After years of lusting for an A-Frame solid-sided pop-up camping trailer, and months of lurking on the Aliner/Chalet Yahoo group, and weeks of watching the nationwide craigslist.com, a too-good-to-be-true deal showed up. The problem: the Aliner Sport was in Indianapolis! Solution: my brother Wayne lives nearby and he is such a good guy that he and his wife went to the far side of the city to check out the trailer and make the deal for us. All we had to do was drive out to Indiana and pick it up. The fact that we had never owned a camping trailer before and knew next-to-nothing about RVing was not going to slow us down.
Here's a really brief summary of a quick trip to Indiana and a shakedown cruise back to North Bend - all in a rush so that we could leave for Alaska before the snow flew along the ALCAN.
April 2009 - Road trip to the SW/Colorado Plateau - too cold for camping in our tent (except for one night at Capitol Reef National Park). A little trailer would be perfect.
June-July - Buy and install trailer hitch and wiring for our Outback. Install brake controller and wiring. Install 12 V line to trailer electrical connection (for charging trailer battery).
20 June 2009, Sat - Borrowed Bob Hannah's Mity Lite trailer and towed it to Dog Mtn for a test run of the Outback and camping in a small trailer.
Last week of July: record high temperatures in the Seattle area. Maybe the air conditioner that the Indianapolis Sportliner comes with isn't such a bad idea.
1 Aug 2009, Sat - Wayne and Betty buy the 2005 Aliner Sport from a couple in SW Indianapolis for a price literally thousands less than comparable Sports.
8 Aug 2009 - Sportliner delivered to Wayne and Betty, but no title. (Title arrives a couple of weeks later, phew!)
Just before we leave - Installed a transmission oil cooler
28 Aug 2009, Friday - Leave for Indy. Camp at Beavertail State Park about 30 mi east of Missoula, MT
29 Aug 2009, Sat - We drive across Montana and arrive late at Theodore Roosevelt National Park - sign says "Campground Full" but the ranger (superintendent?) says go on out there and check it out. We race another vehicle out to the CG and there are several sites left (phew, again!). We set up camp in time to go to the campfire program which features a Native American who talks and plays his flute. Very good.
30 Aug 2009, Sun - We drive across North Dakota and most of Minnesota to Mille Lacs Kathio State Park and find an expensive campground (Ogechie, $21) but it's very exclusive - we're the only ones there. It's also buggy, but then it gets cold and the bugs are gone. Maybe the fire helps, too
31 Aug 2009, Mon - We reach Mary (C.J.'s youngest sister) and Dave's home and have a great visit after braving a detour to avoid the stopped traffic on the freeway.
1 Sep 2009, Tues - Avoiding Chicago area expressways we drive south on suface streets as far as Joliet before heading east. By afternoon we get our first sight of the Sportliner at Wayne and Betty's - it looks to be in great shape. Wayne and I go out to have the battery tested - yup, dead as a doornail, even after replacing the fuse. We price batteries at Schucks, Walmart and Sam's Club but Costco is closed by the time we get there.
2 Sep 2009, Wed - Betty takes us around to Costco for a deep cycle battery, to U-Haul to fill the propane tank (surprise - it was already about full), and a thrift store for bins and containers for trailer storage. We all have lunch with Wayne at a good BBQ place then Betty shows us the house that Darby is buying. I spend the rest of the day tinkering with the trailer trying to figure out how everything works. We can't get the wheel off the jack, and there is no pin holding it on. The tongue weight seems like it might be more than 100 pounds. At night Wayne and I go out to test the brakes - they don't seem to be working. Also the left turn signal is inoperable.
3 Sep 2009, Thu - After I run down to south of Indy to get some stick-on RV mirrors at Camping World we say a big thank you to Wayne and Betty and head northwest (but avoiding Chicago) to an RV park in Coloma, WI, right next to Danny's Campers, the best Aliner Dealer/Repair Center in the world according to many folks on the Yahoo Aliner list. We learn a lot about lowlife RV parks and how to hook up electricity, water and sewer (well, gray water drainage).
4 Sep 2009, Fri - Danny is ready for us at 0800 and his mechanic goes right to work installing the 16,000 btu propane furnace. Meanwhile, Danny tests the wiring and tells me that my wiring converter is toast. He doesn't have one that fits a Subaru but I buy a general-purpose one (it's half-price this weekend!) and splice in the Subaru wires. It works! Brian finishes the furnace, raises the jack so we can get the wheel on and off and does a couple more things, then we have to decide if we want the Fantastic Fan. C.J. says, "Go for it." so Brian rips out the old vent and puts in the new powered one. It works great, sucking air in the screened windows and cooling the interior like an air conditioner (but running on battery power unlike our A/C). We get on the road around 1300 or so and make it all the way to Sioux City, SD, where we make use of our self-contained status and park overnight at a Walmart Supercenter. We're RVing now!
5 Sep 2009, Sat - We drive across South Dakota and get an oil change at Walmart in Rapid City.
Now it's time to get off the freeway so we head into the Bear Lodge Mountains to a Forest Service campsite north of Devil's Tower. Nice place and not crowded, considering that it is a holiday weekend. (Photo, left - G folding up the A-wall in the morning)6Sep 2009, Sun - Now it's Labor Day weekend, for sure, and we find the crowd on a hike around Devils Tower.
We're a little concerned that we won't find a campground but we head for Cody, WY, over the Bighorn Mtns, just to shop the sale at Sierra Trading Post for bear spray, and to position ourselves to go to Yellowstone by either the east entrance or the NE entrance. We opt for the Chief Joseph Scenic Byway to Beartooth Jct and the NE entrance. It's almost dark when we find the first campground is full. Fortunately the second, and last one has a site we can pull into. The weather has started to get colder, or maybe it's just the elevation.
7 Sep 2009, Mon - Our "golden geezer" pass gets us in to Jellystone and we cruise along like any other RVer until we get to a ranger station at Tower Jct. A brochure describes a short hike along the Yellowstone River pretty much right across from Tower Falls and all the tourist overlooks.
It's a great little hike. Later we drive south over the high Dunraven Pass (8859 ft), and the Outback seems to handle the climb fine, slow but fine. We stop at the Visitor Center in Fishing Bridge and grab some ice cream at the store. There sure are a lot of people around - last time we came through after Labor Day, the park was almost deserted. We make another stop at the other end of Yellowstone Lake and tour the boardwalks of West Thumb Geyser Basin with a ranger, picking up all kinds of interesting stories. Finally we head another 22 miles south to Lewis Lake Campground and have no trouble finding a site. It's cold overnight and we get to appreciate the furnace.
8 Sep 2009, Tues - The car thermometer says it's 26 deg F in the morning, toasty in the trailer.
We head north and then west past Old Faithful. Since we haven't stopped anywhere else, we take the Firehole Lake Drive which leads us to a practically deserted geyser basin where we wander around for a while taking pictures. Back on the main road along the Firehole River we run into a bison jam - one old bull is walking down the middle of the road and holding up traffic. C.J. gets some good photos and finally the road clears.
We continue on to W Yellowstone where a service station attendant tells me that September is just as busy as August nowadays since the demographics have changed - lots more retired folk out touring. We drive on to Hebgen Lake, Ennis, and finally reach a campsite just below Lolo Pass - good thing we stopped there because the CG we had expected right at the pass is no longer there.
9 Sep 2009, Wed - The drive along the Lochsa River is still scenic even though there are no raftloads of riverrunners this trip. We stop at a ranger station (for a bathroom break, more than anything else) and C.J. scores some Smokey Bear stuff. We get gas and lunch at Costco in Lewiston (or was it Clarkston?), and then it's just a long drive home.
