Airstream,
RV Camping
& Travel Tips

Kathy Deggendorfer was raised to appreciate design and details.

Growing up in Portland, Oregon as a daughter of the owners of Columbia Sportswear, she “spent a lifetime of looking at stitch length and bar tacks,” she said. “I like to see pattern. The first time I saw an Airstream I thought, wow, those rivets look just like the top stitching on the side of a pair of jeans.”

Love the allure of Airstreams but don’t have one yourself? Well, what’s the matter with you. Get one. Join us. Resistance is futile. Want to spend the night in one first? No problem. That’s a thing.

There are several “Airstream hotel” options out West.

Just in time for the holidays! A one-of-a-kind gift for you and your trailering friends.

Spend any time at all on the American highway and you’ll see one: the world’s largest [fill in the blank].

The Frazee, Minnesota turkey. The Vergas, Minnesota loon. (Giant fowl are popular in MInnesota). The Medicine Hat Teepee in Alberta, Canada. The list is endless; their aficionados, legion.

If you have a very long Airstream you’ll have trouble turning it around—especially if other gawkers pull in behind you—at the site of Salem Sue, the World’s Largest Holstein Cow, who makes her home at the top of a steep hill in North Dakota.

R&B Events really knows how to throw an Airstream rally. Or educational seminar. Or festival. Or whatever that nonstop party was last week at Seven Feathers RV resort/casino/convention center in Canyonville, Oregon.

To expedite this post, please imagine I’m writing the the usual glowing review (food/excellent, entertainment/fabulous, activities/fun, etc. Insert your own superlatives). Dare I say that my Great Destinations seminar and Airstream Cookie Decorating workshop were highlights?

Early this spring I reached out to 1859 (the magazine named for the year Oregon became a state) and pitched the WBCCI Oregon Unit as the subject for an article.

“In an intelligent and beautiful format, 1859 explores the landscapes, the personalities, the movers and shakers, the history and the architecture that is the jewel of the Pacific Northwest,” states their website. We were thrilled (I think, mostly) to learn that the Oregon Wally Club would be featured in the July/August 2013 issue.

A real live professional photographer was assigned to attend our rally…

How do you tell the quality of a diner? By its chicken fried steak, of course.

Maybe it was just the mid 80’s, when everything was better, but the finest I ever tasted was at Boz Scaggs’ Blue Light Cafe on Union Street in San Francisco. I’ve been chasing that high for three decades. (The Blue Light today, minimized and lost to new management, serves greasy, monotonous bar food paired with Jello shots.)

The award for Second Best Chicken Fried Steak went to a diner outside Grand Coulee Dam. Actual steak, with a bone, real and delicious. The coating, crispycrunchy. The gravy, oh god, the gravy: not too salty, and lumpy with pork sausage.

To rectify a massive oversight and kill time until we get back on the road, I asked Ralph, co-pilot of our DWR, to finally guest post on ‘Streaming. Ladies and gentlemen, for the first time ever, put your hands together for “The Master of History”:

Hello! I’m the other half (or quarter, if you count Ripley and Raven) of the quartet that’s featured here. I’m the one that’s the product of that celebrity math equation on the “Who is ‘Streaming?” page, and the one with the foldable fetish.

I towed into Pendleton, Oregon minutes before the Westward Ho! parade and faced nowhere to park; every empty slot and lot teemed with RVs and horse trailers and teepees. Somehow I squeezed into a miracle spot in the WalMart parking lot, stuffed to the curbs with motorhomes, tents, and rednecks camped in the beds of their pickups…like spring break for hillbillies. I followed the crowd and piles of manure on Court Street to the all non-motorized parade which showcased wild west wagons and buggies, all manner of cowboy, Indians, Mexicans, sheriffs, preachers, outlaws, firemen, Oregon Trail pioneers, weird timber equipment, every rodeo princess in the Northwest, longhorns, mules, donkeys, horses, miniature ponies, and State Treasurer Ted Wheeler.

The state fair may be legend, but Minnesota’s podunk summer festivals—Detroit Lakes’ Water Carnival, the Audubon Pet Parade (which took ten minutes, beginning to end), and “Looney Daze” (sic) in Vergas—deliver superior fun with easier parking.

Lakeside communities in northwestern Minnesota—frozen into a block of ice for seven-plus months—have to cram their pent up energy into the short tourist months of summer. In Vergas, where the loon is revered as a deity, you’ll find loon ball, the worlds largest loon, and, in August, Looney Daze. (Actual slogan: “WhAt HaPpEnS In VeRgAs!…StAyS In VeRgAs!”)