Airstream,
RV Camping
& Travel Tips

“Oh my god,” I said, when Joanne unlocked the door. “This is amazing.”

“It IS amazing!” she chirped. (I love people who love their things.) “My sister actually started it, back in the 1940s, then she grew up and got married and went oversees and I inherited it. We’ve been here 20 years now.” 

“Here” is a little pink shed at the end of a gravel driveway out behind her house on a residential side street.

I listed 27 dinosaur and fossil attractions in the “Dig This!” article featured in the Winter 14 issue of Airstream Life, but I’m sad to say that Dinosaur Caverns—renamed “Grand Canyon” Caverns in 1962—didn’t make the cut.

While I loved every minute of my visit there, the dinosaurs were just too…plastic.

The veneer of fifties kitsch still clings to the historic site on Route 66, where gigantic, green, cheesy cartoon dinos greet visitors.

Ask any RVing oenophile and they’ll concur: Harvest Hosts a fun and fabulous way to camp for “free”.

My southwest journey was a trip of firsts. My first look at the Grand Canyon. The first time my tires touched Route 66 (and what better place to emerge onto the historic highway than Kingman, Arizona). And, near Kingman, my first experience with the Harvest Hosts program.

The uncomplicated concept is thus: forty dollars a year buys you access to a super-secret map of wineries and vineyards where, for one night, you may camp at no cost.

I had a choice to make upon leaving the Alumafiesta Airstream event in Tucson. Drive north an hour to the Biosphere research facility and educate myself about Earth systems planning and policy? Or slog east toward El Paso on the I-10 to Dragoon, Arizona?

No contest. I went to see The Thing.

Every driver passing through the Southwest has seen the garish yellow billboards that command you to go to The Thing. As you near fabled Exit 322, they come fast and furious, dominating the scenery. “Mystery of the Desert” the signs proclaim. “Have You Seen It?” they tantalize.

My diagnosis came during Alumafiesta.

I was sitting in a computer repair shop in the bad part of Tucson, waiting for my iPhone to be resurrected after it fell headfirst into the toilet at LazyDays RV Park. Leafing through a GQ, I came upon an article about an interesting new disorder that I now know I have: FOMO.

Fear of Missing Out. The tongue-in-cheek article detailed the anxiety and self loathing you experience from overconsuming social media and discovering with every click (or swipe or flick) that your friends and acquaintances are having more fun than you are.