Finishing Up and Going Camping

I've been busy on the trailer the last couple months leading up to our first trip of the season last weekend. We took the trailer out to Fort Stevens State Park outside of Astoria, Oregon with the Webers. The weather was amazing - especially for the Oregon coast in early June. It was about 75 degrees and sunny on Saturday and we spent much of our time with the girls on the beach.

Julia and Eva had a blast playing in the water, which was remarkably warm for the Northwest this time of year.

On the drive down, we caravaned with the Webers who were towing for the first time with their new truck. These two shinny '59 Airstreams cruising down I-5 got a fair number of double takes from other drivers.

Leading up to this trip, I finished a number of mechanical items that had to be completed before the trailer could be considered fully functional. This started with plumbing the gray and black tank drains . . .

and vent lines.

And contined with the installation of all the gas lines. The gas lines include a quick connect on the curbside so we can hook up our outdoor kitchen camp stove - a giant three burner stove for cooking group meals. I also installed an exterior shut-off valve for the inside stove/oven so little hands wont be able to accidently blow us up at night by turning on the oven or stove.

After tracking down a nagging leak in one of the gas fittings, I was able to install the restored Princess Oven and fired up all four burners. Unfortunately, I lost a day on this part of the project as I had to completely dismantle the kitchen cabinet and move it forward one inch because of an earlier placement error on my part.

With the gas lines completed and all the appliances operational, I made a trip down to Portland where Ryan's dad Dan installed a beautiful dinnette that he built for us.

I pulled the trailer up to Dan's house at about 8:00 a.m. a couple Saturday's ago and he went straight to work.

After about three hours in Dan's driveway, he had completely installed the dinette, created trim caps that fit the curve of the trailer, and finished off about five other small items I'd negleted over the last six months including the fridge countertop.

Once I got the trailer back home, I installed my furnace cold air return grate . . .

and the table legs and table.

And while many consider a TV an abomination on a camping trip, I couldn't resist the urge to throw in a little TV to play some DVDs or local news in order to get through the occasional rain storm that we just might encounter while camping here in the Northwest. You can also see my SeeLevel tank monitor just above the TV in this photo . . . it's mostly wired up but I need to make a couple more connections.

But for this trip, the TV was never even powered on. With the beautiful weather, great camp sites, and good friends, we spent 90% of our time outside (despite the endless onslaught of mosquitos).

Our next trip is in just two weeks to Grayland State Beach near Aberdeen, Washington. In the meantime we need to make a few trips to the store to stock up on some basic camping supplies. As we began settleing into the trailer we quickly realized we needed to make a list of things to buy, but first we had to borrow a note pad from the Webers. First thing on the list - note pad and pen.