California, Washington, Arizona----Best places for Kiwi visitors

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cajunkev

Active member
Joined
Feb 19, 2013
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New Zealand
I know I can find this information if I look hard enough but I humbly ask the seasoned travellers amongst you to help me build an plan.
We are long time campers from New Zealand coming for a 6 month RV trip starting in August.
Have some vehicles under consideration.
We are arriving at Los Angeles and driving North to the Boeing factory in Seattle.
Will be visiting the Grand Canyon, Death Valley, Las Vegas and points in between.
We prefer natural beauty spots but I would like to get to all the old aircraft museums, any air shows....the Reno Air Races in September .
Please drown me in your favourite spot reccomendations.
We have only a few places marked on the map so far.
Any tips or advice would really be appreciated.

Thanks to all

Kevin
 
Well here is the problem. The Reno Air Races are from September 11 to 15, 2013. If you leave LA in August you would have to be in Las Vegas and Death Valley in August, and you absolutely do not want to be in an RV in LV or DV in August. It will be between 100 and 110 every day at the minimum and at night it would cool off to only 90 or so. Your A/C won't help very much since RVs are poorly insulated. If you did go to DV you would have the entire park to yourself. You could do LV and rent a hotel room instead.

Assuming that you have to start in August here is what I would do. Start in LA and head to the Grand Canyon. From there go to Zion NP at the end of August and then Bryce Canyon NP in the beginning of September. Then head up to Salt Lake City and take I-80 over to Reno for the air races. Leave Reno and head to Lake Tahoe and drive around the lake. They have gambling at South Shore that is like a mini Las Vegas. After Tahoe I would continue on I-80 to Highway 101 and stop near San Francisco and rent a car to see SF. Then head up 101 all the way up the northern California/Oregon/Washington coast and eventually get up to Seattle. You would have great weather everywhere except driving from LA to the Grand Canyon when you would be crossing the Mojave Desert.
 
Plenty of places and a lot of people will comment so I'll just start with taking the loop around the Olympic Penninsula in WA state. If you've never been on a big boat, a ferry ride would be fun. Walk on and take a round trip. Taking the RV is expensive. Seattle to Bremerton will take you through the fairly narrow Rich Passage and give an end view of the Puget Sound Shipyard full of navy vessels. Or if you're going that far north, take the San Juan Islands ferry to Friday Harbor and back. Lots of beautiful scenery, between Orcas Island and Friday Harbor be sure to look for the eagles nests.

Great aircraft museums in NW Oregon, the Spruce Goose Howard Hughes largest wooden airplane is in there, as well as many military and private aircraft. Look for the 747 parked on the roof of one of the buildings. Great RV park right next door. And the Tillamook Cheese factory just down the road too.

The Reno Air Races are great. We stay at the Grand Sierra RV park and watch from box A17 (the crash 2 years ago was into box A47). The pits are great for up close and personal views of the planes and talking to the crews and pilots. There is nothing better than watching a group of jet class or unlimiteds coming around the final pylon headed straight towards you at race speed as they head onto the front stretch. A gaggle of T6's beating the air into submission as they go by is a sound from every war movie you ever saw. Don't miss the races. I might even know where you can get 4 free entry tickets, pit passes, parking pass and box seats for Friday.

In California don't miss the Planes of Fame air museum in Chino. When you drive there you want to remember to go to the second air museum for the most planes, not the first one on that road. The T-33 that is used as the pace plane for the unlimited and jet class at Reno is generally on display there. Lots of planes, model planes, parts of planes and just cool stuff.

I'm sure you already know you want to do the WA and OR state stuff in August and September and be down into CA or Vegas, Grand Canyon by the middle of October or first of November. Reno races are in the middle of September so I'm not too sure how you want to work that into the schedule. I'm positive that it will be raining and gray from the middle of October until sometime in April in western Washington and western Oregon.

Ken
 
Let me suggest making the trip in the opposite direction - start your journey in Seattle in August and end up in Los Angeles in January.

August is the middle of summer - while it's hot and miserable in the desert southwest, summer weather can be spectacularly beautiful in the otherwise wet and dreary Pacific Northwest.  Spend some time exploring Seattle, ride the ferries including the loop through the San Juan Islands, then work your way down the coast towards San Francisco.  Head east from there to the Reno Air Races in mid September.  Then continue east towards Salt Lake City, visit the Utah national parks and the Grand Canyon before winter weather sets in.

November through February is our winter, and the Pacific Northwest will be cold with rain and snow.  Meanwhile, the desert southwest has their best weather of the year.  Use that time to visit Las Vegas, Death Valley, Phoenix and Tucson.  And of course the RV snowbird extravaganzas along the lower Colorado River (Laughlin NV, Lake Havasu City, Quartzsite and Yuma, AZ).

From there it's a short hop to San Diego then another short drive to the terminus of your trip in Los Angeles.

The air museum you don't want to miss is the Evergreen Air and Space Museum in McMinnville, OR.  It's about 30 miles south of Portland.  The centerpiece of the museum is the Spruce Goose, of course - but they also have a separate space flight hall and a full size movie theater showing flight related IMAX and 3D films all day long.  I'd set aside at least one full day, possibly two, to take it all in.

Tucson has the Pima Air Museum and of course, the adjacent Davis-Monathan Air Force Base Boneyard with over 4,400 aircraft in long term dry storage.  Bus tours of the Boneyard are available through the museum.

There's also the Titan Missile Museum south of Tucson which offers tours of the last remaining Titan missile complex including the underground silo (complete with decommissioned missile), underground control rooms and crew quarters.

And I'm sure you know there's more than one Boeing Factory in Seattle.  There's the Museum of Flight and the original Boeing Red Barn at Boeing Field south of downtown Seattle. Then there's the main Boeing production facility to the north in Everett where they make the wide body planes (747, 767, 777 and the Dreamliner) in the world's largest building.  Tours are available at the nearby Future of Flight tour facility which includes a bus ride and a walking tour of the factory.  Finally, there's the narrow body plant (737) in Kent which I don't think offers tours.
 
Lou has a great idea doing the trip in the other direction.

I did not know the Boneyard offers tours. I have driven past it many times and wished I could go inside. Thanks Lou. :)
 
Sounds like a great trip. Reverse order sounds good.

+1 for the Evergreen Air and Space Museum. The word "museum" hardly does it justice -- it is huge, with big, separate buildings for space, air, and an iMax theater. There's also a water park building with a huge 747 perched on top! They were prepared to add a space shuttle, but it wasn't awarded to them. They do have a lot of space-related material, and the whole place is extremely well done and well run -- even the cafeteria, where the owner and other notables often have lunch right with the customers. Besides, it's a nice area, northwest of the State capital, Salem, and well worth your time.

The Pima Air and Space Museum (PASM) and the two boneyards in the Tucson area are great, but very hot in summer. I believe you can take a narrated bus tour from the PASM to drive around the boneyard at Davis Monthan AFB. However, it isn't as easy to see the other boneyard in Marana, so I'm told, Google will probably help. (Evergreen used to own that one but sold it awhile back.) AFAIK, the Marana airfield used to be a CIA operation, back in the day. There are still operations such as National Guard training, parachute drops, etc.

If you do the Olympic Peninsula loop in Washington state, you might like to visit Port Townsend, a scenic Victorian town on Admiralty Inlet, where Puget Sound connects with the Strait of Juan de Fuca. If you get there, drop by Fort Worden State Park, an old US Army Coast Artillery fort from ca. 1900 (photos). The guns are gone, but the emplacements remain, along with two campgrounds (beach views from one!), a forested hill to hike, etc. We are volunteering Aug-Oct as hosts at the Coast Artillery Museum (in the barracks building next to Park Hq) -- drop in and say hello!

There is a triangle of forts covering Admiralty Inlet, so you can drive to Fort Flagler on Marrostone Island. Then, take a ferry over to Whidbey Island to visit Fort Casey, which still has a few big guns, then on up to Deception Pass State Park, another gorgeous place. Go to Anacortes and ferry to the San Juan Islands, or take that ferry from Port Townsend. There also are whale watching boats from Port Townsend. If you are there at the right time, there's everything from a jazz festival to the Wooden Boat Festival.

Have a great trip!





 

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Add me to the list recommending you reverse the order for your trip. We lived and worked in Death Valley and you do not want to visit from May until early November, especially in an RV. But winter there is delightful and it is a strikingly beautiful place. Be sure to make the trip up to Scotty's Castle at the north end of DV. You might also want to visit Joshua Tree National Park, another desert park. 

We did the boneyard tour at Davis-Mothan and loved it.

The California coast is beautiful if you get there. Hearst Castle is an interesting place although tours are pricey. Plenty of campgrounds along the coast which are full in summer but not so much in fall/winter.

Lots to do along your route. Enjoy.

Wendy
 
I agree with others-reverse your arrival destination to Seattle. We did Southern CA to Vegas etc in August 2010 and we barely managed since our time slot didn't allow much flexibility, but with a 6 mos option it would be much more enjoyable for you to start north. Our entire family really enjoyed the Museum of Flight in Seattle. The teens loved talking to the actual retired pilots from certain aircraft on site-a true highlight of the trip. They also loved touring the aircraft carrier in San Diego-USS Midway and again talking to the retired pilots. The entire west coast is magnificent, another highlight for us was a jet boat trip up the Rogue River in Oregon and riding the dunes around Florence-Winchester Bay. Ireland's RV in Gold Beach, OR is a tiny park directly on the beach. Of course you must do the Napa & Sonoma Valleys while in CA-check out the Greystone campus of the Culinary Institute of America overlooking the vineyards in Napa. A dining reservation can be made online. The most important advice when touring the west coast......be sure to rent a car and don't even think about taking the rental RV just north of SanFran on the coastal Rt 1. It's almost white knuckles in a car, much less anything larger. ENJOY! 
 
Hi guys,

Thanks for your generous replies...I have added some great spots on my map.
I was in Oshkosh in 07 for the annual EAA airshow. Then went to Davis Monthan AFB and the Missile silo in Arizona. Love to get back to Oshkosh some time in the future....loved it!
I am picking up my vehicle in LA so it has to be the starting point. Reno is going to be the clincher....as its on shortly after we arrive.
Then all those other things you've mentioned will follow. San Diego is a must, so is Seattle.
We really want to be away from the North West when the weather closes in, so maybe we should concentrate on the Southern states...maybe go to Texas...Mexico is a possibility? Whats that like for RV's?
 
The problem with Texas is that it is such a huge state and the best sights would require a lot of driving just to get there and then to drive from site to site.

After the Reno Air Show you could head for Seattle and then start working your way south. Lots of great things to see. Mount Rainier, Mount Saint Helens, Crater Lake, Lassen NP, Lake Tahoe, Yosemite, Kings Canyon, Sequoia, Death Valley. All awesome places. California has a lot of air museums and air shows.
 
I agree - head north ASAP, then return south.

Between L.A. and Reno you have a few choices to make - drive north along the coast to San Francisco, then head east to Reno, go north through the Central Valley and visit Kings Canyon and Yosemite National Parks (the latter will be extremely crowded and advance campground reservations are mandatory) or travel the less populated east side of the Sierra Nevada mountains. 

The east Sierra route is the most direct from L.A to Reno and includes the site of the Manzanar WWII Japanese internment camp, the Alabama Hills where many vintage Hollywood westerns were filmed and the Bodie ghost town, a mining camp that is being preserved in a state of arrested decay.

On an aviation note, the Mojave Airport in the town of Mojave, CA to the north of Los Angeles is the home of Burt Rutan's Scaled Composites and was the site of the Voyager around the world flight and the White Knight/Spaceship One X-Prize suborbital flights. The Spaceship One flights earned it the designation as the world's first commercial spaceport, making it legal to launch and return from space.  They have a good size commercial boneyard visible from the highway and there's a chance of seeing  flight activities from nearby Edwards Air Force Base.

Not aviation related, but a few miles to the east of Mojave is the town of Boron.  Just north of the freeway is the Rio Tinto open pit mine, producing nearly half of the world's supply of borax.  Borax has an amazing number of uses, in everything from laundry detergent to fertilizer and even as a component of spacecraft heat shields.  They have a nice visitor center overlooking the mine pit that traces the history of borax mining from the 20 mule team wagon trains that carried the ore out of Death Valley to the present operations.
 
Thanks for your comments.

I agree Texas looks pretty big on the map.

Feel there are a lot of things to see on the West Coast. Heading north rapidly then drifting South seems a good strategy. The weather will determine our progress.

Please keep the ideas coming....my trip map's looking healthier all the time!

Cheers

Kevin
 
If you're renting an RV, you'll need permission from the rental company before taking it into Mexico.  They will have to supply the necessary ownership documents for it to cross the border.

US auto insurance isn't valid in Mexico so you'll need separate Mexican insurance coverage for the length of your visit.  The insurance is available from agents in the border crossing towns before you leave the US.
 
The US is a bit harder to roam than NZ.... I spent 6 months circling both islands in my sailboat in '86/'87 then again in '94/'95. I spent a lot of time on the South Island on the 2nd trip, mostly in Fiordland, Stewart Island then down to Antarctica in December Jan.

You can't go wrong on the advise that you have been given on the West Coast US. Especially heed the advise of staying out of the desert in July/Aug/Sept.

I live in the Los Angeles area and would be happy to help in any way that I can with your arrangements here. God knows that I owe my Kiwi friends a ton of returned hospitality.

Where do you live in NZ??
 
Wavery said:
The US is a bit harder to roam than NZ.... I spent 6 months circling both islands in my sailboat in '86/'87 then again in '94/'95. I spent a lot of time on the South Island on the 2nd trip, mostly in Fiordland, Stewart Island then down to Antarctica in December Jan.

You can't go wrong on the advise that you have been given on the West Coast US. Especially heed the advise of staying out of the desert in July/Aug/Sept.

I live in the Los Angeles area and would be happy to help in any way that I can with your arrangements here. God knows that I owe my Kiwi friends a ton of returned hospitality.

Where do you live in NZ??

Lou,

Thanks for joining my post. Pretty impressed with your travels. Going to Antarctica is no mean feat. I would appreciate an opportunity to touch base in LA...can never have too many contacts when in a foreign country. My sailing is limited to club racing with my kids and Gulf day sailing on a 44 ft ketch and many of the other sailboats that live in our waters.

I'm in Auckland...been there nearly 60 years! Apart from trips all over the planet.

I am considering picking up a 2000 Chev Tioga camper with a 454cu in motor. About 95,000 miles. As a Chevy service agent you are peobably very familiar with this powerplant? I know its a bit old by your standards but by ours....its an awesome beast! Owned by a Kiwi who's done a lot of mainetnance...new tyres, alternator, batteries, frdge etc. What do you think of this type of rig? Is the transmission a problem on these vehicles?
 
cajunkev said:
Lou,

Thanks for joining my post. Pretty impressed with your travels. Going to Antarctica is no mean feat. I would appreciate an opportunity to touch base in LA...can never have too many contacts when in a foreign country. My sailing is limited to club racing with my kids and Gulf day sailing on a 44 ft ketch and many of the other sailboats that live in our waters.

I'm in Auckland...been there nearly 60 years! Apart from trips all over the planet.

I am considering picking up a 2000 Chev Tioga camper with a 454cu in motor. About 95,000 miles. As a Chevy service agent you are peobably very familiar with this powerplant? I know its a bit old by your standards but by ours....its an awesome beast! Owned by a Kiwi who's done a lot of mainetnance...new tyres, alternator, batteries, frdge etc. What do you think of this type of rig? Is the transmission a problem on these vehicles?
I am very familiar with that chassis..... The 454 is a reliable power plant and the 2000 has fuel injection which has greatly increased the longevity on these big V8s. The 4L80E is a very good trans if it has been serviced regularly.

A lot of owners don't even realize that the transmission needs to be serviced at all. Therefore, it is common to find vehicles with 95,000 miles on them and never been serviced. The vehicle starts acting up and they trade it in. It's pretty easy to listen to an engine and tell if it's knocking or smoking, leaking whatever. A transmission takes someone that knows what he's doing to look it over.

If you're going on a long trip, be sure that the tires are recent and the vehicle has ALL of the fluids changed (including brake fluid).

If the vehicle has been properly cared for, it could easily give you another 100,000 miles of service.

I had a Passport 45 Ketch.... I had a friend in Auckland with a 44' (Kauri) ketch (his sir-name is Carpenter.... I think his 1st name is Grant??)..... beautiful machine. He used to come out to Mototapu Island and teach our Church-camp kids to sail every summer. He'd take a group of kids and I'd take a group of kids..... great fun. In my 2 seasons of Summer-camp on Mototapu, I probaly taught 200 Kiwi kids how to sail........ I'm going to remember the guys name in the middle of the night tonight.....
 
Wayne,

Thanks for your comments. Do you "flush" auto transmissions in the US....ours are now done this way.

We dont replace filters and oil now. "Flushing" is more expensive....about twice the price.....but said to be more effective.

I presume this motor will have electronic ignition and computerized analyses? Make it easy to diagnose.

Its such a small world. I take snapper out of the gulf near Motutapu regularly. I remember well sailing in a fleet of 12 footers with my kids and camping on the island. Its a wildlife sanctuary now. We had an annual race to one of the gulf islands from our club in the Tamaki river....Glendowie Yacht club. We had some great times....even won the season trophy one year...had 3 boats in my campaign....wanta win yacht races...get a faster boat!

Team New Zealand have just launched their new cat in Auckland, for the Americas Cup in August, in San Francisco Bay. Their prototype "smokes" around the harbour. You dont want to get in its way!  Now that will be a yacht race to watch!

Sounds like you had some great times in our harbour. Your yacht sounds like a Nice boat! There are still a few strip planked kauri yachts around. Its a lot of work to keep them seaworthy. But there are some passionate families in the yachting business here. Unfortunately many boat builders have gone overseas for lack of work. Although we get a few super yachts to refit and the odd scratch build.

Regards

Kevin

 
cajunkev said:
Wayne,

Thanks for your comments. Do you "flush" auto transmissions in the US....ours are now done this way.

We dont replace filters and oil now. "Flushing" is more expensive....about twice the price.....but said to be more effective.

I presume this motor will have electronic ignition and computerized analyses? Make it easy to diagnose.

Kevin
OMG.... you're going to be sorry for asking.....

Flushing the trans has proven to be a 2-edged sword. I got a job as Service Manager at a large Used Car Mega-Dealership in Los Angeles when I came back from sailing in 1998. The company had 25 of these mega used car dealerships and 500-new car dealerships across the country. Every vehicle that came into the used car dealerships received a thorough inspection. Any vehicle that had the hint of old trans fluid (from not being serviced recently) got a trans flush. I was very much against this policy if the vehicle was over 3-years old or trans fluid looked at all burnt. I insisted on pulling the pan (inspecting the residual), changing the filter, draining the fluid from the converter, then refilling.

We did this for 6-months and the powers to be over-ruled me and insisted on a flush only. They determined that the cleaning, inspecting and refilling was too costly and not warranted. For the next year, we performed a flush on every vehicle and tracked the vehicles that we recommended an inspection on. A whopping 35% of those vehicles came back to the shop with transmission problems (every car we sold had a 9 or 12-month warranty). 60% of those vehicles required a complete overhaul or rebuilt trans. It drove warranty costs so high that the policy was abandoned nation wide in our stores. Shortly after that, the entire used car chain was abandoned with a $25B loss. This loss was largely driven by bad policies on servicing and/or rejecting poorly maintained vehicles. IMO... most of that was due to transmission failures.

So...... I never recommend a trans flush on any vehicle that has missed a regular trans service. Those flush machines are a rip-off to the consumer and a $ machine for the businesses that use them. They charge the customer more for the flush and the labor costs are far lower...... do the math.... someone is getting screwed.

The big issue is that if the trans has crap in the pan, that crap is going to be forced through the filter and into the tiny orifices of the valve body where they can clog the valve body and may cause catastrophic trans failure. To further aggravate the issue, if the filter is already clogged (which it will be if the fluid is brown), the filter may come apart and clog up the valve body even worse. A lot of the cars that we did came back on a tow truck after just a few miles. In that case, we had to eat the failure....... If it is a customer at a lube shop, the lube shop is going to tell the customer that the trans failed due to lack of service and either sell them a trans or send them to a place that will sell them one.

The fact is, any trans that has not been properly serviced has a seriously shortened life-span. If the fluid is brown and smells burnt, catastrophic failure is just down the road. A proper service may slow the damage from getting worse and extend the trans life by 10K-20K miles if one is lucky (giving the owner time to dump that vehicle on someone else). My experience has been that flushing that same trans may cause it to fail within 100 miles or less.

Done with rant...... ;D


BTW........ the mentality in NZ is far different than the US........ The US is pretty much a "Throw-away society". Servicing a vehicle a way down on the average person's priority list. If the car fails, get another one........ In NZ, I found that people knew the value in maintaining their vehicles. It shows by the number of well maintained, older vehicles still going down the road. Very much a different mind-set.
 
Wow!  Well I guess I did ask...

Guess I need to find a shop that can drop the pan and replace the filter!

Your comments echo those of a friend of mine who ran an engine rebuilding business. His comment was....service your vehicle regularly...religiously! Hes retired now. I was in his garage recently. He had stockpiled 20 containers of "synthetic" oil. Reckons it the best.

How much would it cost to replace the auto gearbox on the Tioga? I believe you can just buy a complete unit and bolt it in? What would you expect to pay for parts and labor?
 
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