Trip West

In May, we took a trip out west for a little sight-seeing.  We made reservations for the trip out, but stayed at some non-reservable park campgrounds once we got out there. Our cheapest site was Desert View Campground at Grand Canyon National Park – $6/night (with our America the Beautiful pass).

Meteor Crater, AZ

Grand Canyon from Desert View

Got snowed in one day at the Grand Canyon

Monument Valley, AZ

A look back, leaving Monument Valley

Goose Island Campground on the Colorado River, Moab, UT

Heading into Arches National Park – get there early to avoid the crowds. That holds true for just about everything.

Dead Horse State Park, UT

A view of the Tetons from the Gros Ventre Campground outside of Jackson Hole, WY.

All of these pictures were taken with a cell phone!

 

No more restorations for me

I’ve enjoyed messing around with these old campers, but it was time for something new.  We’re going to keep our 1956 Shasta, the teardrop trailer and the Alaskan truck camper, but we’ll be spending most of our time in this:

airbarn

1956 Shasta Maiden Voyage

For our maiden voyage, we went all the way to the end of the road…

Key West

US 1 that is – Mile Marker Zero – Key West, Florida.

St Augustine, FL

Our first stop was at Anastasia State Park in St. Augustine, FL where we were met with curiosity,parrot

but later found the natives to be quite friendly.me and parrot
Our next stop was at John Pennakamp State Park in Key Largo, and our final destination was Bahia Honda State Park – 35 miles from Key West.

Old Bahai Honda
In all, we traveled 1600 miles with no problems. The weather was great, the seafood excellent, and it’s good to be back home.

Shasta Screen Door

I recently bought a made in America dowel jig at a yard sale for $3.00 and wanted to try it out. Since I had a 6 foot piece of 1×8 poplar laying around, I decided to rip it down to 2” widths and build a screen door for the 1956 Shasta. Here’s a picture of it before assembly with all the dowels ready for glue up. The dowel jig is the black and aluminum piece with the T handle on it.
Shasta screen dowels
I ran screws through the bottom and top pieces to clamp everything into place after I glued the dowels. Here it is glued up, stained and poly’ed.
Screen door assembled
The handle access is covered with a piece of birch plywood with an aluminum slider and the screen molding is made from fir, so there’s a little color difference in the wood.
screen door hung
Shasta screen door

Back to the 1956 Shasta page: 1956 Shasta

Alaskan camper wheelwell area modified

Here’s a before, during and after look at the modifications that I made to the bottom section of my Alaskan camper so that it would fit into my truck bed.

Curbside: the box is now 3″ thinner than before

lower curbside rearAlaskan curb side bottom

Roadside: the box was completely removed

Alaskan lower left rearAlaskan roadside rearAlaskan road side bottom

I added electrical inlets and outlets, plus moved the water inlet from the overhang along the bedrail to the back of the camper.