Wandering Wahls

In our travels, we’re attempting to utilize base resources as much as possible. The commissaries are a great benefit. For instance, I’m amazed at what we save at the commissaries versus off-base grocery stores. I tend to compare value based how many bags of groceries I get for my money, after all, I usually buy the same items when I shop.  So, when I walk out of a Safeway with one small bag of groceries representing a bill of $75, it always makes me wish I had gone to a commissary where I usually get three or four bags for the same price.

Anyway, to continue the subject of my last post about ID procedures, we also use the bases for their Famcamps or RV parks — the price is right and the facilities are good. Therefore, we encounter a variety of ID procedures from service to service and base to base.

Based on our experiences, it seems there is no set of security guidelines for U.S. bases. We’ve been waved through at some; some have required the passengers’ ID; and some required a driver’s license in addition to the ID card.  It seems odd why a procedure as important as entry to a base isn’t a consistent policy throughout the services.

At one Air Force base, when my wife still had her active duty card, we were turned back from the gate and told to get a pass, after which we were simply waved through when showing our ID. When she got her retiree card, we were waved through after flashing the ID — no pass needed. This discrepancy struck me: why does an active duty servicemember need a pass but not a retiree (or vice versa).

Also, in some cases only the driver needs to show an ID and not the other passengers.

As for the guards, some bases use active duty servicemembers, some use Department of Homeland Security, and some use rent-a-guards. One naval base used active duty guards at one gate and rent-a-guards at another — and they had different ID requirements.

Speaking of ID procedure, one Army base had different ID requirements depending on the shift.  We had a sticker for the car by that time, but one shift still needed a driver’s license and one shift did not. At an Air Force base, only the driver was asked for ID in the morning, but all passengers were asked for IDs in the afternoon.

Oh well, these decisions are above my spousal pay grade. I’ll just keep on enjoying the benefits of the base services.

Our trip has taken us past many guards — thankfully not the prison type but border and base guards. Our experiences with these guards has me wondering about the ID measures used in controlling entry into the U.S. and military bases.

For instance, this morning we crossed the U.S. border coming from Alberta into Montana. I drove up to the wrong lane and had to walk our passports over to the guard. First, the guard was, well,  a jerk. No smile. No greeting. He just gave me a look like, “how could you be so dumb not to drive in the correct lane.” (I didn’t know if the clearance would be high enough, so I took the truck lane, and because it was 8 a.m., there was only one person on duty.)

Anyway, he took my license, swiped the passports, and asked the usual questions: Did you buy any firearms, fruit, alcohol, food, wildlife, etcetera? Now, I’m not expecting every U.S.-border representative to be

Mr. Congeniality, but they are representing the U.S. — so at least offer a smile or ask how our trip was.

What surprised me, though, was he asked how many days we were in the U.S. I inadvertently gave an incorrect amount of four days, when it was actually eight, and he said nothing. I thought he could view this information when he scanned our passports. I wonder what information actually is  collected and if it is viewable to U.S.-border representatives when a passport is scanned?

He also didn’t look into the RV or ask to see the rest of the family.

In comparison, the Canadian-border guard in Washington had been very deliberate in his questioning. He noticed my driver’s license (he wanted both a passport and a driver’s license) was from California, but the RV and car plates were from South Dakota. I had to explain the purpose of the trip and the vagaries of state income tax laws in order to satisfy his suspicions.

He also asked if we’d been to Canada before. When I told him we went to Victoria from Whidbey Island two days earlier, he asked why we didn’t just drive up Vancouver Island and go through Vancouver. I didn’t mind the questions because they seemed logical and what a border guard should ask. And he did all this with a smile.

We’ve also found differences at bases also. But I’ll get into that in my next entry.

Happy travels!

We’ve been staying at a few military base RV/camp parks during our trip so far. I’ll go into more detail in a later blog, but I wanted to pass along a tip if you’re thinking of where to camp or take your RV. The Cliffside RV Park at Whidbey Island NAS in Washington is a fantastic spot for either camping or staying in a RV. It is beautiful there. The camp sits on top of the cliffs above the beautiful water and across from Lopez and Orcas Islands.

So many things make it great. The host is a delightful guy with good knowledge of the area’s nature, the base, and the island; there is great beach access; the location is remote and quiet; it is well-maintained, and it’s cheap. Plus, from the park it is easy to explore Oak Harbor or Whidbey’s small towns like Coupeville or Langley. It’s also easy to get to Anacortes at the north end of the island for the ferry to Victoria, British Columbia. The best part of going to Anacortes is driving over Deception Pass.

We even stayed there during a blustery storm, and the time was still fun. The kids and I walked the beach —well, I walked while they played “runaway from the waves” (we did find out that wet shoes don’t dry well in a moist climate).

I’ll pass on other campsite information as we travel, but we were so impressed with Cliffside RV Pak that I had to mention it.

I better stop writing now, the light has turned green.

As I write this from the RV park in Jasper, Alberta, I realize that our trip has been going faster than my blogging — and that’s hard to do in a 41-foot RV towing a Volvo wagon. I’ll have to get used to a ritual of consistent blogging. I guess the inside term is bloviating, but that sounds too much like overeating. Before I get into the trip and its wonders to date, I would like to describe our experiences buying the RV. It was a fascinating process because the various personalities we met and as a peek into our economy.

We did deal with some nice salespeople. There were two who told us upfront they did not have the RV in stock that would fit our needs. They did not try to sell us anything, and, more importantly, they helped us along as we had to deal with the “car salesperson” mentality we met when we found the RV we knew we wanted. You know the type: “how’s the kids” or “that unit will be gone today.”

Because we have three kids and will be on the road for a year, we determined we needed an RV with bunk beds and good storage. This decision narrowed our choices. Among our choices, we decided on a Newmar Allstar 4154 because it also had Captain’s Chairs behind the passenger seat, with a table (good for road schooling), and a U-shaped dinette (good for a family of 5).

We searched for the RV on the Internet and during visits with family. In the end, we found a unit at a dealership in Davis, Calif. After visiting the dealership and going to the dealership’s “biggest sale ever” (aren’t they all?) at the Sacramento Expo Center, we knew this was the model we wanted. Unfortunately, the dealership’s sales manager was trying to push us into a lesser model from a different manufacturer with his standardized salesperson lines, such as “You mean you didn’t come ready to buy?! I guarantee it will sell today.” The unit was still in their lot three weeks later, by the way.

After further salesperson routines (“The owner says don’t call him with any price request; this is the lowest we’ll go!” “My boss’ boss called the owner to get you a deal, and he got chewed out.”), they accepted our offer — lower than the sales price which they wouldn’t go below. Of course we had our RV friend Smitty (at Guaranty RV in Oregon) telling us not to worry — the dealer wasn’t going to let us walk, and we should hold firm. So we didn’t buckle, and we got our deal. We plan to sell the RV when the trip is over, so we’re hoping that we negotiated out a lot of the depreciation and brought ourselves closer to the selling price we’ll get in a year.

The whole process was an eye opener to returning to the states though. We had heard of the economy slow down while being overseas, but here we saw hard evidence — the closed dealerships, the liquidation sales, the 40 percent off MSRP, and the manufacturers going out of business. This represented the fringes of the economy, but it sure seemed like the canary in the mineshaft warning us about the whole economy.

But, to top it off, we had to deal with sales managers who think they are in the economy of a year ago, even though their salespeople are playing computer games, and there are no other customers on their acre lot. But hey, that RV will be sold today if we don’t act. Further, too many don’t seem to realize the power of the Internet to provide consumers with information about what these models are going for at other dealerships. No wonder the dealership we bought from had to close locations.

Wow, we are blown away by the replies to our first post. We will try to reply to some of them as soon as we can. It was really fun for Mary Claire to read the posts by people she had served with.

As I wrote last time, I wanted to elaborate on how we came up with our idea to travel the country. Well, it stems from having spent eight of the past 10 years out of the U.S. From 1998 to 2004, we were in Okinawa, Japan, at Kadena air base. Then, after my wife’s stint at Bolling AFB in Washington, D.C., with the Air Force surgeon general, we spent 2004 to July 2008 stationed at Landstuhl Regional Medical Center in Germany (where my wife was a nurse-midwife).

Being overseas was fantastic (everyone should try to be stationed there at some point), and we made the most of the assignments. We wanted our kids to know about different cultures and ways of thinking, so we lived off base and involved ourselves as much as possible in the local community. Our children attended the local schools in each country and played soccer for the German village we lived in. I was assistant coach for the village’s Bambini team when my youngest played (essentially I rolled the balls to the kids as they ran up to the goal to kick shots, and I carried the ball bag). We tended to shop off base, and we explored and visited as much of the surrounding areas and countries as we could.

Because of local cultural immersions, our children learned to ski in the Alps; ate sushi in Tokyo; fed monkeys in Bali; climbed the Eiffel Tower; pretended to be VonTrapp family members running through Salzburg, Austria; ate French fries in Belgium (they were invented there, after all); played soldier in the fields around Verdun, France; and enjoyed the natural hot baths of Budapest, Hungary, and the chilling Alpine waters of the Eib See near Garmisch, Germany.

As we thought about our return to the states, we realized what was missing in our kids’ experiences were things like going to the edge of the Grand Canyon and looking down (or spitting when mom and dad aren’t looking), crabbing on the Oregon coast, swimming the rivers where the 49ers panned for gold, seeing the battlefields of the Civil War, playing on the white sands of the Florida panhandle, and eating deep-fried Twinkies (well, the last item might not be a bad thing to miss). Therefore, to help our kids round out their cultural experiences to date, we decided to take the time to show them America and introduce them to the unique cultural and historical aspects of the country (OK, even deep-fried Twinkies).

The second reason for our trip is that we have no place to call “home.” There are a few reasons for this. For one thing, we don’t own a home. Also, because of our time overseas, we haven’t put roots down anywhere. And finally, there is no one compelling place that draws us there. My wife and I are both from the west coast, and the places we grew up or lived when out of college or first married have changed dramatically. Most are sprawling expanses of concrete, with more traffic, pollution, and crime than when we lived there (the wonderful results of growth).

Therefore, we want to make this trip to see the different towns and areas of the country and find a place that we feel drawn to and want to call home.

Finally, we are at the perfect time to make such a trip. Mary Claire has just retired, and the Air Force will store our household goods for year. I can teach online while writing articles for magazines and blogs (and while searching for a trip sponsor. Our RV can be a country-wide rolling billboard for some firm. Can you hear me USAA? ). The kids are still young, and, well, you get the idea.
Next up will be how we attained our rig and our first journey leg.