Airstream,
RV Camping
& Travel Tips

Alumapalooza has grown into a sprawling event that reaches from the new Airstream factory under construction at one end of Jackson Center, Ohio, to the other side of town near WBCCI headquarters. I’m glad I was Airstreaming with my URB-E foldable electric scooter at Alumapalooza 10.

This 200-site facility is a real slice of LA life. Catering to film & tv workers and wannabes, the campground is located next to a large sound stage on busy Balboa Boulevard in Van Nuys and packed with long-ish term residents who are doing business in the industry, trying to break into the industry, failed from the industry, or retired from the industry.

If you’re not into getting blind drunk on a Lake Shasta party barge (no shame in that), Lake Siskiyou Beach & Camp is the better alternative, only five miles from the town of Mount Shasta. At Lake Sis I feel like a kid camping with family during the summer of 1951.

Wisteria is hard to describe. The website explains it as “a special place” in the Appalachian foothills of southern Ohio. What’s special is not necessarily the 200-plus acres of land, but the people who congregate there. I visited three of my favorite folks in the world—Summer, Eric, and Michael—at Wisteria during a recent work weekend on the property.

Full disclosure: I couldn’t care less about Elvis Presley. But as a dutiful Amurrican tourist, I went to visit Memphis to pay my respects to the King. Staying at the Graceland RV Park in the shadow of Heartbreak Hotel is convenient, and everyone seems to be having fun. Graceland is a happy place—like Pisa in Italy, clogged with souvenirs—where everything is all Elvis all the time.

Texas is a great place. I say that because Texans have talked me into it. Who else has so much state pride? I’ve never been to Amarillo, so I went out of my way to cruise through on my way to Alumapalooza 7.

Dinosaur National Monument is a fun and colorful Airstream destination—the famed dinosaur bones are in the “quarry building”, constructed around the remains of more than 500 huge dinosaurs that perished there 149 million years ago. Go ahead, touch the bones!

There is no Harvest Hosts vineyard in Pocatello, Idaho; the Pocatello KOA was completely booked; and this was the ACTUAL review I read about the only other RV park I could find: “2 violent sex offenders live here…a hooker passed out in front of my RV.” Okay, OKAY, Pocatello. I get it. See you never. I circled back to Twin Falls.

Native Idahoans, feel free to disagree. Like much of the Lower 48, Idaho is a place that one begrudgingly passes through on the way to someplace else. But thanks to the Harvest Hosts program, I’m warming up to Idaho. There’s a nice little wine region northwest of Boise by the Snake River.

The longer I live in Bend, the more surprised I am to discover that Central Oregon is a hotbed of RV notables—including, now, the Nest Caravan. President and designer Robert Johans let me peek behind his fence and inside one of his innovative trailers, rolled out just eight months ago.