S5, E16: We Towed an Airstream Down the Oregon Coast Using an Electric Truck. Here’s What Happened.

What happens when the person who knows how to tow has to leave — and you’re left with a 5,000-pound Airstream, an electric truck, and 800 miles of Oregon coast ahead of you?

On this episode of Unpacked, host Aislyn Greene shares the story of the eight-day road trip she and her wife Jeannie took down the Oregon coast in August — towing an Airstream Basecamp 20 XE with a Rivian Tri-Motor R1T, with exactly zero towing experience between them.

What was supposed to be a fully sustainable cycling-and-camping trip with friends became a crash course in trailer physics, EV charging, and the unexpected generosity of the RV community.

Transcript

Aislyn: Imagine this. It’s August. I’m cycling down Highway 101 along the Oregon coast with two friends. It’s a sunny, perfect day in the Pacific is on our right, doing its ocean thing, you know, glinting in the sun. Waves crashing. Even better, we have a fourth person with us who is acting as our support queen. So while we pedal, she drives an electric Rivian truck, towing an Airstream trailer so that every afternoon as we cyclists roll into camp, all tired and sweaty and, you know, buzzy with the energy of the day, she’s already set up camp. Dinner is ready. The Airstream is level. Our sleeping bags are waiting for us, so all we have to do is shower, grab a beer, and watch the sun set over the Pacific. Well, that was the plan. Right.

Jeannie: What are we doing? I’m really scared.

Aislyn: Stop, stop.

Jeannie: Oh.

Aislyn: Are you really crying?

Aislyn: What you just heard is a slice of the trip that we actually took. Because for eight days in August, my wife, Jeannie, and I towed a 20-foot Airstream down the Oregon coast using a Rivian truck with exactly zero experience towing anything ever. We laughed, we cried, we swore, and yes, we bickered. But the trip taught us a lot, including two really big things. The first is that an electric truck can absolutely tow a 5,000-pound Airstream down the Oregon coast and do it well. The second is that the RV community is really just that: a community. Even now, I get teary eyed thinking about how many people helped us along the way.

I’m Aislyn Greene and this is Unpacked, and this episode is really devoted to those people, the strangers who taught us to park an RV, who offered us tools and advice, and who, around a campfire. shared a drink and their own stories of learning and failing on the road.

The idea started, as you know, any travel idea does between friends. It was a simple dream. We wanted to cycle down the Oregon coast with our friends Chris and Betsy. So Betsy had done the trip twice before and wanted to get in a third run. Jeannie and I, we love to cycle, but the idea of planning a big trek like that and hauling our gear was a little overwhelming. So we combined all of our knowledge and experience and mapped out a big adventure. Jeannie, Betsy, and I would cycle south from Astoria at the northwest corner of Oregon, all the way down to Brookings, which is near the California border. And Chris, who has a commercial driver’s license, would tow an RV and act as a one woman pit crew. As an additional layer, because why not? We wanted to make it fully sustainable. So enter our Storm blue Rivian R1 T. We chose Rivian because it’s a California based company, and I’m based in California.

Plus, they had just expanded their adventure network, which is a fast charging network that’s built specifically for the kind of places EVs weren’t supposed to go. And many of those charging stations just happen to be along the Oregon coast. They even have trailer friendly pull through charging stations, so that’s a bonus. Plus, Airstream had a new electric model out, a partnership with REI, which resulted in the Basecamp 20XE. It’s essentially the Airstream that makes it even easier to go far off the grid. So we figured why not pair two of the most iconic American adventure brands out there and create one epic summer trip?

Jeannie and I left our home in Sausalito on August 14. We pointed the Rivian north on Highway 101, with our bikes strapped to our brand new bike rack and headed to Eureka for our first night. The plan was to slow charge overnight at our Airbnb, but we knew we would need to stop once for a little battery juice along the way.

Aislyn: We are in the middle of dark forest right now. Oh boy.

Aislyn: Our first stop was actually the result of us ignoring what the Rivian suggested that we do. It was a small Electrify America station in a very dark middle of nowhere, with one hookup that did not work, and at the time it felt a little scary. I jokingly called it the murder stop because, you know, remote location, dark forest. We’re the only ones around for miles. 24 hours later, though, it would feel like a blip of a problem. The next day, as we were driving toward Eugene, where we were going to meet Chris and Betsy and pick up our Airstream, we got a phone call. Betsy shared that Chris’s brother had died suddenly and unexpectedly in the middle of the night and they had to fly to Chicago. You can probably imagine we were so shocked and devastated, and our hearts just broke into a thousand pieces for her. And of course, we just said, go do what you need to do. We’ll figure it out. And we knew we would. We didn’t want her to worry. We just wanted her to go and be with her family and not even think for another moment about this whole trip. And we were faced with a decision because that meant that the one person on the trip who actually knew how to tow was gone. Jeannie and I were now the ones picking up the Airstream. And, you know, to be honest, we did think about canceling, but we’d spent so much time planning this and we decided, I think in the end, to keep going for one main reason Chris and Betsy thought that maybe, maybe there would be some way that they could join us at the very end of the trip, and we wanted to hold that space for them. Plus, and yes, let’s all groan together. We thought, how hard could it really be?

Aislyn: And basically from here, Jeannie, you’re just going straight and you’re gonna get straight on the highway. And once you’re on the highway. I think it’s actually gonna feel easier than it is right now. Jeannie, are you really crying? Okay, okay, I okay, you need to stop and let me drive.

Jeannie: Okay, okay.

Aislyn: Okay, okay. Okay. I need you to stop, not stop crying. But I need you to stop so I can take over.

Jeannie: No, I’m gonna do it. Okay. I’m okay.

Aislyn: We were five minutes into our 500-mile journey. We just left Sutton RV in Eugene and now had a 5,000-pound Airstream bumping and swaying behind us. I had driven us off the lot and pretty much promptly freaked out. So Jeannie took over. But clearly she was also freaking out. So we just pushed through. We kept driving, and what I said in that clip earlier was true. As we got onto the highway and adjusted to the rhythms of both vehicles, we did get a little more comfortable, like maybe one percent, and we focused on the things that we knew we could control, like when and how we’d need to charge with this. Now 5,000-pound trailer behind us.

By late afternoon, we finally neared our first stop, Fort Stevens State Park, one of the country’s largest public parks. Its 4,300 acres near Astoria that combines military history and modern recreation. Quite a fascinating combo.

Aislyn: This is day one. The tears are behind us.

Jeannie: I’m so overwhelmed.

Aislyn: The rain has lifted. The clouds have parted. I think it’s symbolic. Jeannie is doing a great job behind the wheel.

Aislyn: We were approaching our first campsite and our first back in. And if you have towed before, you might suspect what’s coming.

Jeannie: If I go this way, it’s going to push the trailer. If you go left, it’ll go. Should go left.

Aislyn: What we were about to learn was the signature RV scoop, where you drive past your campsite, then turn the tow vehicle hard toward the site and slowly back up to scoop the trailer into the spot. It is so much harder than it sounds.

Jeannie: So you. So you want me to.

Parking Angel: Jump this way? About six feet? Yeah. And then hard, right? As hard as you can. Oh, okay. Yeah.

Aislyn: That is our first campsite neighbor whose name I didn’t write down, and shall therefore be known as Parking Angel. Before we get back to him, though, I have three things to tell you about the situation we found ourselves in.

Number one, most campgrounds have either back-in spots where you have to back your RV into position or pull through spots where you pull in, you park and then you pull out. No backing up required. All of our reservations were for back-in spots.

Number two, if you have never tried to back up a single axle trailer, let me tell you, it is way harder than it looks. And our gorgeous little Airstream that I still love to this day was squirrely. One slight overcorrection with a tow vehicle and the trailer was off the pavement and starting to jackknife.

And number three, what we learned about RV life is that once you have parked your RV, it’s a sport to sit around and watch other people try to park theirs. In other words, everyone was staring. Thankfully, our parking angel helped Jeannie nail her second attempt in record time.

Parking Angel: Alright, now keep going. Okay. You’re good. Keep going.

Aislyn: Five minutes later, the Airstream was in place and we were out laughing with our new friends who were sharing their own stories of learning to park an RV. And that night, Jeannie and I finally unclenched, we sipped on some whiskey, then fell asleep in a trailer that we had hitched and towed ourselves. We hadn’t scratched the Airstream. We hadn’t hit any kids on bikes in the campground, and we hadn’t cried in many hours. Maybe we were winning?

The next morning, fully caffeinated, we face down our next big decision. How much do we actually try to bike this week? Because we’d all spent the last year training and prepping for this big ride, but we also felt so pummeled by all the new things that we were learning. Our brains just felt like they were completely overwhelmed. But because Fort Stevens was so large, we decided to go explore for an hour on two wheels. That would turn out to be the longest bike ride of the entire week. A few hours later we were showered, fed, and we hitched our Airstream Rivian combo and headed 55 miles south to Nehalem Bay State Park. This time I was behind the wheel and I felt, you know, more confident. And we both thought yesterday went fine. We’ve had some education. Surely today will be easier.

Jeannie: Every little movement, it’s like making it go.

Aislyn: I completely understand. I’m trying to follow what you’re saying.

Jeannie: Straight forward again. I guess it’s impossible. Can it not go straight back? Yesterday. Was it going straight back?

Aislyn: Not really. More straight or less. This plant is in the way. AM I straight now? I just need you to direct me. I’m gonna just go a little farther, and then I’m gonna pull out. Go straight, and then I’m gonna reverse again. Jeannie, Jeannie. No. Can you? Sorry. Wrong way. I’m gonna pull forward. Yeah. Okay.

Aislyn: So, yeah, that is us attempting to back into campsite E34 at Nehalem Bay. I’d pull forward, I’d crank the wheel, I’d reverse, and the trailer would go the wrong way. I’d pull forward again, crank it the other way. Reverse again. Wrong way. All the while, traffic is starting to pile up on the one way road. Our stress was just going off the charts. Eventually we gave up, pulled out, and did the loop of shame around the campground until we could start again.

Jeannie and I were determined to be the ones to save ourselves this time. We struggled. We swore. We tried to block out all the stares. I gotta say that driving a Rivian and towing an Airstream does not make it easy to go incognito. And 20 minutes into our second attempt, the trailer was in. Our neighbors burst into applause. They later said that they were trying so hard not to watch.

Aislyn: Oh my God.

Neighbor: We all have to learn. And it sucks.

Aislyn: It really is so, And this thing is really so sensitive. We discovered last night.

Jeannie: the shorter one. That’s what we were told. Yeah, it’s kind of a loaner.

Neighbor: You stole it. Those are Awesome.

Aislyn: No, no, we don’t know what we’re doing.

Aislyn: That night, we chatted with our three new friends. They shared their whiskey and we talked late into the night, the stars winking on above us. The next morning we took another short ride to the beach. And then we were back on the road. And this therefore brings me to another thing that we learned. Most people with RVs, at least big ones, pick a campground. They go through the agony of parking and then they literally park themselves. They stay for a week or two. But we had planned our trip around the bike ride, which means we had reservations at a different site almost every night. And if you know anything about trying to camp during the summer on the West Coast, you know it’s almost impossible to find open campgrounds at the last minute, especially during a gorgeous stretch of August weather. So we were back on the road and anxiously watching the Airstream, and I was anxiously watching the speedometer really slow.

Aislyn: Slower and slower. Slower, slower, slower slow. Real slow. Just go really slow. You’re gonna slow down a little slower, little, little slower, even slower than you’re going. You’re good. You’re doing great. Amazing. You’re doing really good. Good job.

Aislyn: So if you were to listen to 48 hours of voice memos from our trip, and I have done that, you will discover that 70 percent of the words out of my mouth were some variation of slow down. 70 percent of the words out of Jeannie’s mouth were some variation of am I okay on that side? And the remaining percentage was mostly profanity. But we got better and you can actually hear it in the recordings. Our voices go from scared and upset to almost workmanlike. By day three, we had a system and even running jokes. In other words, we were, if not pros, at least not so terrified at every turn. And that made it easier to take in the beauty of Cape Lookout State Park.

An hour after leaving Nehalem Bay, we were weaving our little caravan through stands of spruce and hemlock trees. We were headed toward the campground, which is so close to the Pacific. You can hear the ocean roar from some sites. It’s probably one of the prettiest campgrounds I’ve ever seen. It’s also one of nine Oregon state parks with Rivian charging stations, and by this time we’d driven maybe over 800 miles since leaving California, and our charging experiences had run the gamut we’d charged without the Airstream at a Rivian waypoint in Astoria. The battery restoring as we ate enchiladas and tortilla chips at a local Mexican restaurant. We’d charged with the Airstream at a Rivian station tucked into an enormous parking lot, not daring to leave the truck for fear of, well, just for fear. But this was the first time we’d be able to charge overnight at a campground to set up camp, move the truck, and wake up to a replenished battery. As we looped around searching for a campsite, We felt that parking anxiety begin to build. But you know, by this point we had done some googling. I think I googled at one point, how do you help your partner park an RV? And we had some tricks up our sleeve. While Jeannie moved into position. I called her on the phone. No more trying to shout from a distance and instead of saying right or left, we now knew to say driver’s side or passenger’s side. And we had the scoop down.

And that’s when we went from parking rookies to the kind of people who now sat back and watched other people park. So we set up camp, went for a little walk to the beach, and as we were walking back, we saw this enormous RV attempt to back into a tiny spot, I think probably a 50-footer. It was huge. And there were two park rangers who were stuck. They were just waiting for this guy to finish his parking so they could drive by. So we stopped and struck up a conversation.

Park Ranger 1: Thing too, is like, this was built back in the fifties when everyone had like trailers like that and little trucks.

Aislyn: Oh.

Park Ranger 1: So that’s how it was designed. So it’s not really designed for these new big ones.

Aislyn: So that must be fun for you guys to see every day.

Park Ranger 2: Oh yeah. Yeah.

Aislyn: Do you have stories getting stuck? You bet each other?

Park Ranger 1: Oh, yeah.

Park Ranger 2: And the longest I’ve ever sat here, and I’ve worked here for 20 years, is an hour and a half.

Aislyn: Oh my God, no!

Park Ranger 2: Waiting for a guy because I got jacked up because all these people got lined up behind me. Oh, yeah. Yep. I sat here for an hour and a half. I walked up, I said, sir, I think I probably move you to a second. Nope. Nope. Yeah. So if you’re doing it in 10 or 15 minutes.

Aislyn: I feel like we did it all by ourselves last night. No help. It still took a couple minutes, but, like, you know, we got it. 10 minutes is better than 20.

Park Ranger 1: That’s not bad.

Aislyn: As we walked away, the driver of the giant RV was still struggling. And now a woman who was acting as a spotter was breaking off branches that were getting crushed by this off kilter maneuvering, and we felt such compassion for them and for ourselves, because at that moment, I realized that the 20 minutes we’d held up traffic the day before was in RV park terms. Nothing. We were not ridiculous. We were just normal first timers. And that night, for the first time all week, I think we truly relaxed.

Jeannie: In front of the marshmallow, which is the whole point of it all.

Aislyn: The marshmallow is not the whole point of it though. Yeah it is. It’s an ecosystem. Each third is an important part.

Jeannie: Of a cohesive. The marshmallow is the only part that counts.

Aislyn: We also were just really lucky. We had booked two nights at Cape Lookout, so we hiked. We biked a little bit, we let the truck charge and we watched other people try to back in, and we only judged a little bit and we thought, hey, we finally got it.

Two days later, we drove from Cape Lookout to Bay Point Landing in Coos Bay, Oregon, which is about 160 miles south. We backed into our spot. Still not easy or perfect, but not a disaster. I got out of the truck and I spotted something hanging off the Airstream. It turns out it was one of those stabilizers, and it had rattled loose. And a stabilizer is exactly that. There are these metal legs that keep the trailer from rocking or falling back when you’re parked, so they’re pretty important.

Jeannie: Oh, God. What?

Aislyn: The second bolt had fallen out and the stabilizer was off completely.

Jeannie: What? I see, here’s the bolt. It just fell out just now.

Aislyn: I mean, you can’t write this stuff.

Aislyn: I turned around and our camp neighbor, Nate was already approaching. He had his wife, Jen, with him. They’d seen us holding a piece of the Airstream in her hand, and they just walked over with their tool kit. Because Nate has been RVing long enough to know that things just break all the time. So he pulled out his tools and we got to work the bolt.

Nate: Bolt hunting season.

Aislyn: Yeah.

Nate: Once it’s stuck.

Aislyn: I think Nate maybe spent an hour with us. We ID’d the size of the missing bolt, and then Jeannie and I ran to a local Ace Hardware to find a match. We returned. We jerry-rigged the stabilizer back into position, and as we talked, we chatted about the Rivian and Airstreams and what kind of truck that Nate wanted next. And then we gave him all the beers in our cooler.

I have not said enough about Rivian, which I love. Before we left, the thing that I was most worried about was charging. I think that’s a pretty standard worry, especially for something like this. A really ambitious trip. I pictured us stranded on the side of Highway 101 with a dead battery and a 20-foot trailer, but it was totally the opposite. While we faced so many other anxieties and so many other little hiccups that I have not included in this episode. We never actually faced range anxiety because the Rivian was built to tow. The truck actually calculates how much charge you need. It accounts for the weight of what you’re towing, and it tells you where to stop for how long, and how much you’ll have left in the battery when you arrive, and it updates in real time based on things like elevation, speed, heat, and all the other factors that impact battery life.

Jeannie: It’s interesting because it just recalibrated and is sending us to a charging station that’s farther away. It’s like it knew the battery was okay to go a little farther.

Aislyn: At full charge. The truck had a range of about 360 miles. With the Airstream attached, that number dropped to about 200 miles. And that might sound like a lot of lost range, but the Rivian Adventure Network stations along the coast are spaced with that in mind. So if anything, we were spoiled for choice when it came to our charging stations. The other unexpected thing that came up along our trip was that the truck and the Airstream combo turned us into what I have affectionately dubbed man bait.

Man: I’m. I’m a car geek on our hitch. It says, you know, five thousand pounds without a weight distribution hitch. How’s the truck?

Aislyn: Great. We love it. Yeah. Besides the people, the truck is the hero, for sure.

Man: Before I bought my tundra. I was on the wait list for the new GMC. Um, yeah, EV.

Aislyn: Yeah, it’s a great. We do love the truck.

Man: Yeah, our friends just bought one. They love it too. Yeah.

Aislyn: That’s so cool.

Aislyn: Every RV park we stayed at, we’d catch men and some women doing these slow loops around our site, like they were casually walking their dog in a circle that somehow kept ending at our truck. And then they’d get closer, and then they’d ask, how much can it tow? Is it fast? What’s the range? Is it actually made in America? We’d explain that the charging was actually pretty easy, that the Rivian is made in Illinois. But truly, in most campgrounds, we were the first all electric truck most people had seen towing a trailer. I think we may have single handedly convinced half the West Coast to go electric. So if you’re curious about more of the technical details, tune in to our next episode, where I get into the logistics of towing with an RV and interview Sarah Eissinger, who runs Rivian’s Adventure Network.

Back to Coos Bay. Because of the stabilizer issue, we decided not to continue south to Brookings like we’d planned, and fortunately, Bay Point had room for us to stay for three nights. Also, by this point, Chris and Betsy had returned from Chicago and wanted to be at the coast, so we got the campsite ready for four, made an incredible dinner salad and welcomed them with the world’s biggest hugs.

After a week of even the most friendly strangers, it was so nice to be with two of our dearest friends and to put our very minor traumas aside and make space for their very real grief. So that evening, we drove 7 miles south to Sunset Bay State Park for, appropriately, a sunset swim. We weren’t hitching anything. We weren’t watching a trailer back into a slot, and the truck, which is so wonderfully quiet, just glided us down a winding two lane road as West Coast by Coconut Records plays.

Music: I’m going back home to the west coast.

Aislyn: As we walk to the beach, I ogled this gorgeous park. I think really fine sand beach in this wide, calm bay surrounded by tree covered cliffs. Easily the most scenic beach we’d seen so far. Betsy and Jeanie decided to stay on the sand, but Chris and I wanted to dunk. It was kind of a sunset baptism, so we waded into the bracing water, finally diving in when the water was up to our hips. It was so cold that we gasped for air for a couple of seconds, you know? Our teeth chattering. But then as it does, the cold subsided and our breathing slowed and we flipped onto our backs and floated as the sky orange and purpled above us. And I thought, with a mixture of sadness and comfort, that this, this was the trip we were supposed to take.

Three days later and only a few hiccups later, we were back on the road, heading north to Eugene to return the Airstream. Chris and Betsy following along in their car.

Jeannie: Okay, we’re two blocks away from dropping off our Airstream.

Aislyn: Hopefully we don’t have to back into a spot.

Jeannie: Oh, no. I didn’t even think of that. I think we could just flat out refuse. Or they can do it.

Aislyn: It’s one last test of your what you’ve learned over this last week, and then you get your Airstream license.

Aislyn: We pulled into the lot and we did not have to back in. Jeannie made a big sweeping U-turn, slid in next to another trailer, and powered down the truck.

Chris: We made that whole entire thing look easy.

Jeannie: I’m not as scared anymore. But still, you know.

Chris: You did great. You did amazing.

Aislyn: Chris, who was the only one from our group who actually knew how to tow, said we looked like we knew what we were doing. I don’t think I realized how much I needed to hear that until she said it. We reluctantly said our goodbyes, returned to the truck, and 48 hours later, Jeannie, the Rivian, our barely-used bikes and I were back home in Sausalito. Bikes and I were back home in Sausalito.

Now I want to say that we felt so restored, but that would be a total lie. It was in no way a relaxing vacation, though. It had relaxing moments within it for sure. But I felt empowered. I knew things I hadn’t known before we left, like how to do the signature RV scoop and how to feather the brakes when you’re towing something down a six percent grade. I knew how to direct my wife without saying watch out or slow down. I might have a ways to go in that one. And mostly I knew how to accept help when I really, really needed it.

Now, here’s the cheesy part. At a time when our country feels so divided, it was miraculous to me the way that people showed up for us. We were staying in parks where it was clear that people around us didn’t share our same political views, but everyone was just there to support one another and to relax in the trees. So thank you to our Fort Stevens anonymous angel who taught us how to park, and to Nate and Jen, who rescued us with their toolbox and all of the other friends we met along the way. And thank you, especially to Chris and Betsy for showing up in the midst of terrible grief. And most of all, thank you to Jeannie, our driver, who, true to her, sobbed out words on day one, really did work through it.

Next week on unpacked, we’re doing something a little different a bonus episode on the practical side of all of this, how Rivian’s Adventure network is built and what to know if you’re thinking about towing with an RV. So if you are Rivian curious or just EV curious or RV curious, come back for round two.

In the show notes. You’ll also find links to all the campgrounds we stayed in and the gear we used, including the Airstream Basecamp 20XE. If you’re ready for more travel inspiration and Intel like this, visit Afar.com and be sure to follow us on Instagram and TikTok. We are at @AfarMedia.

If you enjoyed today’s exploration, I hope you’ll come back for more great stories and interviews. Subscribing always makes that easy, and be sure to rate and review the show on your favorite podcast platform. It helps other travelers find it.

This has been Unpacked, a production of Afar Media. The podcast is produced by Aislyn Greene and Nikki Galteland. This podcast is part of the Airwave Media Podcast Network. Visit AirwaveMedia.com to listen and subscribe to their other fine shows like Culture Kids and The Explorers podcast.