The Californian Odyssey

Most everyone has heard the stories of, or have lived through a family vacation that involved a cross country trip in an RV of some sort. Mine occurred during the summer of 1975 as a nine year old in our 19' travel trailer. It's hard to believe that it's going on 34 years ago now since that fateful journey. I can still remember the excitement near the end of my fourth grade year when I found out that we were going to go with Dad to San Louis Obispo, California on his annual summer two week summer trip as an Army Reserve Instructor with our trailer and make a vacation out of it. 

Most of the time, Dad made the trip alone and we always got a some sort of surprise when he got back, usually money or something from the PX. This time, my older brother Jeff and I would be going with Mom and Dad. We'd planned take our trailer and make a vacation out of it. Problem was, we didn't have good vehicle to tow it. Dad sold our 1973 Chevy pickup that spring because of the gas crunch at the time, in it's place we got a gas saving Datsun B-210 that got over 40mpg. Economical yes, but it was not up to towing a two ton monster behind it.

The Chevy towed our trailer really well and we could ride in relative comfort on a soft bench seat, carpeted floors, automatic transmission enjoy air conditioning. It had a canopy and Dad covered the bed with thick foam covered in carpet. We could lounge in the back while we traveled - those were the days when seat belts weren't given much thought.

I loved taking trips in our trailer. We'd usually go up to the mountains where friends of ours had some land along a river where we could camp, or to many other places on the east slopes of the Cascade Mountains. I can remember waking up and smelling the fresh forest air coming through my open tiny window from my upper bunk in the early morning. We also had trips to the beach that I remember fondly, once during Easter. We made homemade clam chowder after spending a day clamming on the beach and got visited by a little old lady in a big bunny cosutme.

With those happy thoughts of anticipation in mind, I could hardly wait to hit the road to California. We had plans to visit Crater Lake on the way and trips to Disneyland, Knotts Berry Farm, Sea World as well as catching a Dodger baseball game too once we got to California. I could hardly wait to go. It seemed the last month of school took forever before we left.

Coming Next;

Our "new" pickup.