Moving back into the Airstream

After arriving back into the USA, and adjusting our plans around those pesky spring breakers, we started the process of moving back into the Airstream from Big Blue. It sounds easy enough, and it should have been, but after 3 months in storage and a year’s worth of dirt a grit that went uncleaned before our departure, the Airstream required some proper cleaning before we could make the move. It was some serious work which Kerri tackled simultaneously as I unloaded Big Blue. It was an all-day process, but by 9PM we were in a hot spring washing all the tension away.

A photo posted by Kerri McHale🌲🌵🌊🇺🇸🇨🇦🇲🇽 (@asolojourner) on Mar 21, 2016 at 9:29pm PDT

Funny enough, now that everything was removed from the van, we had to find room for all of it in the Airstream, and it wasn’t easy. Big Blue can hold a lot more than first glance, and it is setup for a fanatical level of storage capabilities. It was packed very densely so getting it all to fit back into the much larger trailer took some effort.

Surprisingly, Kerri has been going through some of the same issues I did last year. See, Big Blue has a way of working his way into your heart more than you could imagine. Yes, I have thoroughly corrupted this poor girl. Life lived in Big Blue just has more meaning… more zest. So within the first 24 hours of being in the much more luxurious Airstream, Kerri was already missing the van and quite vocal about it. I leave you with some of her own words on the subject…

I’m struggling with the transition back to #airstreamlife from #vanlife. I know some of it is just from being stuck in an RV park while we get our crap together, and that just getting back into nature (which will still be several weeks from now) will help a lot. But the clean lines, the prefab veneer, the ease of the airstream are not what I love anymore. The van was work—each use of a resource had to be evaluated, each meal made or dish washed was actual work. It sounds like it would make life harder, but what it did instead was make each moment meaningful. I keep spacing out while working at the dinette, because I don’t have my designated workspace (which really helped me focus). I am having a hard time separating what worked because it was the van from what worked because it was Baja. We have a lot of decisions to make in the next 6 months or so. We have plans and ideas to make the van something practical for long term, but we also know that, financially, we have a space that already works as home. Whether we choose one or both in the long term remains TBD.

A photo posted by Kerri McHale🌲🌵🌊🇺🇸🇨🇦🇲🇽 (@asolojourner) on Mar 23, 2016 at 6:35pm PDT

PS – Since picking up Big Blue back in December of 2015 we have put just over 6000 miles more on it’s clock (up to 148,000 now). It made the trip all the way down to Cabo, and back, without any major issues – although I am sure a few people were hoping I would break down just to say I-told-you-so. Sure the van is old, and beat up, and ugly, but it never fails me. It has it’s hiccups from time to time, but never actually fails. Who would have figured that a 1989 American made product would be reliable eh? And the secret of it’s reliability is it’s own simplicity; there really is nothing to break, so it just doesn’t.

Duh.