Douse the sails, let’s get an Airstream

Our sailing adventure comes to an end. Time for another slight adjustment – Let’s get an Airstream and get back to what we know we love – RV’ing in North America.

While we had planned to sail across the Pacific to Australia and then the Far East, we decided to end our sailing adventure. Here’s why. To be completely honest, we didn’t love the multi-day passages. They were stressful and exhausting.

Many sailing couples will bring on crew to help, but this is not something we want to do. Also, part of our global travel strategy is to take advantage of great travel opportunities – when they present themselves.

This is tough to do from a sailboat for many reasons that I won’t detail here. While we had a great sailing experience, we made a slight, well not so slight, adjustment.

And it is this: Let’s get an Airstream and enjoy road travel in North America as well as visit as many amazing countries as we can via trans-ocean cruises (which we also love) or commercial flights and AIRBNB.

While I was preparing Oasis for sale (not sail), Heather went back to Phoenix and get an Airstream travel trailer and a truck. While it would take a normal person months to accomplish this, Heather had our 2021 Airstream FB27 Globetrotter negotiated and purchased, as well as our 2022 Ford F-250 Diesel negotiated and purchased.

We completed a 7-day boondock near our cabin in Munds Park AZ. to get to know our Airstream and truck and planned the first leg of our “RVing in North America” journey. The first leg is in the Dolores River/Durango Colorado region. We’ve RVed in this area many times and simply love it.

Our first stop is Priest Gulch just north of Dolores on the Dolores River, which is one of our favorite RV campgrounds. It provides a great setting in the Aspens and Pines, at a cool 7500′ elevation that provides for great daytime and sleeping temps, and great hiking for me on the Bear Creek trail as well as the Priest Gulch trails. Another huge positive is the Dolores River running through the middle of the campground.

For our 2nd stop, Heather found a real gem of a campground called West Dolores Campground. It’s a Forest Service campground and is rated 9.8. It has a beautiful setting at about the 7500′ elevation range along the West Dolores stream.

It has both reservable and first come first serve electric, water spigots, and the cleanest vault toilets you can imagine. It also has reservable electric sites. We had site 10 – an open electric site and loved it and stayed here a full week.

During our stay at West Dolores campground, we went into the town of Dolores for date night at the Dolores River Brewery. Great pizza and a local stout – yum. The bartender mentioned an event they were hosting Saturday. 1-mile beer run (no thanks) and a performance by a Native American Reggae band called the ‘Yoites. Gotta see this!!!! We did, and they didn’t disappoint. Saturday night was a blast.

Now on to our first Rally, and Airstream Rally! We’ve never done a Rally, ever, of any kind. It was at the Views just NW of Dolores. A four-day weekend event with plenty of food, events like wine tasting, hiking, and a lake day where I caught my first fish of the trip.

There were a total of 25 Airstreams registered and we met a lot of very nice couples. Wine tasting at the Sutcliff Winery was great, along with an epic hike at the Canyon of the Ancients.

On to Vallecito Lake, just east of Durango, which is one of our favorite RV Camping areas in the Durango area. While we’ve been here many times, this visit was special. First, the Forest Service campground is very nice, and while we did have a site reservation, they also have First Come First Serve sites, some with electricity, that you can transfer to, and we Scored (did you notice the capital S?).

Following the Forest Service Campground, we also had a reservation at the Blue Spruce Campground for three nights with full hookups which allows us to clean up our holding tanks, get laundry done, etc… The Vallecito Lake and streams were running very high, and it was simply a beautiful setting to spend the next ten days in.

Between the rainstorms, I hiked the Vallecito Creek trail four times, which I believe is a World Class Hike. Heather filmed her first exercise video along the stream which provided a beautiful background for her, and enjoyed a couple of welcome visits to the local pub, which one included a fun Veterans Charitable event called the Naughty School Girl Run.

On to Junction Creek. We’ve not been to this Forest Service Campground before and it would not disappoint. Extensive and private sites, with power and windows through the large pines for our Starlink. We spent a beautiful, restful, and mosquito free 10-days in one site.

We kept busy, Heather with running on the hills and developing more content (making Instant Pot Baked Beans) and me hiking on the Colorado and Animas trails and getting my drumming on. Cathy and Rich, Heather’s sister and her husband, drove up from Hades (Phoenix @ 110+) to join us for a few days, which was by far the best part of the 10 days.

For the final leg of this Colorado segment, we headed back to Vallecito Creek to meet my sister Angie, and her husband Tom. They’ve just retired from their Educator careers and moved from the Midwest to Arizona.

It’s time to explore the Western part of the Country, and we’re glad they made the drive to visit us and check out the Durango area. We had a great 3 day visit with them which included hiking, white water rafting and playing some of our favorite games – Uecker, Oh Hell, Marmot tracking, etc…

And that’s a wrap on this segment of our Airstream journey. We’ll bid adieu to Colorado tomorrow and begin our trek to Idaho and Montana. We’ll stop for for a night in Cortez to provision, then on to Provo/Salt Lake City for a road break and heater maintenance, and then plan to be in Idaho by 7/18 or 7/19.