Airstream Camping 2025 - We Start Again

Our first trip of the year in Towed Haul and an auspicious start it may turn out to be.

When cleaning her out, I discovered a soft spot or two in the floor, just by the couch by the door. A gentle press with my fingers resulted in a muted rustling sound beneath the vinyl floor covering, and a definite dip. The dreaded rotten floor, caused by some unseen leak of water under the vinyl. Repairing that is a major task and I don't think we have will, or the money, to fix it. Maybe we'll call this our last season and sell the old girl on as a project for someone else. It's a bit annoying because it's all happened unseen, and therefore we've done nothing about it. Interestingly, the noise from the floor is giving off dry vibes, but maybe I'll check it again after some rain. Who knows?

Back to this trip, and it's the usual three-nighter at Site 16 at Rondeau Provincial Park. Almost as soon as we'd hauled the old girl out of storage, we legged it to the UK for a month, so my first job in returning to Canada was to clean her up, inside and out, check everything was working, and sanitize the fresh water system. To my surprise, the good people at CanAm RV had filled the fresh water tank, so after draining it, refilling it and adding a little bleach, I had quite a bit of stinky water to clear out of the internal water lines. CanAm had cleared the anti-freeze, but water in the lines, sat there for a month, needed to go. It's worth pointing out that we don't drink the water from the fresh water tank and lines, we always bring fresh in another container for that, but no one wants to shower or wash their dishes in stinky water. The bleach (3/4 cup for 45 gallons), by the way, works well, but you do have to flush it through properly.

When we loaded up and prepped for travel, the weather was being silly. Temperatures around 36-37C and blazing sunshine, plus some humidity, and I was wet through with sweat. The onboard fridge and freezer was complaining as well, struggling to keep cold. But, being the troopers that we are, we hitched up, checked the lights and brakes and hit the open road. Well, we had to inch past the badly parked cars fifty yards from our driveway first, but then we hit the open road.

Our hitch receiver on the Toadmobile is rusty, the result of thirteen Canadian winters. I fret that it will break as we're towing, and perhaps I should have had it replaced. But, it's been modified by CanAm RV and is pretty sturdy. When we hitch up we use the Airstream's jack to lift the car, and I reason that if it's going to break, it'll do it then. Today it was all good.

It was hot driving towards Lake Erie, and windy, too. The gas mileage was moderate, but you could tell that the wind was coming into play. But the Toadmobile took it all in its stride and in no time we were wheeling into the park and making our way to our personal site. It's not really our personal site of course, but it feels like it.

Setting up was another sweat-inducing chore, although the temperatures were seven or eight degrees down because we were on the lake front. Site 16 also allows us to set up in the shade, which was helpful. The forecast was for thunderstorms, and the sun was in and out of the clouds. There was a few spots of rain, then a short shower, and the occasional rumble of thunder, but that was all. The sun came out and the temperatures went back up, and everything was summery again. 

Someone came by and stopped at the site opposite and expressed amazement that it was still dry in the park. She had been caught in a storm just a couple of miles away, and yet we knew nothing about it. It's a good job that thunderstorms are so localized.

Of course when it gets hot, we have to power up the cold air in the Airstream. It's good to have, essential actually, but it's noisy. DW, though, did a fine job tuning it so that it was come on and go off at reasonable intervals, which is what we needed if we were to get any sleep.

The afternoon was hot and we did very little, apart from drive out to the convenience store just outside the park's gate and stock up with beer and nibbles. Then we went back to the store to exchange one of the boxes of cookies we'd bought for a non-dairy type. Gawd, pick up the wrong ones. 

Barn Swallow

Tree Swallow

As the evening set in we enjoyed some of DW's homemade vegan stew (which is really very good), before setting off on a short walk to have a look at Rondeau Bay. The little park store was closed up for the night, but the Barn Swallows that live there were busy, as were the Purple Martins and the Tree Swallows. We watched a pair of Tree Swallows feeding their young in a nesting box that had been installed by the park rangers. At first we stood too close, which made the male fly around us in wide circles, and the female sit and wait. We took just a few steps further back and then the feeding commenced, with the female flying off to get insects, and the male sat atop the nesting box, on guard. There were a ton of other birds around as well, as our Merlin bird call app registered around ten other species of birds, just from their calls. This is why we love coming to Rondeau.

It's not yet school summer holiday time yet, so the campground is occupied most by old geezers like us. It was very quiet last night, and I think many had turned in for the night by 10pm. We campers are pure rock and roll. How we will sleep with the "air" on I don't know, but hopefully it will seem like background noise. Still no thunderstorms, but I put the awning away, just in case.