Rob it's not too awful far just a little hike more north on 81 for the most part.
For the record I've run the highway aired down to 12 on mine many times and it drives fine, and haven't even had a swaybar for a few years now, you'll be fine.
Nice to hear your uncle is coming along, I remember him coming from before!
We will have a good time, hell or high water.
Rich
Yeah, it's been a while since he's been able to make it out; now that he's retired, it's easier for him to schedule (sort of). We're both looking forward to it.
I'm used to making the run from RC down to the camp aired down and disconnected, but the 35-mile run to AOAA was a little longer than I have ventured on-road that way. I will give it a try on the run back to camp Friday night aired down/disco'd just to see - I literally just replaced the MT/Rs on my rig with a brand-new set (noticed recently that the DOT date code on them was early 2011, and decided that was getting a little old for sustained highway travel), so that'll probably help matters a bit. I decide I don't like the feel, I can always pull over and at least put the swaybar back on.
Eric, on the waiver - I did one back when I did that "trail of tears" thing a year or so back, but I thought the park staffer who helped me said it was a "once and you're done for life thing". I'll have to double-check on that, and have my uncle do it online as well, but doing it again isn't a big chore especially since it's online (something I wish Rausch Creek would do for their memberships and waivers as well).
This will be my second time at AOAA, and this time I'm looking forward to having heat in the truck (last time, I got on the road and found I had a blown fan resistor pack and a dying blower motor).
I also got to the bottom of my CB radio problems from back in June - turned out there were a couple things wrong:
1. My "counterpoise" wires snaked inside the roof rack to create ground plane were worn out. Removed in light of #2.
2. I added a nice ground connection between the roof rack crossbar and the roof rack rail to get the antenna mount grounded to the body, rendering the counterpoise wires unnecessary. Apparently on my Jeep, I had good ground connection between the rail and the body, but not between the rail and crossbar.
3. The mast of my antenna had worked its setscrew loose and was rattling around in the coil base. Tightened that back up, but may look into getting a new whip at one of the truck stops on 78 (maybe that Pilot out by exit 26, they have some radio stuff).
4. #1 and #3 probably conspired to blow the output of my old RadioShack radio - when I went to retune the antenna, it wasn't moving the VSWR meter at all. Had to get a new radio (nice little Cobra I got at the local Wal-Mart), and then I was able to get everything tuned up nicely.
I'll have the VSWR meter with me again if anyone needs an antenna-tuning check (if I pick up a new antenna mast, I certainly will)