about

  • Flying Cloud is the model name of our 1963 Airstream... now at large (but often just parked) in the 38th state.

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history

  • Our Flying Cloud was built in Santa Fe Springs, California around 1962. Airstream manufactured the Flying Cloud model from 1950-1963, so this one was the end of the line.
  • It was originally registered as #11229 in the Wally Byam Caravan Club International, or so we have heard.
  • We took over this blog along with the trailer from the previous owners. We are the Flying Cloud's fifth owners.
  • An ad for a 1958 Flying Cloud.

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« May 2007 | Main | July 2007 »

wilkerson pass

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Returning from Aspen last weekend we stopped at Wilkerson Pass for a photo shoot. I love the panoramic view of about a half dozen mountain ranges in hazy layers from this unassuming spot. If the US Forest Service weren't hogging all the land, we'd buy it all.

In the far distance you can see the Sangre de Cristo Range. Directly above the hood of the truck is Mt. Princeton and the Collegiate Peaks near Buena Vista. To the north and out of the picture is the rest of the Sawatch Range and the Mosquito Range. And directly behind us is Pikes Peak, the easternmost 14er in the US. The big plain in the middle ground is known as South Park. Yep, the TV show's namesake.

listening to

On the subject of music... Bon Jovi released their new CD last week. I like it! Here are our (my) favorite recent acquisitions.

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Madeleine Peyroux was at the Jazz Fest but she played on Thursday nite - we couldn't make it to Aspen in the middle of the week. I really like both her and Katie Melua's previous releases too.

black crowes

Last night we went to the Black Crowes in Aspen. Flashback to high school! Study hall, was it?

Alicia/Beth/Kelly/Mickey would have probably had more fun than poor Michael who just humored me.

The concert was in a tent so the acoustics were terrible. I kept thinking if they would just turn down the volume it would sound better. Obviously, not in high school anymore.

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Click on photos to listen...

aspen

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This weekend we are at Difficult Campground a few miles from Aspen. Appropriately, we are parked in an Aspen grove so dense that we can't see or hear any other campers. I like it here. We are in Aspen for the Jazz Fest, but it there isn't too much Fest going on, so we've spent most of the weekend in the forest. Tonight we are seeing the Black Crowes.


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At the Aspen Saturday Market, we saw the "Artstream" selling pottery.


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More Aspens in Aspen


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Maroon Bells is supposedly the most photographed place in the state and is so popular that you have to take a shuttle bus to get there between 8 and 5. Expecting it to be annoying with so many people, we almost didn't go. Then we decided to wait until 5:01 and drive. It is superlatively scenic and lives up to its reputation. This will probably be the area where I'll plan our next backpacking trip.

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This might be the best picture of the entire trip. On the way back from Maroon Bells, I reset the MPG average and coasted all the way down. Didn't hit the gas once in about 15 miles, although we idled pretty slow up a hill or two. Lucky no one was behind us. Michael thought I couldn't get up to 50 MPG. I got up to 98.8. It stayed at 98.8 for about the last 5 miles. So now we know that the maximum gas mileage we can ever hope for in the Dodge Ram 2500 Heavy Duty 4x4 Turbo Diesel is 98.8.

summer solstice

It was supposed to hit 91 today, but afternoon thunderstorms rolled in and it didn't get close. We made it to the first day of summer and still haven't turned on the air conditioning. Could not be more unlike DC.

Sunrise: 5:34am | Sunset: 8:28pm | I always find it a little depressing that it's all downhill from here.

farmers market

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Today I picked up our first share of produce from the CSA we joined, Country Roots Farm. This week we got spinach, mint, garlic scapes, radishes, snap peas, pinto beans, leeks and something else that I can't identify. I am not a fan of radishes so I am scratching my head to figure out how to use them without tasting them. Maybe I will try carving them into swans like they do in Chinese restaurants. For the curious or the bored, I like this Time article about food and produce.

I PROMISE we will write more about Airstreaming soon....

Update: That thing I couldn't identify is a hardneck variety of garlic called Music Pink, an heirloom variety. And it is pink. Cool.

camp food: grilled vegetable fajitas

I made this last week for the first time and we've already had it three times. It is loosely adapted from Martha Stewart's Great Food Fast cookbook - which I highly recommend if you don't already have it. [I love cookbooks with pictures! -- I was also thrilled to throw out old issues of the magazine.]

We love this because it is sooo easy and there is no mess other than cleaning up the grill. Which makes this a perfect recipe for camping. You can use pretty much any vegetable you have laying around, in addition to those below... such as asparagus, summer squash, shallots, eggplant, or new potatoes.

Grilled Vegetable Fajitas

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1-2 large portobello mushrooms
1 bunch scallions, root ends trimmed
1 poblano pepper, cleaned and cut in half
1 red pepper, cleaned and cut in half
cherry tomatoes
1/2 red onion, sliced
2-3 links of chorizo sausage
olive oil
salt and pepper
flour tortillas
pico de gallo - I use store bought (or any salsa)
avocado, sliced
feta cheese
fresh chopped cilantro, optional
lime wedges


1. Heat grill to high; oil grates (I cook on a perforated grill tray - stuff doesn't fall through).
2. Arrange the vegetables in piles on a baking sheet. Season everything with salt and pepper and drizzle with olive oil.
3. Grill the vegetables and sausage, working in batches if necessary. Start with the longest cooking (zucchini and sausage) and last add the shortest cooking (scallions and cherry tomatoes). Cookbook says 8 minutes for zucchini, 6 minutes for mushrooms, and 2 minutes for scallions.
4. Return vegetables to baking sheet and slice the ones you grilled whole (mushrooms, scallions, peppers). Slice up the chorizo sausage too. Cover with foil to keep warm.
5. Brush the tortillas with olive oil on both sides.
6. Grill the tortillas - about 60-90 seconds on each side depending on grill heat. Just long enough for them to puff up but don't let them get crispy (unless you want a tostada!). A tortilla warmer like they use in Mexican restaurants is a great thing to have for this meal.
7. Assemble like a fajita and serve with pico de gallo, sour cream, feta cheese, avocado and cilantro. Squeeze a lime wedge on top if desired.
Serves about 4.


I changed a few things from the recipe in the book. Added different vegetables, added chorizo sausage for Michael, grilled the tortillas just a few seconds so they stayed soft enough to fold (instead of tostadas).

before & after

Our blog is finally getting a makeover! I am not done yet - I need to download a Photoshop upgrade to do exactly what I want to do... But getting closer! I didn't even know what a FTP client was until today. Teaching myself to do this was initially like self-learning Chinese, but once I cracked the code, it was easy! More ideas, anyone, while I am on a roll? :)

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pikes peak

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Michael's mom visited this weekend. Yesterday we drove to the top of Pikes Peak where it was a balmy 48 degrees.

sailin' shoes

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This morning we got up verrrry early to run the Sailin' Shoes 5k in Colorado Springs, so named after the classic 1970s Little Feat song. (A better metaphor for our shoes would be paddling, not sailing.) This is our first road race in Colorado and therefore our first one at 6000 feet... Then again, we live at 6520 feet so we got to go all the way down the mountain for this! Michael says if he could have had that Starbucks before the race he could have shaved 2 minutes off his time. Perfect, perfect weather today.

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Since this is one of the better race t-shirts I've seen, it seemed to deserve a picture. (It is brown, not black).

troubleshooting

rs2000_scp.jpg If you are wondering what we are doing with the Airstream, we actually have been working on it to get things fixed, functioning, cleaned, organized, decorated, etc... All that fun stuff. Well, the decorating part is fun.

Anyway, yesterday we got the first problem fixed. We found out that after about two days without being plugged in, the invertor goes into hibernation and does not wake up without manually disconnecting the invertor from the battery. (Sound like a familiar problem to Vista users? Grrrr.) Meaning, even when sitting in the garage, we'd have to keep the trailer plugged in all the time. Michael only went through this tedious disconnect/reconnect process once before deciding this was unsat. The manufacturer of the invertor said this problem is easily fixed with a software upgrade, which the trailer was long overdue for. So, the software is now upgraded and our initial testing indicates problem solved!

truck camper

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Michael still says he wants a truck camper for off-roading. I like this one. However, the axe, the frog, the eagle and the shovels might fall off.

cripple creek & eleven mile canyon

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I am finally home. Got home late Friday after an exhausting week. I am not used to going out five nights in a row (all business dinners, of course!). Both of us were too tired to go away for the weekend.

But we did go to Cripple Creek yesterday and saw The Colorado Colleen, a "classic Victorian melodrama" in Old West style at the Butte Opera House. It was cute. Other than a group of 7-year-olds sitting next to us, we were the youngest people in the theater. Both the old men and the 7-year-olds ("kiss her, kiss her!") were very into it, earning us the best audience title. Afterwards, I overheard one of the actresses in the coffee shop telling her friends about the audience so they must have meant it.

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I like this sign (a modern interpretation of an old ghost sign). I googled it to find out what it is supposed to be an advertisement for, and it seems to be a book written by Colorado entrepreneur, mine owner and writer Verner Reed in 1897 about an old Ute Indian. Hmm, despite this lovely ad, I don't think it will be topping the NY Times bestseller list anytime soon.

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We also drove down Eleven Mile Canyon to scout out camping locales... I went there a few weeks ago and wanted Michael to see it. Very pretty. All the campgrounds were packed, which confirms Michael's desire to avoid them all together and camp as far into the middle of nowhere that he can get.

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the riverwalk

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I am in San Antonio all week for work... all work, no play. At least our hotel is on the Riverwalk.

seven falls

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Today we went to Seven Falls...in the rain... and climbed enough stairs to skip the gym.

junk mail

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A few months ago I discovered this pretty cool for-profit (unfortunately) company, green dimes. Pay them to stop your junk mail for you and they plant trees with some of the profits. We've always been vigilant about staying off the lists of the big offenders like DMA, ADVO and DirectMail but getting rid of the catalogs, charity solicitations and freebies is time consuming. This makes it pretty easy. We love not getting a mailbox full of junk mail anymore. It's a new company with some bugs yet to be worked out, and the lottery-style triple-decimal-point counter on the right sidebar is cheesy (I'd still believe they are making a difference if they dropped the decimals), but at least the service works. For shame, Victoria's Secret is the only catalog not to cooperate with them so far.

This article has lots of hints too, if you want to do it yourself.

Oh, and by the way, this is why I stopped sending out my 'junk mail tip of the month.' But now you know everything I know! :)

us

We got this thing to facilitate our summer adventures in Colorado. Michael's job transferred him to Colorado last summer and I gladly followed. I had been living in DC for nearly 9 years and was ready to get on the other side of the Mississippi. Michael went to high school in Denver but has not lived here since the 80s. My DC-based company kindly permitted me to continue working for them from home here in Colorado. If Michael could find a similar gig, maybe we would go on the road in the Airstream part time. That would be a least a couple years away, though.

We started shopping for campers as soon as we found out we were moving here but never had any intention of getting an Airstream. Michael grew up vacationing in motorhomes and trailers so he knew what he wanted: A truck camper. So we could get into the backcountry on 4WD roads and boondock to our heart's content. But we weren't really finding anything that made us tick. No matter what kind of camper we got, I wanted to gut it and remodel. I think that made Michael a little nervous. So, somehow we ended up with the 63 Flying Cloud. Luckily it doesn't need to be gutted. We are hoping to winterize it and park it in ski lots in the winter (I know winterize and Airstream don't really belong in the same sentence). If we can pull it off, we can avoid the ski resort's 3-night minimum stays, the astronomical costs for lodging, and the book-six-weeks-in-advance planning that is required for a ski weekend in Colorado.

The previous owners of the Airstream did a total renovation of the trailer in 2005 then lived in it for a little under two years while full-timing and working on the road. We took over the blog from them, but all the old posts are gone. I don't have any qualifications to have a blog about much of anything, let alone Airstreaming. But, since we live pretty far away from nearly all of our family and friends, it has turned out to be a pretty good way to keep in touch. Michael says it provides me an outlet for creative energy that I am always in need of. And frankly, it keeps us disciplined in enjoying the good life. If I go five days with nothing to post, I know it's time to get outside. I take more pictures and we do more because we don't want to publicly embarrass ourselves by being boring. We are boring, but we hope we have tricked you into thinking we are not.

Lynn and Michael
June 2007