CALIFORNIA
With retro good looks and bunk space for
two, an Airstream trailer is the hippest way to
holiday in California. Hotels? Who needs ’em?
Jenni Doggett hits cruise control36 worldtravellermagazine.com
CALIFORNIAworldtravellermagazine.com 37fter 250km, turn left.’
California’s epic scale
has rendered my sat-
nav redundant. But at least we don’t have
to worry about making it to the hotel in
time: my friend Sergio and I are touring
the Golden State with accommodation
in tow. Our home for the fortnight
is a classic Airstream trailer, one of
those shiny aluminium bullets (don’t
call them caravans) that have graced
the highways of America since 1931.
As well as 90-odd years of history, the
space-age-silver trailer comes with a
glamorous Hollywood pedigree: name
an A-lister and they probably own one
— Hanks, Pitt, McConaughey, Depp et al
have all fallen for its vintage-Americana
looks and freedom-of-the-open-road
mythology. The film-star version is
probably a bit more substantial than
ours, mind: Sergio and I have booked
the smallest model available, a 5.5m
‘Bambi’, along with a muscular four-
wheel drive to tow it. Truth be told, our
Bambi looked a little ignoble beside a
truck almost twice its length, but I’d
been assured that, for a first-time RV
driver like me, it’s manageable, cosy
and maintains a sheen of cool in spite
of its size and resemblance to a toaster.
So, at a rental lot on the outskirts of
San Francisco, we receive a quick briefing
on how to hook up the power and empty
the tanks, then we’re off, leaving the city
at rush hour, me terrified of Downtown’s
famously treacherous gradients.
Hunched like a tense crow, I grip the
steering wheel, barely reaching double-