Stargazer's Garage

While Roam Mobility worked fine for us in Portland, coverage in rural areas is severely lacking. Despite their access map showing coverage along Highway 20 as far east as Hamilton, in reality, we lost data on the outskirts of Sedro Woolley. At the campground, I switched in the AT&T SIM card and all is good again. Data is my oxygen.

Motorcycle vs. Car Drift Battle 2 is a video that shows how much fun skilled drivers/riders with capable machines can have on a twisty, closed-circuit road. After watching this my heart was racing and my foot and wrists were twitchy. I didn't know if I felt more like getting back into my Subaru Impreza WRX STI or Suzuki Burgman 400c scooter. By the way, the road in the video is the Maryhill Loops Road in Washington. It's closed to public vehicles, but available to rent for special events. Too cool. Drive safe!

Debriefing Notes: The campground was much busier this time with neighbors all along the row with us. It was nice to have other children for our kids to play with. When we arrived the power tongue jack on our Keystone Premier 31BHPR was not working. I suspect that it might be a loose ground like it was before. I'll fiddle with it more our next trip. Didn't have the manual crank with me so I just left the trailer 1" nose up. It wasn't an issue sleeping inside. Overnight temperatures were around 5 C. Bought a couple of vent opening pillows to put up at night to reduce the amount of heat loss through the ceiling in the evenings. Tried it Saturday night and the furnace seemed to run less constantly. Need to find some way to warm the 16 oz propane bottle for our table-top patio heater. With these cold temperatures, the bottle ices up quite quickly and pressure drops so much that the heater turns off even when there's still propane left. Keeping the bottle warm would...

We averaged about two gas stops per day on our road trip in the GMC Yukon XL Denali and Keystone Premier 31BHPR. We did one stop in the morning and one in the afternoon. A full tank cost just under $70 depending on where we were in the country. I took this picture while we were in Montana because they don't have such low (85.5) octane fuel where I live. It's strange to me because no vehicle I've ever seen before required anything LESS than 87 octane for optimum performance.... Even with fuel in Blaine, WA now costing nearly a dollar MORE per gallon than it did last summer, it's still cheaper than it is in Canada so traveling in the US always saves us money.

Day 3 of our 2010 Road Trip in our GMC Yukon XL Denali and Keystone Premier 31BHPR travel trailer had us traveling from Spokane, WA to Bozeman, MT, and according to Google Maps, covering a total distance of 645 km (400 miles) with an estimated 6 hours of driving. To tell the truth, this leg of the trip was the one that I was most concerned about because we were passing through the Rockies and over the Continental Divide with an elevation of 6393 feet. I've driven this route several times already in a passenger vehicle but never while pulling a trailer. I didn't know how the Denali would handle pulling the Keystone's 7600 lb GVWR for extended climbs. Our 2007 GMC Yukon XL Denali has a 6.2L engine with 380 HP @ 5500 rpm and 417 lb-ft torque @ 4400 rpm. The transmission is a 6-speed automatic with full-time AWD and it's never had any problems keeping up with traffic when pulling a travel trailer. I'm happy to say that it was no different in the high mountain passes. ...

We arrived in Spokane, WA, the final destination after our first full day on the road, shortly after 16:00. At Trailer Inns RV Park, the sites were the shortest we encountered during our entire road trip. The total length of our GMC Yukon XL Denali and Keystone Premier 31BHPR travel trailer is about 55' long (the ProPride 3P hitch adds an extra foot), longer than the available pull-through sites, but the manager was friendly and helpful in guiding us into our spot. This is an urban RV park but there was a nice playground for the kids to play while we setup for the night. One item of RV gear we discovered that we needed was a water filter. Living in Metro Vancouver, we were not used to the hard water we found in Spokane and luckily we had enough fresh water in our tank to last the evening. I picked up a disposable water filter at our next Walmart stop and it worked well for the rest of the trip. When we pulled in to our site, our Keystone Premier attracted attention and questi...

This is a picture of our GMC Yukon XL Denali and Keystone Premier 31BHPR travel trailer parked at the Winchester Wasteway Rest Area near Moses Lake, WA. Its name notwithstanding, we stopped here for lunch on the second day of our 2010 Road Trip. Because it seemed to be in the middle of nowhere, this location was very quiet compared to the bustling Indian John Hill rest stop we made earlier in the morning. There were still people coming steadily through, but everyone seemed to be in passenger cars coming in only for a quick pit stop and zooming back on the road right away. There were not very many RVs and no tractor trailers at all. The wide open parking lot allowed us to put out the slides and have a very relaxing lunch. This is one of the great benefits of RVing and hauling around our own portable hotel room!

We pulled over for our first stop in the morning at Indian John Hill Rest Stop at about 10:00. It's was a very busy location with lots of people coming in and out but I was able to pull our 2007 GMC Yukon XL Denali and 35' Keystone Premier 31BHPR travel trailer into a nice central parking spot. This rest area was large with nice grassy areas, picnic tables, and plenty of tourist information. The view is very nice, too, with the Stuart mountain range in the distance. Unfortunately, there was one dog owner who didn't follow the signs and had their large dogs loose outside the designated dog area, so I couldn't let our 2-year-old play in the grass. It was too bad because he really needed to work off some energy. We're lucky all our 5 kids travel really well. We've done extended road trips in the past, including driving to... ...Washington, DC, (see Road Trip 2007 , Road Trip 2008 , Road Trip 2009 ) and we generally find that leaving not too early, having a ...

The first full day of our 2010 Road Trip opened with blue skies and we were happy to put the previous evening's border glitch behind us and get on the road in earnest. The goal for today was to reach Spokane, WA, and seeing the sun appear from the mountains behind us was energizing.... Since we had arrived at Camping World in Burlington pretty late, all the spots in the back lot were full. We ended up parking on the side lot and left around 07:00 hoping not to impact workers arriving in the morning too much.

In August 2010, our family of 7 went on a road trip in our 2007 GMC Yukon XL Denali and 35' Keystone Premier 31BHPR travel trailer. From Vancouver, Canada, we drove over 7500 km (4650 miles) through the United States taking the I-94 East to Thunder Bay, Ontario and the I-90 West back home from Minneapolis, MN. We spent nearly 30 days on the road living out of our trailer and had an incredibly great time. However, the journey was not without its bumps (including the first night when we found ourselves in the wrong lane at the border crossing and a flat tire in North Dakota), but every "wrong turn" we encountered happened at the "best" possible time to NOT ruin our trip. Even the bent axle that forced us to spend an extra 3-days in Deer Lodge, Montana, did not put a dark shadow on our vacation, because it allowed us to explore and make a special connection to a place we had no idea existed. As a result, we saw a very beautiful part of the country that we will alwa...

We're another step closer to getting on the road with our brand new 2010 Keystone Premier 31BHPR travel trailer. The ProPride 3P hitch I ordered several weeks ago was shipped 11 May 2010 and is making its way from Grand Blanc, MI to the west coast. It left Hodgkins, IL this morning. I can't wait! UPDATE: 14 May 2010 The hitch is now on the West Coast! View ProPride 3P Hitch Journey in a larger map Can you tell I'm excited? Past journey as of 12 May 2010 View ProPride 3P Hitch Journey in a larger map

Thanksgiving Camp Originally uploaded by istargazer . We left home after I got off work on Friday to go RVing in our Tango trailer. It would be our last trip of the year before putting the RV into storage for the winter and would mark the 29th night of camping in 2009. A pretty good number if I say so myself! It took us almost an hour to get over the Port Mann Bridge, but traffic was pretty smooth after that. We got to the campground after dark and I had the hardest time backing the trailer. I could not see a thing back there and because I didn't remove the trunnion bars, I was paranoid about turning too sharply and breaking them off like I did earlier in the summer. It was actually my first time doing it in the dark and after a couple of failed attempts, a couple of neighbors, Mark and Steven, helped guide me into position. Without their help it would have been a very long night for us! The weather for the weekend was clear and sunny but cold because of the arctic air tha...

Lakeside RV Park: 3 Nights 12321 Hwy 99, Everett, WA 98204 Talk about contrasts! From our very first camping trip into the lush forests around Cultus Lake, BC we went to our next destination of urban pavement: Lakeside RV Park off of Highway 99 in Everett, Washington. To be fair, after first impressions of the "neighborhood", the place was quite livable and suited our goal of being close to shopping. In fact, we got a water-view "lake" side spot right next to the fishing pond. We did lots of time at Camping World, Walmart, and Target as well as doing a little shopping at an outlet mall, and I was able to install and setup a few more things on our travel trailer. Click the thumbnail below to see more photos. 2009 Everett I got to climb up on top of the roof of the travel trailer for the first time to install the MaxxAir II vent cover. It allows us to keep the vent open without letting water come in through the opening. I'll need to get up there a few more times b...

Click here for MAP of Day 2: Spokane to Billings Click here for all of today's photos . Sorry for the late post. I had some issues with the geotagging when we crossed time zones. I'll update this post tomorrow night with a summary of details. For now you can find the Google Map of our progress and a few pictures. Our day ended with a little twist when we arrived at our hotel and found it to be surrounded by water and inaccessible! Today's Summary: Spokane, WA to Billings, Montana Total distance traveled: 912.8 km Estimated travel time (GPS): 7 hours, 43 min. Total elapsed driving time: 8 hours, 16 min. Average fuel consumption: 11.5 L/100 km Average speed: 123 km/h Highest observed outside temp: 30° C Number of confirmed V1 bogies: 1 Grateful for: The "Grade Logic Control" on the Honda Odyssey avoids gear-hunting on uphills and descents, and downshifts for added engine braking. Because today's route took us through mountain passes, this feature was re...

Click here for MAP of Day 1: Vancouver to Spokane . Click here for all of today's photos . 07-07-07: Road Tripalooza begins! Today we started our road trip to Washington, D.C. :0) I bought a GPS data logger so I'm tracking our progress on Google Maps and geotagging the photos I'm taking during the trip. Today's Summary: Vancouver, Canada to Spokane, WA Total distance traveled: 666 km Estimated travel time (GPS): 6 hours, 20 min. Total elapsed driving time: 6 hours, 30 min. Average fuel consumption: 10.8 L/100 km Average speed: 117 km/h Highest observed outside temp: 32° C Number of confirmed V1 bogies: 2 Tip of the Day: Avoid long border lineups by going into the Duty Free shop and buying something, anything. We shortened a projected 1+ hour wait to about 15 minutes by buying a $7.50 mini-bottle of Absolut Vodka. When you exit the store, the attendants direct you to merge back into traffic at the front of the border line. That was $7.50 well invested :0)