Before I Airstreamed...

[ROBERT CROSS]

0-1964 nutt'n

1963-68 government issue

1969...tents on the ground

1973...Chevy Vega hatchback with tent

1980...tents on the ground

1987...63 22' Safari

2004..."Cloudsplitter"

The next one will have wings.....hopefully.

[HiHoAgRV]

Great thread. It's neat to see some of the forum regulars and their older posts...

My parents did some camping, mainly as a place to stay while seeing areas. I don't think they ever stayed at a place for more than an overnight stop. Never for the 'fun' of camping.

As a kid, We had a sears popup and used it as a place to spend the night during cross country trips. A couple of long weekends were actually the only 'camping' we did.

We tented under my parents airplane wing at the EAA convention in the late '60's (a rented tent and we froze!)

When the family out grew the airplane, Dad built a super B-van for the annual trip to the EAA convention. A couple of years the trip was extended to include some side trips like the Smoky Mountians. Some buddies and I borrowed the van for annual trips to Road Atlanta and the SCCA Runoffs.

Fast forward to Married life...

The Misses had never camped and our first outing in a tent, it rained but she was hooked. Then came the Musty borrowed popup (one weekend was all it took to decide to sell our houseboat and buy a camper, not a popup)

A '88 Holiday Rambler 34' class A was perfect for us until Katrina ate it and gas prices went into orbit.

The advertisement for a restored Front Kitchen Spartan had me looking for Aluminum and we ran across the '77 29' 'Stream on EBay, just 150 miles away, we bought it on a 4 hour whim.

Now it's a 34' 'Stream in the back yard.

[jjustice]

A question, I have seen SOB used many times but I have not been able to determine what SOB means. The obvious is not correct I know. Thanks,
jjairstream@gmail.com

[ROBERT CROSS]

Some other brand....

http://www.airforums.com/forums/f138...ist-28713.html

[sharbours]

My husband & I both grew up in Southeast Alaska - Sean in a floating logging camp that moved around the islands as needed for their jobs, and me in the 'city' - an island town of 11,000. As kids, we spent all day outdoors playing in the Alaskan wilderness. Sean had his own boat from age 11 and the main rule was to let the adults know which direction he was going every day in case they had to send out a search party. No one we knew had anything like a travel trailer. My family would go out once a year on our boat for a week, with several of my parent's friends, to catch our limit of salmon. Dad wouldn't let us use our fresh water for showers; we had to swim in the ocean to clean up!

Every year my junior high school would send the 7th graders out on a camping trip, and the 8th graders out on a survival trip, for 3 days. On the camping trip we learned things like how & where to build a latrine, set up a tent, build a fire, and clean up before you left. On the survival trip, each group was dropped off on an island. You could bring a sleeping bag, food supplies for the 1st and 3rd day, and a 5 lb coffee can filled with everything we'd been taught we'd need to survive a few days in the wilderness to use on the 2nd day. You wrapped a sheet of heavy plastic visqueen around the outside of the can (to be used to make a lean-to shelter), filled the inside with firestarters made from folded cardboard tied with string dipped in wax, waterproof matches, Lipton soup packets, first aid supplies, a small bottle of bleach to sanitize water, and anything else you could make fit. You filled all the empty space with dried rice. You could use the can for cooking over your fire if needed. We learned (and ate) just about all the edible things that can be found on an Alaskan beach & forest. This was not recreational camping!

When Sean & I lived in Arizona, we went tent camping once or twice, but didn't see what the big deal was all about. After we moved to Oregon and went tent camping with friends at Detroit Lake, we began to see the appeal of travel trailers. We bought our Argosy in 2007, and quickly found out what we'd been missing! We try to go camping at least twice a month in the summer, and are starting the season earlier & ending later each year. I think we're hooked!

Sharon & Sean

[StingrayL82]

I started tent camping, when I was a kid.

When Sherri and I dated, we took our tent to Big Sur every weekend to a park, but the name eludes me right now.

When we had kids, we traded our 1979 L-82 Corvette for a 1973 Fireball Class C, but quickly realized the limitations it had. We sold that and bought a 1968 29' Streamline Empress and had that for a few years. We sold that and bought a 1993 21' Sunline, a nice little trailer, but it was just that, little. In 2005, we sold the Sunline and bought our Sovereign, which I promptly took to the shop that did the outrageously expensive refurbish. Unfortunately, Sherri never saw the final result.

Brooke, the kids and I have used the Sovereign, most notably in 2006, when I went to Fort Huachuca in 2006 for the Basic Non-Commissioned Officer Course (BNCOC) and again in 2007, when we moved to Texas; we lived in the Sovereign for four months, before we got our house. We used the Sovereign once a couple times in 2008 and once in 2009....my job and the price of fuel put a real damper on our fun.

We took the Sovereign out yesterday to the car wash and got all the dirt off of her, in preparation for next weekend; Brooke is showing our horse and the arena has full hookups, so we're having some friends over for a nice BBQ and drinks.

Here are some pics of our rigs.

[dlb435]

I found an old 72 Safari on the side of the road:
"FOR SALE $2500"
I brought it home.
My wife cried and said it would never be livable.
Three weeks later we went cross country in it.
Three years later, someone broke in and trashed the trailer.
My wife cried.
We bought an other AS .
She's happy now.

[Yhottys]

Murray grew up camping. He and his family would hitch up their pop up trailer and camp on their land in northern Arizona.

Gemma's a city girl and never went camping but loved the idea of it. (She also likes Manolos-quite the dichotomy!)

When we met each other we'd go hiking and backpacking. We'd pitch our North Face tent after a couple of hours of hiking and enjoy our beautiful surroundings. (Once sales clerk at REI mistakenly asked Gemma while she was picking up a few things for a camping trip if she was "car camping"-she was so offended. Gemma informed her that, no, she was not car camping, but instead hiking to the bottom of the Grand Canyon and hiking out the next day with a 40 pound pack.) Yes, she likes Manolos, but she's still "outdoorsy".

Then we learned about Burning Man and Burn Stream Court, a theme camp made up of Airstreams! What an art and music festival that celebrates creativity and individualism, yet encourages community building, and operates on a gift economy, in the desert and a camp made up of shiny, silver twinkies? How awesome! We so wanted to go! We've always admired the shiny silver twinkies when we saw them down the road.

We bought our first Airstream, Sweetpea, a 1974 25 foot Tradewind Landyacht, in 2006. We picked her up near Seattle the second week of August, and less than two weeks later we were at Burning Man!

We've since brought home some friends for Sweetpea, the last one being a 1959 26 foot Overlander. We've posted some images below. We found that her floor plan allows us to be comfortable and entertain a few friends when camping for more than a few days.

We like the idea of the Pan American. We could roll the Harley into the back, add the kayak and go!

Hope to see you on the road,