CAYUCOS CA AIRSTREAMER HOW TO
CAYUCOS CA AIRSTREAMER CRACKED

Man Skills, who seems to have had several talks with Rick when I wasn’t around, informs me that we need a pullout the size of a small runway to get on or off safely.

CAYUCOS CA AIRSTREAMER CRACKED

We haven’t cracked 15 mph, and the line of sports cars behind us is growing, but we resist the urge to pull off. We never go above 20 mph on this stretch! At least, this is the logic that carries us into our Highway 1 homestretch in Big Sur. (Plus, people slow down to check you out because, hey, the Airstream’s a looker.) Even when the road narrows and kinks, I learn that if I stay in the middle of the lane, point the truck where I want to go, and forget about what’s behind me, I’m fine. But once you’re behind the wheel, you get the hang of it pretty quickly. Hauling an Airstream is a bit like riding a bike for the first time: The sheer physics of it seems impossible when you’re an onlooker. Man Skills advises me just to drive normally and trust that the trailer will follow. I climb up in the seat, feeling the way I used to when I was a kid and my dad let me ride in front of him on his tractor. It’s time for me to bite the bullet and drive the hotel. I’m beginning to get the appeal of this genre of “camping.” Going all the way quiet, I get the same nature rush I usually feel after a night of camping-except the coffee I’m drinking came from a percolator and I slept in a dry, mostly comfortable (albeit U-shaped) bed. The following morning, drinking coffee outside in the 8 a.m. After we make sure our trailer won’t end up in somebody’s backyard, I cook a one-pot dinner of lemon chicken and wilted spinach, and we eat in the Airstream’s retro dinette, feeling like passengers in a first-class train cabin circa 1955. Home away from home: a retro-charming Airstream. Man Skills did everything else as we headed toward our goal: Kirk Creek campground in Big Sur, the creek itself taking on Shangri-la status the more hours we logged behind the wheel.

A team dynamic emerged: I checked for blind spots and rogue cars. The Ford F-250 Super Duty pulled the trailer as if it were a toaster, and I kept tabs on our side mirrors, which was easy because they’re the size of large flat-screen TVs. Lessons absorbed, Man Skills took the wheel as we chugged up the entry ramp toward the freeway.

CAYUCOS CA AIRSTREAMER HOW TO

He nodded and asked pertinent questions as our Airstream expert showed us how to dump our sewage tanks and walked us through the Manhattan Project of hitches. Man Skills-my nickname for my husband, since he can change a flat and back our SUV into a space the size of a mailbox, all strengths I could tell were going to come in handy-seemed equally excited. As I opened the floor-to-ceiling drawers, turned on the saucer-size gas burners, and peeked in the tiny shower (you could stand up in it!), the effect was like being in a shiny, ergonomic playhouse designed by NASA. It took several weeks of planning, but when we picked up the Airstream at a lot in Los Angeles, it gleamed at us like an airplane fuselage. Which is how I ended up driving a retro icon-the Airstream-up a highway that looks like the backdrop for a Hitchcock chase scene.

Maybe I had watched one too many episodes of Mad Men or ordered one too many Prohibition-era cocktails, but I became romanced by an idea that has been sweeping the nation: retroism. As we roar onto this white-knuckle stretch of Highway 1 north of San Simeon, all hairpin turns and glorious views of Big Sur, I have a moment of longing for my Volvo. We’re towing a 23-foot Airstream trailer with a rig that would be right at home at a monster-truck rally-headlights that could freeze a herd of deer, tires the size of Texas. Then we barrel past a sign that on any other excursion would be casually ignored-perhaps barely noted. Where you drive for miles upon miles, not even braking for traffic. My husband, Brant, and I are cruising the rugged, cliff-hugging highway on California’s Central Coast-aka the stuff of road-trip dreams. And there’s nothing but plate-glass blue Pacific alongside us. Sea air blows in through the rolled-down window.

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