Roseville to Oakland in 78 Days: The Southeast Coast Spectacular: T minus 7 and counting

Thursday, August 30, 2007

Getting Started

Well, this is the start of our trip blog - we (Marcia and Cam) leave Wednesday September 5th 2007 to see if we can take 78 days to tow a trailer from Roseville, California, to Thanksgiving in Oakland, normally about 100 miles. In the process we will travel east mostly on I-70 to Rehoboth Beach, Delaware. On October 2nd we will then join 25 other Airstream owners and caravan down the eastern seaboard, ending at Jekyll Island, Georgia, November 8th. Our solo return west will begin about November 10th following mostly I-10 and I-40, hoping to be back in time for Thanksgiving in Oakland at John and Carmen's house.

The trip involves a lot of travel on interstates but by taking our time we hope to discover and enjoy things most people would probably miss.

We hope you enjoy our journey.

How we're doing...

Pulling a 2005 25' Airstream Safari trailer with a 2005 Dodge Ram 2500 diesel.

We arrived home November 19th, 2007, after completing about 9900 miles across 24 states.

See blog entries Sept and early October to learn about our solo trip east to Delaware.

For our account of the WBCCI Southeast Coast Spectacular caravan from Deleware through Georgia, see posts from October 3rd to November 10, 2007.

Our solo trip home is described in posts dated November 10 to November 22, 2007.

Diesel has gone from under $3 most of the way east to $3.35 when lucky in Georgia, and finally abut $3.59 on re-entering California. The Dodge performed well, although I wish I had stronger braking and 4WD.

We developed a rain leak near the Airstream skylight and we have episodes of foul odors. The galley/refrigerator GFI has tripped twice for unknown reasons. Also the gray-water tank may have a leak, evident when it becomes overfull. Otherwise, the trailer performed admirably.

Free WiFi has become fairly commonplace in campgrounds, though maybe a third are still without.

Television on the laptop has been a failure. I have a new HP computer with plenty of RAM, a large hard drive, a fast processor, and I think decent video capability. Either TV on a laptop just isn't practical yet, or possibly my HP TV tuner adapter is a piece of crap. (The only time we've really missed TV is when something big is happening in the news, especially if weather related.)

Our TomTom GPS has been very handy when independently traveling but it can mislead - our caravan leaders issued us a drivers manual for use on the caravan, and cautioned not to follow the GPS in certain parts.

Would we take another WBCCI caravan? Sure! Our fellow caravaners were wonderful, the leaders were excellent, costs were reasonable, and the organized nature allowed us to see and do far more than we would have otherwise.

What we're doing...

This is our record of our 78 day journey from Roseville, California, to Oakland, California, for Thanksgiving 2007.

We left Roseville September 5, 2007, towing an Airstream trailer, headed for Rehoboth Beach, Delaware. At Rehoboth Beach we joined up with other Airstreamers from around the country - all but two of them strangers to us - for a 40 day caravan down the eastern seaboard to Jekyll Island, Georgia.

The caravan ended November 10, 2007, with a party at the Jekyll Island Hotel - the 25 rigs and 48 individuals safe and sound and now good friends.

On November 11 we pulled out for our solo trip back to California following a southern route. We made it home November 19th, in time to join John and Carmen and many other relatives in Oakland for Thanksgiving.

Roseville to Oakland in 78 Days: The Southeast Coast Spectacular

Thursday, August 30, 2007

Getting Started

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