Trailer envy

Our 1966 Airstream Caravel is really cool. A compact silver bubble, it’s space-y and cute. Seventeen feet long, it features a dinette that turns into a double bed, a “gaucho” - an Airstream term for a fold-out sofa - a kitchen with three burners, a stove, sink, fridge/freezer and furnace, and a bathroom complete with a shower. It’s all more or less in one room, with the girls sleeping at the front end (Daniel built a box-like structure that keeps Lulu from falling out) and us on the side, with a bathroom at the back end.

That doesn’t mean we don’t get occasional bouts of trailer envy, Daniel especially.
There are all kinds of recreational vehicles (RVs) available: trailers such as pop-ups (which are kind of like an expandable tent on a trailer base), fifth wheels (they attach onto pick-ups), truck campers (which slide to fit on top of pick-ups) and even something called a Toy Hauler (not sure yet what exactly that is); converted vans (the Dodge Ram is popular); and of course monster mobile homes such as the Winnebago. Here are some photos and proper definitions, if anyone’s interested:
http://www.rv-coach.com/rv/types/classes/rv_types.html

We’ve seen RVs of all vintages and sizes at various institutions, the Henry Ford Museum in Dearborn, Michigan the Elkhart RV Museum in Indiana and the Winnebago factory in Forest City, Iowa. Unfortunately, we were not able to make it to the Airstream factory in Jackson Center, Ohio. And of course, we’ve seen many an RV on the road and at campsites.

When camping, it seems that peeking into other people’s RVs is fairly commonplace. Once you get talking to someone, you can ask to have a look at their vehicle. One advantage of owning a vintage Airstream is that lots of people want to look inside, so it’s a bit of I’ll-show-you-mine-if-you-show-me-yours. Or, you can hover outside a vehicle – pretending to be on a walk around the campsite – until you get an invitation. Or just stumble in drunk, which one very friendly couple did to us at Custer State Park in South Dakota’s Black Hills.

The pop-up is probably the most sensible and lightweight option although they provide less defense against inclement weather, while the truck camper, for its part, is also great use of space. The vans look great but might be a bit difficult for our trip, since it might be difficult to carry a lot of stuff – and we have tons of baby and kid paraphernalia.

The mobile homes, some of which are as large as an intra-city coach bus, are pretty amazing – they tend to have an enclosed master bedroom, shag carpeting, separate bathrooms, microwaves, TVs, space for dogs, magazine racks, etc. We’re not so sure about the décor, though. And going for side trips would be cumbersome and expensive given the low mileage per gallon these things get. Lots of these people hitch a car onto the back of their vehicles.

That brings us on to the other Airstreams we’ve seen. The most luxe one was a 2008 model, which had white leather sofas. We saw the outside of a 30-foot 2005 trailer belonging to Rich Luhr, the editor and publisher of ‘Airstream Life’ magazine (www.airstreamlife.com). His has a master bedroom as well as a second room with a double bed and optional bunk bed, where his nine-year old daughter Emma sleeps. There was also an Argosy, part of a short-lived range of painted Airstreams that sometimes draws scorn from the hard-core Airstreamers. We’ve also seen a longer vintage Airstream, probably from the 1970s that we liked the look of – it had loads of awnings.

Our dream Airstream would have an awning – which would give us a front porch – separate master bedroom and bunk beds for the girls. And probably be a couple of feet longer.

However, there are advantages to being short and sweet: it’s light to tow and will conform to UK road regulations – and perhaps most importantly, Daniel can light the kettle from bed in the morning.

Three cheers for socialism

Sure, we have some gripes about the UK’s socialism – high taxes, long waits for doctors, incentives for not working, etc.
But being in the US, we are really grateful for some of the benefits we get from the system.

This morning at the Super 8 Motel in Murdo, South Dakota (yes, we succumbed again to the joys and comforts of motels – this time staying at the $64-with-tax king of motels, which boasts laundry, WiFi, cable, make-your-own waffles for breakfast and a coffee maker in the room), I was talking to the girl on the desk.

With a baby just a few weeks older than Lulu, she went back to work four weeks after the birth. I couldn’t even walk after four weeks.
It’s not that extreme for most people, who seem to get about three months – fully paid - off by saving up sick leave and invoking something called disability. My question is: does this imply that having kids means you’re sick and disabled?

In contrast, under UK law, I get nine months’ maternity leave and my job is protected for a full year. It’s thanks to that provision that we can make this trip.

If your company, like mine, does not offer anything over the government minimum, you get six weeks’ pay at 90% and then 120 pounds per week for the duration of the nine months, with the last three months unpaid.

Now on to healthcare, which is obviously a huge topic here, with President Barack Obama (vainly?) trying to convince Congress and the country to approve some type of universal coverage.

In the UK, a small percentage of each paycheck goes towards the National Health Service (NHS), and everyone is covered – whether they work or not. The system is slow and uneven, but usually, if something goes wrong, you can get it fixed.

One direct benefit to us is that Daniel, who has his own business, is covered without costly insurance payments. If we wanted to move here, we’d have to hope that my job gave our whole family coverage.

We don’t really get the opposition to universal health coverage – isn’t it in everyone’s interest to have a healthy populace?

The problem seems to be that Obama is spending all his airtime – we saw him on TV before a joint session of Congress two weeks ago and again last night on talk show Dave Letterman - extolling the good of his idea, rather than explaining exactly how it would work and how it would be paid for.

He’s got his work cut out for him. We’ve been listening to a lot of Christian radio in the car here – just to learn firsthand what exactly the conservative groups are thinking and saying – and they allege that universal health coverage is going against God’s will.

I don’t have that religious a background, but Jesus always struck me as a bit of a socialist, working on behalf of the poor, the sick and those gone astray. But these guys, who seem to have quite a following, say it goes against Freedom.

Thoughts?

Marian’s house

My American grandmother, Marian, was always a bit of a mystery. Maybe because by the time I was old enough to have more grown-up conversations, she was quite old herself.
Or maybe it was because she was always overshadowed by the legend of my grandfather, Irv.

What I do know is that Marian grew up in the northwest Iowan town of Paullina, in a very strict Calvinist Scottish family where drinking, dancing and other forms of fun were banned.
A teaching job eventually took her to Meservey, in north-central Iowa. It was there that she met Irv, an atheist, gambling, master dancer.
Well into their thirties, they got married and quickly produced three daughters and a son. The first two daughters were born into a one-room house, with the youngest sleeping precariously suspended over the eldest’s cradle.
With the long years of the Great Depression eventually easing up, they managed to acquire their own farm, where my grandfather raised tens of thousands of turkeys.

My memories of Marian revolve around summer trips to the library, her extremely long and angular brown Plymouth, her reading chair tucked away in the corner of the living room and her recipes.

Marian was famous for her cooking, producing amazing white and brown bread every day, at least one dessert at every meal, and of course, countless turkey dishes.
Whenever my mother makes one of Marian’s recipes – such as cheese soufflé and Swiss roll – she inevitably says “it’s not as good as Marian’s”.

So, on our way to South Dakota, we took a detour off Route 18 to Paullina, to get a sense of Marian’s earlier years. It’s a tiny town, welcoming visitors with a sign reading ‘Paullina, the best of small town America’.

My aunt Jean had given us a description of how to find Marian’s house: a two or three-story square shaped former farmhouse – older than all the neighboring ranch-style properties - on the south side of town.

We followed her suggestion of asking an older member of the community which home had belonged to R.C. Brown. The first person we saw, a lady tending the gardens of the Lutheran church, was able to show us the white, shingled house adorned with red, purple and pink hanging plants.

Seeing the house made it a bit easier to imagine Marian as a young girl, a daughter of a prominent family in the small town. There remain some of the features that were probably around in that day: the post office, dinette type place, grain elevator and water tower seen in all Iowa towns and the lake just outside of town.

We had lunch at that lake, part of Mill Creek State Park, on a Saturday afternoon blessed by the lingering Indian summer (everyone says the Midwest didn’t get a summer this year, but we were lucky enough to enjoy it once it did finally start at the end of August). There were a few RVs parked, a couple of families sitting by the lake watching their kids swim, and a father and son fishing in the water.

We swam, christened our red camping chairs (Coleman, and very comfortable!), had sandwiches prepared in the Airstream and just enjoyed the quiet afternoon.

Perhaps Marian and her family used to come to this lake.

We liked Paullina.

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That’s more like it

Our second night of camping was to be far more successful.

We pulled into the Lewis & Clark Recreation Area in Yankton, South Dakota at around 6, well before nightfall. Thankfully, we managed to get one of the last available RV slots alongside the swollen Missouri River.

Almost immediately, a man in the group parked opposite us leapt up from his camping chair to give directions on how best to reverse into our paved spot.

Reversing a car and trailer together is pretty hard. I have yet to drive the two together, and Daniel said that the only secret is practice.

As soon as we disembarked, Sophia went straight over to the man’s group, baby doll, three Barbies and Kiki, her much loved black and white stuffed cat, in hand. Having introduced herself and her brood, she waved us over. Shortly after that, we had an invitation to join them for dinner at 7:30.

Barb Nielsen and her extended family – who all live in and around Yankton - then plied us with food, prepared by three brothers using three different outdoor preparation methods (barbeque, Dutch oven and one other thing we can’t remember). They took Sophia to the bathroom and then held Lulu so Daniel and I could eat. They asked about our trip, told us about their family and livelihoods and gave us lots of tips on what to see in South Dakota, Nebraska and Wyoming – complete with directions.

We even got some recipes, both for the Dutch oven
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dutch_oven

Beer Bread:
3 cups self-raising flour
3 tablespoons sugar
can of warm beer

Mix and put in Dutch oven at equivalent of 350 degrees until it gets a nice crust on top

(Another version used in the family is: 6 cups self-raising flour, stick of butter, can of warm beer)

Peach Cobbler
Box of cake mix
Can of peaches
Large can of pineapple chunks
Stick of butter

You don’t even have to mix this one. Stick it in the oven at equivalent of 350 degrees and remove when it gets a nice crust. Tastes great with peach frozen yoghurt.

Both of these were delicious…we got yet another recipe for Beer Pancakes (add can of warm beer – instead of milk and eggs - to pancake mix) in the morning, when once again we were treated to food.

False start

At last, the day came when we were ready to set off on the pioneering section of our Big Road Trip, having finally finished packing and stocking the Airstream.
A couple of hours (well, about five) after we meant to set off towards Sioux City, a city on the Iowa-Nebraska-South Dakota border, we left my aunt Jean’s farm.
About an hour later, having driven 40.3 miles, evening start to set in.
So we stopped in Algona, Iowa, where according to our trusty atlas, there was a state park.

A friendly Harley Davidson rider led us to the park’s campsite, taking us down winding roads into a deep forest whose trees soon obscured the setting sun.
With a wave and a smile, he left us near a sign that said ‘Campsite’. But we couldn’t see the campsite – until we realized that we were indeed already in it, and that we were the only visitors.
It took us about 10 minutes to decode the little wooden box that read ‘Deposit’, eventually understanding that the lid held park registration forms that were to be deposited along with a check for $9 for parties of six or fewer.

We don’t have a checkbook.

Deciding to embrace camping with a smile, we backed into electricity enabled site number 4, unpacked the trailer, turned on the lights and the pilot lights, settled the girls and started making preparations for dinner. Throughout this process, a surprising number of cars passed by the campsite. All of them contained kids in their teens or early twenties, who craned their necks to stare at us – New York license plates, vintage Airstream, family hellbent on outdoor domesticity.

Friday night at an unstaffed campsite. Of course. Maybe we were ruining their party.

The second time a car drove into the campsite itself, unloading a passenger into the bathroom facilities Daniel had deemed unusable, we decided to investigate. The two guys in the roofless Jeep were friendly enough, informing us that our destination was a favorite for weed-smoking teenyboppers and that we might want to check out a clean, safe, staffed campsite near a lake a bit to the north.

So were these kids nice stoners, or mean ones?

Dinner was almost ready, so we decided to go ahead with it. So we ate our pasta with sauce Daniel had prepared with Jean’s tomatoes, listening to the rising volume of kids who had parked their cars outside the campsite but still very nearby.

Explaining to Sophia that actually, our plan was to have dinner in one place and sleep in another, we packed up and left the forest.

We slept in the fabulous Burr Oaks Motel alongside route 196, it’s run by a Gujarati and is this weekend hosting Algona’s high school reunion attendees.
It is by far the cleanest and most comfortable motel of the four or so we’ve stayed in on this trip. We spent the rest of the evening watching cable TV and using the free WiFi, sipping a beer we never managed to enjoy over dinner.

Will we ever make it as campers? Fingers crossed we manage it today.

Dear Jean and Richard

Dear Jean & Richard,
Thanks so much for letting us stay on your farm this week, it was especially kind since you weren’t here for most of it.
Sorry we kept getting delayed by vehicle issues, we did know you had to go to Peoria to help look after your newest granddaughter, Zhi Yu, who was adopted from China. She had cleft palate surgery last week, and needed full-time care to recover.
Well, we’ve had a great time on the farm. Doing the chores you left us – feeding the cats, dog, sheep, horse and fish (hope we didn’t leave any out) and walking down the lane to the roadside mailbox – was fun and allowed us to be pretend-farmers. Thanks for asking someone else to do the pigs!!
Sophia fed Gus about 25 dog treats per day, so he’ll probably be pretty spoiled by the time you get back.
It’s great to see her enjoying all the things I used to love doing here as a child. She has really embraced farm life and particularly loves taming this year’s crop of cats.
Daniel spent most of his childhood in the countryside, so he is loving spending so much time outdoors and observing nature.
For me, it’s the quiet things that have been best: being back in same home you’ve always lived in, watching dust clouds rise up from the gravel roads from the rearview mirror, looking across endless fields of corn and soybeans towards a horizon miles and miles away, listening to the chorus of crickets at night, admiring pink and purple fried-egg sunsets in the evening and then skies powdered with stars and planets by night, and sleeping deep slumbers brought on by full days in the fresh air. And, it’s the first time I’ve gotten to see the crops yellowing and browning towards harvest-ability.
From the garden, we picked fat, juicy tomatoes, dug crisp potatoes, plucked tiny lima beans and selected a few choice yellow and orange marigolds to display on the table.
As instructed, we helped ourselves to all that you left in the fridge:
- The homemade things: pickles (kosher dill, bread-and-butter, cinnamon ones), grape jelly, strawberry jam (like sticking your nose into a just-picked super-ripe strawberry),
- More garden things: chunked kohlrabi, unpeeled baby carrots, cucumbers, the onions Sophia told you we like to eat whole and raw
- The leftovers: creamed corn, slow-cooked beef, ham, the green beans (yum!) and the Jello salad
- The things you bought for us: lettuce, peaches, apples, bananas, black olives, peanut butter, beer
- And your special hot chocolate mix! I remember using that recipe when I was growing up, and want to make it again here so we can take it on our trip – very helpful, since we’re struggling to get Sophia to drink milk
As far as how we’ve occupied ourselves, we’ve explored many small towns in this rural part of northern Iowa – Klemme, where you live, Thornton, where you and my mother grew up, the resort town Clear Lake, prosperous Garner, local metropolis Mason City, and Forest City, the home of Winnebago.
We went to your mechanics in Forest City, Danny at Lichtsinn Motors for the truck, and Ken at Ken’s RVs for the Airstream, and were pleased with both the level of service and price (and the bags of popcorn offered at Lichtsinn’s). To keep us busy while the vehicles were being looked at, we did the Winnebago factory tour, visited the hardware store (we are really looking forward to trying out the hand-powered mini-mixer), bought a few things for the trailer at the going-out-of-business antique shop and twice had coffee at the Cabin Coffee, which is friendly and seems to have big hopes of expanding throughout the Midwest.
Eldridge and Gladys, your cousins who live a few farms over, hosted us one afternoon and showed us the family book they had compiled – amazing to hear about relatives born in 1875.
It’s been fun talking to you on the phone each day and telling you about what we’ve been up to in your absence.
Sorry we’ll miss you by just a day, and my parents by two.
And thanks for having enough love, space and generosity for so many people.
Love,
Claire, Daniel, Sophia & Lulu

Ps. Enclosed is a photo of the watercolor Daniel did of your house and the farmyard. He’s experimenting with a new style of painting for our American trip.