air, started blowing out of the faucets and shower. The pipes also started buzzing; I imagined that was the check valve getting blown around inside it’s seat?

While the air was going, I went inside and opened the toilet flush valve until the water was cleared from that too. (I tried the toilet sprayer, but nothing came out, water OR air. I wonder if that will cause problems?)

I closed the faucets back up, re-pressurized the water line,  and opened the drain valve on the hot water tank. A surprising amount of water sprayed out, along with some black gunk at the end. (Ew!)

The final step was to pour some RV antifreeze into the drain of the sink, shower, bathroom sink, and some down the toilet. Hopefully, this will be enough to prevent frozen cracked pipes, and avoid having the water lines contaminated with RV antifreeze.

We also pulled out the sheets, games, and some wayward clothes hidden around the camper, and swept it out. I still need to go back with some D-Con traps, since there were mouse “signs” all over, too.

We packed up our camp into the camper and suburban at about 6:30pm yesterday, pulled through the dump station (we knew it was time to go, because the shower started backing up again, just a little.)

After a stop at a Shell station about a half hour from the island, and it’s interesting to see what the price caps are at the different gas stations are, (the Shell was $85,) plus air in all 8 tires, we were on our way.

The trip was really uneventful, but long. we probably left the shell station at 8:45pm, and unhitched at the temporary spot in front of the in-laws at 4:45am, and got back home to a house full of stinky dogs a little after 5.

Now what’s left is to go back to the Airstream, repark it, and clean it out.

I’ll log about the revelations about what needs done in the airstream in another post.

P.S. I calculated gas mileage with and without towing:

• Driving around MD, not towing: 9.5 MPG
• Towing back from MD, correct tire pressure in all 8 tires: 8 MPG

Yesterday, we got up early and went to Ocean City, MD, which is about 10 miles away from where we’re camped.

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We determined yesterday that the water in the grey tank smells just as bad, in it’s own way, as black water.

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