As we get older, birthdays and holidays lose some of the excitement that made us unable to sleep and filled our stomachs with rumbles of anticipation in our younger years. Thankfully, there are still some occasions when we get the opportunity to relive that jumbled emotional blend of anticipation, nervousness, and excitement. For us, that day was June 3rd, the day that we finally picked up our Airstream – a 30′ International Serenity – yep, the same one that we picked as “the one” back in February.
We couldn’t decide if we were more nervous because this meant that we were actually going to follow through on our plans to change our lives; or more excited about the places we would visit and the local foods and flavors that we would get to experience (lobster rolls in Maine, beignets in New Orleans, conch fritters in the Keys- we can’t even…). And being teenagers in the epic era of ’90s action movies, we felt that this quote from Armageddon summed up our feelings perfectly- “…I got that “excited/scared” feeling. Like 98% excited, 2% scared. Or maybe it’s more – It could be two – it could be 98% scared, 2% excited but that’s what makes it so intense, it’s so – confused. I can’t really figure it out”. Either way, we are now officially Airstream owners and can confidently say that it’s definitely the 98% excited feeling.
Though we were scheduled to pick up our Airstream at 1:00pm from Windish RV, not surprisingly we had to wait for not one, but two brand new Airstreams to be hitched up and driven away before it was our turn. We are not ashamed to admit that the extra time lead to some increased anxiety about pulling a 30′ trailer, particularly on Jay’s part, since he was the designated driver. Having grown up on a farm, he’s done more than his fair share of driving tractors, trucks, and pulling trailers, but nothing on this scale and nothing with a tow vehicle like our truck. As for Jen, she’d never pulled a trailer. Ever. (It turns out that our worries were for nothing, thank you Ford F-350!)
Walk-through done, necessary supplies purchased, trailer hitched up, photo op taken advantage of, and it was finally time for us to hit the road. For our first stop and official first “camping” trip we headed west to Breckenridge. Though it’s about half the distance to home and removed some pressure from having to drive a new trailer four hours to home over two mountain passes, we truthfully chose to spend the weekend in Breckenridge so that we could wake up to an amazing view- and we were not disappointed (see slideshow).
Managing to barely beat the insanity that is westbound traffic leaving Denver on a Friday afternoon, we arrived at the Tiger Run RV Resort with a head full of ideas about how everything worked for parking, leveling, hookups, etc. (and the standard issue Airstream manual– just in case…). As trailer newbies, we made a few mistakes (parked a little too close to the water hookup to use the stabilizing jack wrench) and took a bit longer to get setup (the ball pin moves forward, not straight up like every other ball hitch we’ve used- who knew!) than it might have taken an experienced Airstreamer, but we did it and with enough time to unwrap our newly purchased reclining camp chairs and toast with a glass of bubbles while enjoying a summer mountain sunset. The rest of the weekend was spent enjoying a round of frisbee golf, lunch at the always fabulous Butterhorn Bakery in Frisco, and learning that Airstreams attract a lot of attention at campgrounds. Just one stay and we’ve already had multiple neighbors ask to take a peek. Thankfully there was just one hiccup in our nearly perfect weekend- the bed. Let’s just say that we had ordered a new bed before we finished coffee on Sunday morning…and had a few Advil for breakfast.
Now that we actually have the Airstream and are working on getting it outfitted for us to live in full-time, we are getting more and more excited to hit the road. You’ll notice that we’ve added a countdown timer to our website, just so we don’t have to redo the math every few days. And because we are really excited. In case you’re wondering, it’s at 91 days and counting.
