Can of beans Sovereign 1972

[Can of beans]

I did contemplate routing the bathroom sink down to the gray tank. I would have picked up the drain pipe on the other side of the tank tee. I thought about putting in a valve on the line down to the black tank so it would then back up into the gray tank also so I could do either or.



But after using our trailer on that 2 week trip. it worked fine. I found that i could not over fill my gray tank. the freshwater is around 40 gallons, and it's hard to get all of it out of that flat tank. The gray tank I put in is 37 gallons, and the center bath black tanks are around 20 gallons I believe.

The only trouble we would have is when we stayed in one place for 4 days, we ended up with a volcano in the black tank, that I had to shift once. with the extra water in the black tank it seems to drain better, and as long as we drove to the dump station that was enough to mix the tank.



Your Gray tank is a bit smaller so I would definitely put the sink to the black tank. We did find that most of the water we use is washing hands after using the bathroom.

[PizzaChop]

Thanks for your input. (I saw it right after I came in from drilling holes in tanks.)

I did "the deed" this morning so no turning back now.

I think it'll be fine as well.

[Can of beans]

The Door lock upgrade was well worth it.

We've done many Trips since.

Highlights were, a trip down to the Oregon Sunstones area in May of 2022.
My favorite campsite was Hart mountain. Gathering sunstones at the public area was fun, small ones are everywhere. it's a beautiful site, and the campsites are generously long and pretty flat. We then drove down through Nevada and up through to see the Steens unfortunately the road was still closed, but we extended our trip and went up to John Day and walked the Blue Basin trail.

[Can of beans]

We did a quick trip to Honeyman State Park with my parents, it's a very nice park, but Covid times were strange.



Then we went to Waldo lake, it had a pretty bad mosquito problem, and another camper had a heart attack in the campsite in front of our trailer. That shortened our trip, but the lake was really pretty.

I bought a set of Harbor freight aluminum ladder rack thingies, and that let me mount the Kayak racks on the Truck

[Can of beans]

We then did a few day trips to the beach, a backpacking trip into Duffy Lake nearish to the Santiam Pass.
then on a whim, we got a campsite out at the Mud Lake campground at Anthony lakes.
Wow, this is one of my new favorite places in the world. it we were there the end of September/beginning of October, so it was great that Mud Lake has power, the temperatures got pretty low by morning, but there are Great hikes that were pretty easy. Anthony lakes is in the Elkhorn mt range in Eastern Oregon, across the Valley from the Wallowa mt range, but it seemed less popular. They have a ski resort that supposedly has great powder skiing, but it's a fair distance from where we live. most of Oregon is very Volcanic(Black rock), but these two ranges are Marble outcroppings from the sea floor. It was beautiful and different.

We took the long way home, across the range and down to Ukiah, and eventually to Mitchell through the high grass lands. I hadn't been through there before. In Mitchell of course we stopped at Tiger Town brewing, once they had a dairy free Cheesecake dessert, that made my youngest daughters day, it's not often she can have a dessert at a restaurant, so we try to stop in there whenever we're near. Sadly they were out of stock that day.

[Can of beans]

This year we started with a trip to Nehalem bay State Park, luckily we were there between Cougars we had a nice weekend with Dave and Susan, and Chris(Brother to Elizabeth) and Ollie our nephew came also. We dug razor clams up at Sunset beach on the way to Nehalem bay, and the next day we got some Purple varnish clams there just to see if they were any good, (Meh). It also happened to be the sand Castle competition up at Cannon Beach, so we drove up one morning to look at that.



I also want to Plug the Manzanita Fresh Foods grocery store, Their mission was to have 85% of their inventory be things not normally carried by other stores and it showed. we walked down nearly a full aisle of Dairy free ice cream and treats, as well as many other dairy free products. My daughter was so happy and that makes me happy.

[Can of beans]

Our Big loop trip this year was

Oregon Caves, Redwoods, Mt Lassen, then a quick stop at Diamond lake on the way home. My parents took their motorhome and pulled a Jeep, and Dave and Susan pulled their Airstream.



Oregon caves was very cool, it's also unique in Oregon for being a Marble cave rather than just another Lava tube. We did the guided tour, and I highly recommend it, inexpensive and informative. It does have a lot of stairs, My dad walked that one with us, the others decided they had done it before or to skip it.

We reserved the Chinquapin Group camp for our small group, that's about as close as you can get our size vehicles to the Oregon Caves, quite reasonable price wise, and one of our favorite nights because we could shut the gate and no one else was around. The dry side of the loop trail from the campground did have copious Poison Oak, so watch your pets and children. Elizabeth is an expert at identifying it, and kept us safe.

We only spent the one night here before moving on, but it was a great campsite. It was also amazing just how much of "Jefferson State" is devoted to illegal Pot grows, I can see why they want the National guard's help to clean out the area.

[Can of beans]

Our next stop was Panther Flats campground to see the Redwoods. we spent 2 nights here, we did a extensive day of driving and short hikes to see the sights. It's hard to express just how big a tree is when you look at it, and it's the biggest tree you couldn't even imagine, then you look to the left and see a bigger one, and another over there beyond.

The only way to really describe it, is unless you've been there, you didn't know trees could get that big.



Panther Flats campground was confusing to me, I'm used to the way campgrounds are laid out here, and it was not the same. To find sites for our rigs , we ended up in 3 separate loop roads, but all in a line across them. I assumed that like in Oregon, the bathrooms are in the centers of the loops with paths from both sides. I could see both of our parents vehicles, but I had to walk completely around the loop ends to get to them. the bathrooms were at the ends of the loops on the road edge, which must make them easier to clean, and the only cross trails ended up directly in other peoples campsites. Weird thing to have a hang up about I guess but I'm a creature of habit. Also still way more marijuana grows than I'm used to.

[Can of beans]

Mt Lassen was pretty,

we spent a long day driving from Panther flats down the coast to Arcata and across on 299. It takes you through the Trinity recreation area, and through the Whiskytown recreation area. Nice trip, but the climbs were hard on our old truck. We filled up with fuel in Palo Cedro, east of Redding, and started climbing up to our campground at Manzanita lake. At one point we were down to 25mph to manage the engine temperature, but we made it. The other rigs felt the altitude also, so it must have been quite a climb in that heat.



The next day we left trailers in camp, and drove over Lassen to see all the usual sights. I had been worried that the roads had just recently opened from the snow, but it ended up that only the trail down to Bumpass Hell was still closed, we were able to see all the other main sights.



The next day some of us hiked up to Crags lake from the campground. The next day we were off on our way home with an overnight stay at Diamond lake on the way home.

The only issue I had with the trailer was that somewhere one of my batteries got disconnected on the way from the redwoods to Lassen, so it drained the other very low. I disconnected the Dead battery, and re-connected the other for the night, then I was able to run the generator the next morning during Generator hours to charge them both back up. Generators were restricted to just during mealtimes at that campground, it made me wish I had added solar Panels like Dave. I had to have my Dad shut off my generator while we were on the hike to Crag lake so I wouldn't be "that Guy" breaking the rules. Still we got enough charge and it all worked out.

The campground had a nice dump station also, so we dumped coming in, and on the way out to lighten the trailer again after a few showers.

[dbj216]

Well, well, Can of Beans; nice to hear from you and very nice you and your family are enjoying Airstream adventures. Your kids will remember them forever, and so will you. Happy to hear your Sovereign is working just like you planned it would.

The Redwood Forests are truly magnificent. I really enjoyed our visit there years ago. Last year we visited Sequoia National Park, and it too has huge trees. Maybe even bigger.

We are gong to travel to your state and Olympia National Park some early September. My DW loves the Pacific Northwest. And I like what I call big, wet trees. We are looking forward to it.

David

[Can of beans]

By September we should have plenty of big wet trees. Are you going up the Coast or along the Willamette Valley?

[Can of beans]

Back in my thread somewhere you can see where I changed out the backup lights with LED cab back lights. When I go them installed I was kind of disappointed in their brightness. They were just supposed to be an area light, so they seemed half brightness.

Today I was out tinkering in my shed, and happened to look at my box of extra stuff, and I saw another one of those lights. I guess I had bought it with the intention of changing the scare light. As I'm looking at the back of the light, I start to wonder why this potted sealed light has a small strip of black tape on the back, I pulled it off, and there's another small spade terminal. I popped it on my test battery and confirmed, The covered terminal is full bright, the one it comes connected to is half bright, Doh.


I went and unscrewed them from the back of the trailer and swapped the tape and terminal, now i have double brightness backup lights.

[Bubba L]

The lights look great. We did the same thing by converting the Bargman Trail-lite #6 to LEDs. I had to take the LED board out of truck lights and install in the #6 lens. The LEDs really show up. I bought a couple of extras for the future. They weren’t expensive. Good luck.

[PizzaChop]

Did similar mod to my back up lights back in the day with 1157 bulbs replacing the the original bulb springloaded base with a double contact, both connected to +12v.

Not quite headlight illumination, but sufficient for most backing.

Someday will replace with LED...if these ever fail.

[Can of beans]

The new truck pulls much better than the old one so far. Elizabeth hates the seat, it interferes with her hip and pushes it out of place. I hope we can figure something out.
As far as pulling, we only went over the coast range, but I've never had to slow down for corners going uphill. that was kind of neat. The air suspension works pretty cool. hitch up the truck, set the load bars, and the truck levels out, take the trailer off, the truck levels out, Neat.

We went to Cape Disappointment State park in Washington. I really liked the park, it's right on the beach, all of the campground loops are perfect circles, and each campsite is on a tangent to the circle, so it's very easy to back into them. We got there pretty late at night, but when we woke up I realized there was a giant rock right next to our campsite, perfect for the kids to climb up on.
Later we found some interpretive signs that showed that the whole campground was on a beach that formed after the Jetty's were built in 1917. The rocks were seamounts that had been out in the ocean before then. There's a maritime/Lewis and Clark museum there, Two lighthouses, and razor clams.
We were there for the clams, we did great on Friday morning. Elizabeth has an amazing eye for spotting the shows, and all 6 of us got our limits. Saturday we tried at the campsite beach, but the tide wasn't as good so we went back north to where we were before but it wasn't as good. I think we'll probably go back there some day.

Friday night we went back across the bridge, and had dinner at Ft George brewery. it was a great evening, and they could make Hazel a Dairy free pizza upstairs then we went and climbed the Astor column. On the way home Sunday we stopped at Pelican Brewery in Tillamook to get her the Dairy free fish and chips they make that she really wanted.

[dbj216]

Well, hello can of beans: It's been awhile. Certainly pleased you are using your "new" Sovereign for family traveling. You are creating great memories I'm sure. Tell us a little more about your tow vehicle. Sure hope the seating comfort gets resolved. That's important for long trips. I think of air suspension being a Ram option, but maybe others have incorporated it now. But a solid tow vehicle adds a lot to the safety of towing our Airstreams.

We drove the width of Oregon last fall along the river interstate. It was scenic and nice. I enjoy the huge trees in the Pacific northwest. We explored Olympic National Park, but we have beagles, not kids, so the trail walking was not available to us.

Photo of our 86 Limited 34' at Port Angeles, WA.

David