Continuing on their five-month trek up the West Coast, Crazy Family Adventure stops in San Francisco. There the family crosses the Golden Gate Bridge, visits the Bay Area Discovery Museum, Google Headquarters, Land’s End, Point Reyes National Seashore, Muir Woods National Monument, and much of the city.
You can learn more about the whole family on their blog.
Route 66, the iconic “Mother Road,” winds its way from Chicago, Illinois to Santa Monica, California. If you don’t have the time to drive the entire route, why not take on this icon of American transportation history in bite-sized pieces? We’re going to help you do just that with a series called Get Your Pics on Route 66 in hopes that you’ll capture some great memories and images as you explore this little slice of Americana. Here’s the final installment on California:
Ever since John Steinbeck made reference to the “Mother Road” in Grapes of Wrath, Route 66 has enamored many a wanderer. And what better place to dream about hitting the open road than California? Here’s an overview of all 270 miles of Route 66 through the Golden State:
We pick up the pavement in Needles, California after crossing the Arizona border. Much of Route 66 has disappeared into the desert here, as the newer Interstate 40 bypassed the towns that grew along America’s highway, but Needles holds a few relics from the past, including the Route 66 Motel.
The sign was recently refurbished by a Route 66 fan, and although the motel remains, it is currently being used as apartments. So you’ll have to move on down the road, exiting off I-40 to some of the original highway just east of Essex.
For 75 miles you’ll encounter several empty settlements, but none as interesting as Amboy.
Almost qualifying as a ghost town with only 4 living inhabitants, Amboy is a most unusual stop along The Route. Sitting squarely in the middle of the Mojave Desert is Roy’s Motel and Café—an abandoned motel that has stopped time in its tracks.
The retro sign attracts numerous Route 66 fans, but you will be mesmerized by what you’ll see inside the front desk building, as well as the bungalows at the front of the property. The night bell still exists at the front door, but the check-in counter and lobby look just as they did in the early 1960s, with flower bulb lights, burnt orange furniture, and room assignment sheets still pigeon-holed on the wall. It’s as if the front desk clerk stepped out for a smoke and never came back!
The small buildings next door have been used more recently for art displays. The doors are normally always unlocked, yet the bungalows are not disturbed by passersby. When not utilized as a gallery, these structures remain empty and dated.
Roy’s Motel lies just behind the bungalows, and it, too, is empty but undisturbed. You can, however, find a few human beings at the café/gas station, but don’t wait to get to Amboy to fill up your tank, as gas is usually priced in the stratosphere here!
Just down the road is the Amboy Crater, an extinct volcano that gives the surrounding hills their color. Black lava flows scar the land, and you can see the crater from Roy’s parking lot.
If you continue following the old Route west you will pass through several towns that no longer remain—towns with names like Bagdad, Siberia, and Klondike. Keep pushing through the desert to arrive at Barstow and the Route 66 Mother Road Museum.
Located in one of the original Harvey House restaurants, the museum holds memorabilia from the Route 66 era, when hitting the road was a favorite pastime. You will find rotating art exhibits that capture the Mother Road in a variety of mediums, collectible vehicles that once cruised the famous highway, and historic signage, among other things.
After you’ve absorbed copious amounts of transportation nostalgia, stick with Old Route 66 out of Barstow as it arches toward the south to Oro Grande.
Although Elmer’s Bottle Tree Ranch wasn’t in existence during Route 66’s heyday, it stands today along the highway in Oro Grande as a testament to man’s creativity. It also addresses the old adage “One man’s trash is another man’s treasure.”
As a boy Elmer Long watched his father collect colorful bottles as they explored the desert together. At the death of the elder Long, his son inherited the large collection and decided to institute a different form of recycling. He turned the castoffs into a unique “forest” of bottle trees, and watched visitors along the Mother Road stop and enjoy the vibrant colors as sunlight lit up over 200 installations. The wind whispers through the containers, creating soulful tunes for visitors enjoying his unconventional art gallery.
The Bottle Tree Ranch is opening daily from sunrise to sunset and is free, although Elmer does accept donations.
Just a few miles on down The Route is Victorville and the California Route 66 Museum. As we’ve seen thus far in the “Get Your Pics on Route 66” series, almost every state along the highway has their own museum honoring the history of transportation. California is no exception.
This collection of travel memorabilia includes a 1950s diner, a VW “Love Bug” that traversed the Mother Road, and interactive exhibits galore. The museum hopes to highlight the cultural influences that Route 66 had on The Arts, architecture, communities, and commerce. I’d say they’ve done a great job! You’ll have to decide for yourself, so be sure to enjoy a well-deserved stop at this venue.
The city of San Bernardino holds several vintage pieces of the Route 66 legend. From retro motels like the Lido and Palms to one of two Wigwam Motels still in existence, the relics from the Mother Road are scattered throughout the area. In fact, so many of these lodges are still in operation today, either as overnight motels or apartments, you will think you hit a time warp and were catapulted into the 1950s as you cruise town!
Even the McDonald brothers knew the importance of the highway to the local economy when they established the first McDonald’s restaurant in the world here back in 1940. Today the site has become the McDonald’s Museum, exhibiting everything from $.15 hamburgers to Ronald McDonald and Happy Meal toys.
On your way out of town, be sure to visit the Santa Fe Railway Depot. It’s another Harvey House location that has been entirely renovated, retaining its Mission Revival style architecture.
Heading west from San Bernardino, the towns begin to run into one another, but you will want to slow down for a vintage gas station in Rancho Cucamonga. The Cucamonga Service Station was recently restored to its 1915 appearance, winning the 2016 California Preservation Design Award.
The station is over 100 years old, and the attention to detail during restoration included two vintage Richfield gas pumps, along with historical paint colors and signage. The building is now used as a visitors center for Route 66 enthusiasts and travelers.
Finishing your journey across California will lead you from Rancho Cucamonga through several communities like Pasadena, Hollywood, and Beverly Hills. Not much of the Old Route has survived there, but the true end of the line for America’s Main Street culminates in Santa Monica, California. The early terminus for the highway was once at the crossing of Lincoln and Olympic Boulevard in the 1940s, but a more recent alignment of the Mother Road brings her travelers fittingly to the Santa Monica Pier and the Pacific Ocean. Capture that final picture of the highway sign that ends (or starts, depending on your direction of travel) your adventure!
If you have followed our trek along Route 66 from Chicago, you’ve now completed one of the best-loved journeys in America. I, like so many others, harbor a fond affection for this ribbon of pavement that links our country to the landscapes and people on its periphery. I hope you’ve found some enjoyment in venturing through the eight states that continue to welcome travelers on Route 66.
You can drive the rest of Route 66 with our other “Get Your Pics on Route 66” articles. Read the entire series.
As the exclusive partner for Coleman RVs, Camping World is proud to offer all of their products to the market. Coleman offers a number of different variations of travel trailers that fit into two basic categories: Lantern travel trailers and Light travel trailers.
There’s further delineation between the Lantern product series. You have the standard Lantern and then you have the Lantern LT. Today, we’re going to focus on the standard Lantern models.
There are several different floor plans, amenities, and options to choose from. Here are a few of our favorite models for the 2019 model year.
Measuring nearly 33 feet long with one large slide out, the Lantern 286RK offers tons of space for the whole family. This model features a rear kitchen layout. It also has both a large sofa and two swivel recliners, making it great for entertaining guests or getting the whole family together.
Check pricing and availability
The Coleman Lanter 215BH is a fantastic camper for a family that doesn’t want to deal with slides. It offers a queen bed near the front of the coach and bunk beds back by the rear next to the bathroom. One unique feature of the 215BH is that it also has an outdoor kitchen, complete with a sink basin and refrigerator. This is great for campers who love to have a cookout and don’t want a bunch of people traipsing through the interior of their rig.
Check pricing and availability
Perfect for a couple, the Lantern 202RD features a simple and smart layout. The rear-placed, camp-side dinette sits right across from a jackknife sofa, which means it’s easy for a couple to invite some friends over and there’s plenty of places to sit despite the camper’s relatively small size.
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Another great bunkhouse option is the Lantern 285BH. This camper features a single large slide out and two entry doors, allowing for multiple people to easily move in and out as well as through the floorplan. It has a queen bed up front and bunk beds and a bathroom in the rear. This model also comes with an outdoor kitchen in addition to the indoor one complete with a refrigerator and wash basin. It’s a great option for a busy family that loves the outdoors.
Check pricing and availability
Rae and Jason Miller have been RVing full-time since July 2017. They travel with their dog, Carmen in a 42′ fifth-wheel and share their adventures across social media.
They’ve also unintentionally become the faces of “beginner RV mistakes” on YouTube by showcasing the many errors they made on the road. They’re transparent with their mistakes because they want to help future RVers avoid similar headaches and show the not-so-glamorous side of RV life.
They just released over 70 pages worth of downloadable checklists and worksheets to help others along their journey as well!
You can follow their adventures (and mistakes) on their blog and YouTube channel.
What do you do when you live what appears to be the American Dream but still feel like life has more to offer? How do you know you’re going to find what you seek if you set off on an unsure path?
Paul and Lorena Charron found answers to these questions by leaving behind their seemingly comfortable lifestyle in a nice neighborhood on the south end of Las Vegas, Nevada. They set off in their RV in December of 2016 in pursuit of new adventures and a new life.
There’s no simple solution to a complex problem. As business owners, Paul and Lorena know this. They work together to run a successful car detailing business located in Las Vegas.
With the business in a good place and their aspirations for a new chapter in life, they started weighing their options.
“We were bored with the status quo and wondered what to do next,” Paul said.
He started looking into living life on a sailboat and traveling the world, but Lorena wasn’t too enthused with that option.
“She didn’t want to drown in the middle of the ocean with me,” Paul said chuckling.
He and Lorena were nice enough to spend a half hour or so with me on the phone to chat about their journey. With his first idea floundering, Paul went back to the drawing board.
He and Lorena both always loved to travel. They tried to disappear to far-away locations as often as possible to disconnect and recharge before coming back to their life in Las Vegas. Having traveled abroad some, they both realized that they hadn’t seen much of the U.S.
Their new goal was to see the areas of the country they’d overlooked. That’s when Paul got the idea for the RV. Lorena was hesitant at first.
“Everyone has a picture of retirees, or they picture Cousin Eddie from Christmas Vacation, and that’s just not the case,” Paul said.
Paul and Lorena bought an RV and tried out a few test trips. Within the first or second trip, Lorena was completely onboard.
“It’s like having a tiny apartment,” She said. “You have your kitchen and your bedroom, and I realized this will not be a hard lifestyle. You have everything you need.”
Lorena said the worst that could happen was that she and Paul would go back to the life they’d been living.
“Once I realized that we could make a serious lifestyle change, and I was okay with that, I told him, ‘Let’s go for it.’”
From there, the couple sold everything. The only things they kept fit either in their RV or in a five by five storage space and most of that is necessary files and paperwork for their business.
While Paul and Lorena were on the same page and excited about the opportunity to travel the country and pursue new experiences, other people in their life weren’t so enthusiastic.
“All our friends thought we were nuts,” said Paul. “They were like, ‘What is wrong with you? Why would you want to go from your 1,800 square foot home to a 240 square foot box on wheels?’ They just didn’t get it.”
Paul and Lorena chalk this up to the fact that their friends were still trying to make the typical lifestyle work.
“They didn’t understand we were trying to get out of the grind and have more fun in our lives,” Lorena said.
That didn’t last forever. As Paul and Lorena moved around the U.S. and shared their travels, their friends came around. Some even bought RVs of their own.
“We have a friend who is in the process of selling everything and full-timing right now,” Paul said.
When it comes to the financial side of things, Paul and Lorena still have business responsibilities. When they first started out, they found an employee willing to take on the day-to-day business operations. Then they slowly weaned themselves off working the typical workday.
They still take care of various managerial tasks, but they can do that from the road. Every once in a while, Paul and Lorena will make the trip back to Vegas to fix any problems that arise and ensure the business is running smoothly.
In addition to their business and their travels, the couple also has a popular YouTube channel called The Motorhome Experiment. Paul just started recording their move out of their house and into their RV. He posted it to YouTube.
“All the sudden it just started to gain popularity, and I got hooked,” Paul said. “I really like it. I like the vlogging aspect of it. We really enjoy meeting people through it on the road.”
Lorena said that meeting people who’d seen the videos changed things for her and Paul. They started having friends on the road that they saw in different areas of the country. Paul said the RV world is smaller than they originally thought, and they’ve seen many of the same people during their travels.
As far as their travel plans go, Paul and Lorena don’t like to get too tied down to a specific schedule.
“We’re horrible planners,” Paul said. “We’re in Las Vegas right now, but that’s just for the business, and then we want to go down to Cabo San Lucas for the winter, but no specifics.”
Paul and Lorena found light planning is what works best for them. When they first started out, they had a vague plan to get Key West, Florida. They took their time and eventually ended up there. While there, they met some viewers of their channel, a couple, and started talking about going to Nova Scotia, Canada. Paul, Lorena, and the other couple decided that sounded like a fun idea, so off they went up the East Coast. They’ve built a strong friendship with them.
After traveling around eastern Canada, they started talking about crossing an Alaskan RV trip off their bucket list, so they headed that way in early 2018. They started their trek north in San Diego and tried to stay as close to the Pacific Coast Highway as possible along the way.
Paul and Lorena say that going with only a rough plan works best for them because they like the flexibility. They like being able to spend an extra week somewhere or deciding to leave somewhere sooner than they originally thought they would want to.
They’ll both tell you that there have been times when their lack of plans failed them. The holidays, for instance, throw a wrench into things because so many people are on the road or at the campgrounds.
“This lifestyle kind of blends every day into the next, so you can forget and then it’s like, ‘Oh, today is July 4th,’” Paul said.
Packed campgrounds during the holidays are no big deal for them. They just find another place to go, whether it’s a campground down the road or a night spent boondocking in a Walmart parking lot.
“Part of doing this was that we wanted to be flexible,” Paul said. “We wanted it to be different than our day to day because with our lives at home with the business we were, up at 3 am and done by noon. That was every single day seven days a week.”
Both Paul and Lorena discussed how strongly they felt before moving into the RV that they needed to make a change. From the outside, their life looked pretty good, but neither was happy with their situation. Downsizing and moving into the RV gave them freedom from the repetitive, mundane lives they were living.
With that said, making the transition proved to be harder than they thought. Paul said he thought it would be easy to get rid of most of their things, but he didn’t realize how mentally and emotionally attached he was to some items.
“I realized the mental side of it is crazy when you try to dump all of that,” He said. “You start thinking about what you’re going to do without.”
But what Paul and Lorena made clear is that once they made that jump, they didn’t have those anxieties anymore.
“Trade your stuff for experiences,” Said Lorena. “You’ll live a more fulfilling life,”
When Paul and Lorena set out in their RV, they planned to travel around only for one year. Halfway into their first year in the RV, Lorena realized that they weren’t going to be able to see all of the places they wanted to in the time that they originally hoped to. So, they decided to eliminate their end date.
“We’re going to do this until we’re tired of it,” Paul said. “At this point, we’re two years living full-time and have no end in sight.”
Paul did say they’ve discussed what will happen when or if they will settle down. If they ever do find another place to have a permanent home base, they will still have an RV.
“We’re not close to that, though,” said Lorena. “We’ve talked about that, but right now RVing full-time doesn’t have an end date.”
Paul also said he wants to continue growing his YouTube channel. Currently, the couple tries for two videos a week, and they want to continue doing travel videos but expand to how-to videos and other topics that help people get into the lifestyle—a lifestyle both Paul and Lorena find more fulfilling than the one they lived before.
The biggest thing I took away from my chat with Paul and Lorena is this: challenge the accepted norms and don’t be scared to take chances. In most cases, the worst that can happen is you’ll get stuck right back where you are now.
What do you think of Paul and Lorena’s story? Leave a comment below.
Travel trailers and fifth-wheels come in a lot of sizes. Some can be pulled by vehicles as small as a standard family sedan. Others need a serious heavy-duty pickup truck. When you show up to the dealership, how will you know if you can actually pull away with the travel trailer or fifth-wheel of your dreams?
Let’s talk towing, and help you figure out the type of vehicle you need to get your RV off the lot and into a campground.
Every RV will come with a sticker (usually inside the door) that will give you some basic information about the rig. One of those numbers is the unloaded vehicle weight (UVW). This number is how much the trailer weighs as it rolls off the assembly line. It includes any of the basic amenities you’ll find in the rig, like the dinette and included kitchen appliances.
The UVW number does not include anything you’ll be putting into or on the RV after you’ve bought it. Any accessories you add to customize the RV, plus any and all of your camping gear will add weight to your RV. This is why we so often preach the importance of lightweight materials and packing only what you truly need when traveling.
You’ll find another number listed on the sticker mentioned above: gross vehicle weight rating (GVWR). This is the total weight that the rig can handle based on its axles and tire ratings.
So, to find the maximum amount of weight you can load into your rig, you take the GVWR and subtract the UVW. If you’re a math person, it might look like this:
GVWR – UVW = Additional Load Capacity.
How about an example? Let’s say the GVWR is 3,500 pounds, and the UVW is 1,000 pounds. (Just to be clear, these numbers are based on nothing real, and are only for the sake of simple math.)
3,500 – 1,000 = 2,000 pounds-worth of stuff you can put in and on your RV.
Water is a major element of weight to keep in mind. If you fill your fresh water tanks before you leave, you’re carrying a ton of weight with you. One gallon of water weighs over eight pounds. When you load up an RV, even halfway full, you’re taking a significant amount of your additional load capacity away from you. And after a trip, when your grey and black water tanks are loaded, you have even more weight to consider.
Of course, the more weight you have in your RV, the more it’s going to affect the gas mileage of your towing vehicle.
With all that math freshly in our heads, let’s start talking about the thing doing the real work here: the tow vehicle.
Smaller travel trailers, like expandable trailers, folding camping trailers, and teardrop trailers can sometimes be pulled by smaller vehicles. Family sedans or light SUVs are great options, while still allowing space for additional packing inside the vehicle. With larger trailers, you’ll need a full-size or heavy-duty pickup truck or van to get the job done.
Towing capacity is very important, but when towing an RV the gross combined weight rating (GCWR) is what you should keep in mind. It’s the maximum weight allowed for both the tow vehicle and the trailer when fully loaded. Basically, you need to ensure that your tow vehicle is rated to tow your trailer’s GVWR and that the whole combination when fully loaded doesn’t exceed the GCWR.
For larger fifth-wheels, you will also need to consider the rear axle weight rating (RAWR) of the tow vehicle. Because a portion of the weight of a fifth-wheel hitch sits over the rear axle, you’re likely going to be looking at a full-size or heavy-duty pickup truck—something heavier to help handle the weight. You need to know the pin weight of the fifth-wheel and see how that compares to your tow vehicle. If your truck’s RAWR is more than the pin weight (in most cases it will be), you’re good.
Most heavy-duty trucks have a RAWR somewhere between, 5,000 and 10,000 pounds. The pin weight of most larger fifth-wheel trailers clocks in around 3,500 pounds. So there’s usually more than enough capacity to handle the weight—and then some.
There’s no RV forum discussion that can raise the ire of a bunch of RVers like the question of diesel or gas.
In short, it’s going to be about what you’re most comfortable driving. Diesel engines are pure towing power, and they’re geared to handle the big tow loads. You can take inclines with a loaded fifth-wheel and never slow down.
Gas engines still pack plenty of power—especially newer models. Their gear ratios may mean you slow down five or ten MPH on particularly steep inclines, and many see nothing wrong with that. Again, it’s all about your comfort level on the road.
Got all that? Just remember this: find a vehicle that will pull your rig, but also one that you’re comfortable driving. The last thing anyone wants is an unsafe RVer on the road.
Have questions about what kind of vehicle you should get to tow your RV? Check out our online towing guide!
