Clay assesses the good and the bad as he wraps up his second season traveling America’s byways in his 23′ Airstream.
Big Timber, Montana, Sunday, August 17, 2025 — As I approach home (486 miles away), I started thinking about storing my Airstream for the winter. This is my second year of travel. I’ve had about eight months of sleeping in the Airstream over these two travel seasons, and I’ve pulled the rig about 38,000 miles over America’s roads. Most of those roads paved, a few gravel. In those two years, I have had no moving violations, have never been stopped by a law enforcement officer, and have received only one parking ticket, ironically at the end of the journey.
My Airstream has performed just this side of flawlessly, but as with all new complicated machines, there has been a learning curve, and a few repairs have been inevitable.
Here’s what I have replaced. First, four new tires for the Airstream out on the Olympic Peninsula of Washington state. After my friend Loren attempted to burn down my rig, he noticed that several of my tires were nearly bald. He set up an appointment for me at a local tire store. Now they are fine.
This spring, when I retrieved the rig from winter storage in balmy North Carolina, I discovered that, despite our careful winterization, the tankless water heater had a burst copper pipe and would need to be replaced. The couple who ran a modest RV sales and repair shop ordered the replacement heater and installed it in a day and a half, represented what service used to be in America back in Steinbeck’s day. They went out of their way for me, a complete stranger, even though they had plenty of other work to do. I sent them a huge gift basket.
The bike rack I installed in my driveway was leaning more and more toward the road surface every day because my E-bike is quite heavy. I purchased the correct metal screws and attached them securely to the Airstream chassis. It hasn’t been a concern since.
I’ve monkeyed with several different sheets for the bed. It’s advertised as a queen, but it’s really more like a full. I also bought a memory foam mattress supplement. It should be trimmed, but I fear I would wind up making things worse, not better. Sleeping in my own bed on my own sheets is one of the greatest satisfactions of living in an RV rather than staying in motels. Hotel sheets run the spectrum from the translucent and pilled discomfort of the low-end motels to high-end Egyptian cotton sheets of which the better hotels boast, but I’m always a little uneasy about slipping into a bed that tens of thousands of others have shared. And those comforters that look like 1970 — ewww.
The Airstream has a smallish gas stove and oven. I’ve had some trouble starting the oven. The gas burners work flawlessly, but it takes about ten minutes to start the oven. I trip the sparking device fifty times before the oven heating coil roars into life. If I persevere, I eventually get it going. Once lit, the oven works perfectly well. I wouldn’t try to bake a soufflé in it, but it has cooked some brownies, a flat cake, and a pizza or two.
I have a small, portable propane grill that I use at the picnic table whenever I am frying meat, rather than wanting to sully the small, enclosed space of the RV.
Last year, I thought the water pump was “going,” as they say, and I even tried to get that North Carolina couple (see above) to replace it. However, they were so honest that they told me it was working “perfectly fine,” which saved me a few hundred dollars. This year, it has performed flawlessly. I’ve stopped thinking about it.
I’ve made a few minor improvements on the rig. I installed cabinet magnets to keep the shelves from bursting open when I drive on bumpy roads. For several of the heavier shelves and cabinets, I’ve added Velcro to keep them closed no matter what. I have those 3M plastic shelving liners so that my books and laptop do not drift on the dinette table. I’ve added long, narrow floor rugs to humanize the aisle space.
The big issue this year was the shower. It had never really performed up to my expectations, and I had largely come to terms with the idea that “RV showers leave much to be desired.” But during the hottest, sweatiest, most hectic week of the year, it stopped delivering even tepid water. In a moment of madness, I decided to fix it myself. I watched several instructional videos on YouTube, made the usual three to four visits to the helpful hardware store, and eventually solved the problem. Pitiful though it may seem, I was as proud of this little episode in self-reliance as if I had just landed the lunar excursion module at Tranquility Base.
Of all the satisfactions of RV living, my morning shower — now a hot shower just this side of too hot — is the greatest. I have a tankless water heater, which means that if I am staying at an RV campground with water and sewer hookups, I could theoretically take a two-hour shower. So far, the record is about six minutes.
Why?
One of the great benefits of RV life is enforced minimalism. I have two plates, a couple of coffee mugs, a couple of stemless plastic wine glasses, four forks, spoons, and knives, a few cooking utensils, two cooking pots, and a frying pan. It’s not quite Thoreauvian, but there is a necessary paring down in RV life that I hope (with modest confidence) will bleed over into my home life. I took too many physical books this year — because I needed all thirteen volumes of the Journals of the Lewis and Clark Expedition, and about 20 related books; plus a dozen or more books I had hoped to read on the road, and of course did not. John Steinbeck warned me about this in Travels with Charley — “I laid in a hundred and fifty pounds of those books one hasn’t got around to reading, and of course those are the books one isn’t ever going to get around to reading.” But it cannot be helped. When I think of all the truly great books I have never read (and I am an “English Major”) and then just the books published in the last eighteen months that I really want to read (the bedside stack), and then the books I have to read for my professional life, I fall into despair. And the clock is ticking!
Each time I come home for a few days, I get rid of some of the superfluities in my RV and in the pickup. When I go out next year, I plan to pack less but pack smarter.
The one thing I don’t like about my splendid Airstream is that there is no reading chair. As someone who reads three to seven hours a day (see above!) and with a senior citizen’s back, I would give almost anything to have a great (if narrow) reading chair in the rig. That would require what in the RV world is known as a “slideout.” I read at the dinette table, which is comfortable enough for maybe two hours. Then I have to move to the bed, where I have four pillows. The problem with that is obvious — get prone in a lovely, comfortable bed and soon enough the body goes into hibernation.
If I were rich, I’d have the interior slightly modified over the winter. I’d replace the queen bed with a single, and with the freed-up space, have a desk and bookshelf made with room enough for an office-style reclinable chair. That would be paradise. I’d make these adjustments myself if I had any skills.
More to the point, I have learned to live and work in this modest aluminum tube on the road. I have never turned on the television, though most RV sites now have cable hookups. I have never used the monitor (which can be seen in bed or in the dining space) even for Netflix or Amazon Prime. By not turning on that screen, I have more reading time, writing time, and quiet time. I could write a book in the Airstream as long as I have connectivity. In some limited sense, that is exactly what I have been doing.
So — to summarize: the shower is outstanding (now). The kitchen is everything one could ask for. I’ve learned to hitch and unhitch the rig pretty well, and I can even back into a campground slip if A) nobody is watching or “helping,” and B) there is no hurry. When I began this life interlude, it took me about ten times backing up, pulling forward, backing up to align the pickup hitch and RV hitch. Now it is down to about three reps and on occasion I can do it in one. I’m entirely comfortable hauling a 23-foot trailer except on narrow two-lane roads where the safety tolerance is limited.
Now, alas, the RV season is winding down. I’ll take it out for a couple of North Dakota runs of two to four days, chiefly in the badlands, and then I will have to winterize it (20 below by Thanksgiving) and put it in storage until early April. Alas.
However, I have what is technically called a ton of work to do, and much of it requires my home library and my serious reading chairs.
Follow Clay and the LTA Airstream as he retraces the famous Lewis & Clark Trail from 1804-1806 across the continent. This 2025 expedition is a central part of LTA’s big initiative to explore the country and take the pulse of America as it approaches its 250th birthday. Be sure to follow Clay’s adventures here and on Facebook — and subscribe to our newsletter.