Weinstein Travels

I started to compile a list of everything that has gone wrong in our fist 2 weeks of the trip.

• Carter got Covid
• Dana got Covid
• Had to cancel seeing my friend Joanna because of Covid.
• Carter started to feel better, decided to open a bag of ramen with a knife, and sliced his finger. Gushing blood. Didn’t need stitches.
• Lost camper keys (which I found this morning)
• Flat tire in 103 degrees in AZ
• Ants in the camper

What? Ants in the camper?! I’ll get to that in a second. The flat tire on the highway was something I thought might happen on the trip and I was very nervous for. I (Dana) was driving when it happened. I have never had a flat tire in my life. I am a Jersey girl who doesn’t know what to do. Luckily, I had checked our AAA membership and made sure we were all paid up before this trip. So we called AAA, and a lovely man drove 45 minutes to change our tire. In total, it added about 2 hours to our trip. Not terrible. Just scary as trucks whizzed by at 75MPH and it shook the entire car.

Now we have to replace the spare tire and get a new tire because the AAA man said our spare couldn’t handle the weight we were towing, which we drove on for 300 miles. I won’t go into the details, but finding a new tire was harder than it should have been. Again, I had a moment of gratitude about having an iPhone and google and yelp and all those tools at my fingertips. (Note by Jason: after several hours on the phone, I found a guy that ordered me two tires. Turns out I had spoken with his competitor in the same automotive complex who said he couldn’t help me. The wheel, “rim” to the lay person, was destroyed so we needed a new wheel to go with the second new tire. Thankfully, we are in a densely populated area and after a lot of calling around I found one at a local Rv repair place.)

We stayed in Trabuco Canyon, because it was close to San Diego and some friends we wanted to visit. I did not like the camp ground. We didn’t realize until a few days before we got there that there was no electric hook up or Wi-Fi. But the main reason I didn’t like it was the ants. California ants are small and are attracted to water. The mother lode was under the sink, on a hand towel that was moist.

We noticed the ants at first on our cooler, which we took out of the car to lighten the load while we went to the zoo. When we got back in the afternoon, Jason went to a coffee shop to do some work. While he was out, I looked in the door and saw stream of ants walking into the camper. Then another stream up the wall. I got rubber gloves on and started attacking them with Lysol spray and wiping them up with paper towels. Carter said I was whimpering and practically crying while doing this, which I don’t recall, but I’m sure he’s right. Jason came to our rescue with Raid and we emptied out everything to spray for ants.

This nearly pushed me over the edge. But our visit was worth it because we got to see some good friends. As I write this, Jason is telling me not to focus on the negative— the purpose of this writing is to remember the hard parts too.

Dana, Jason, Brian & Shye

Jason and Brian have known each other since they were little. It’s so special to see them and their son Evan and hang out!

Our day at the San Diego Zoo was fantastic! The tall guy is Aaron Miller, Jason’s fraternity brother from college. It was so much fun to see him and meet his daughter, Ava. He’s local and has a zoo membership and was a fantastic tour guide.

Back at the camper, I made some time to do a painting of this lovely cactus. This was right before the ant incident so I was still relaxed.

The tire rim got completely mangled in the flat. We think it makes a beautiful photo- so glad it’s a memory now!