The 2010 Airstream International RV: Nature, meet man-made wonder

Like a lot of Angelenos, I like to ditch the city every once in a while and experience nature. Briefly.

My last escape involved 1,000 or so Cub Scouts, a battered, borrowed tent and two days of port-a-potties and pump-station water. This time around I was looking to rough it, but rough it “lite,” during a weekend getaway with my best friend and our two young children.

Enter the 2010 Airstream International, whose manufacturer, like many RV companies this year, is experiencing a post-recession sales resurgence. According to the Recreational Vehicle Industry Assn., RV shipments declined 30% in 2009, but they’re bouncing back this year. Shipments increased 87.5% in February compared with one year earlier; towables, such as Airstreams, were up 93.6%.

Compared with my weekend at the Firestone Boy Scout Reservation, a trip in a 23-foot camper with a refrigerator, stove, table, beds, toilet, shower, sinks and electricity was a major step up. And it was far more civilized than the camping I did as a child, when my dad forced our family of six into an orange Volvo wagon and drove us out to nowhere to canoe for two weeks, carrying freeze-dried food and backpacks that were almost as big as our bodies.

The Airstream is to camping what takeout dinner is to working moms. It’s cheating a little, but it makes life so much easier.

Since Airstream first set up shop in L.A. in the 1920s, the manufacturer, which has since moved to Ohio, has become synonymous with luxury and style. The creme de la creme of trailers, an Airstream is the sort of thing that inspires lust in those who wander. The owner of a 34-foot Holiday Rambler motor home stopped me at the campground where we stayed and said with a sigh, “I’ve been wanting one of those for 60 years.”

Airstreams are prized for their aerodynamic architecture and unmistakable “ Lost in Space” silver siding assembled from studded sheets of metal. Their exteriors look like lunar modules whose hard corners were melted into round forms during atmospheric reentry. Their interiors are equally NASA’d out, with more storage space and cubbies than seems possible considering their dimensions.

The International model is available in five lengths, from 16 to 27 feet. Mine was mid-size with an interior width of 7 feet 7 inches, 6 feet 7 inches of standing room and almost as much storage as my home kitchen has. The highly engineered compact living space had two small closets to hang clothes, three overhead storage bins, two medicine cabinets and seven other cubbies. I would have felt comfortable traveling in the Airstream for months, rather than the two days I’d planned.

But first I had to make it to the campground. I’d borrowed a Ram 2500 Laramie turbo diesel pickup truck to do the deed. Almost 20 feet in length, it was the largest vehicle I’d ever driven. The prospect of adding a 3-foot tow hitch and 23 feet of trailer, then maneuvering the entire thing through L.A. and out to the sticks, was enough to prompt nightmares of me jackknifing the rig.

As it turned out, attaching the two vehicles with a straightforward system of chains, bars and cotter pins took about five minutes. And wheeling the thing through Hollywood, where I’d picked up the trailer, and out onto the 101 was easier than I’d imagined. I just needed to go wide in turns and use my friend as a lookout to supplement the view in my side mirrors.

Once we’d arrived at the Ventura Ranch KOA campground in Ventura County, I half expected to see something akin to Hurricane Katrina inside the Airstream. But everything was intact, including the kitchen-area seat cushions. Those, I realized later when they were rearranged into a bed, were held in place with Velcro.

Paprika was the name of the interior decor, so called because of the reddish cushions. The most urban, design-oriented model in the Airstream lineup, the International has interiors that were conceived by San Francisco architect and furniture designer Christopher Deam, who’s been working with Airstream Inc. since 2001 to modernize the trailers and make them true homes away from home. That’s exactly how the International felt with its dark wood cabinetry, stainless steel appliances and halogen lights.

The aesthetic was scarily similar to that of my house. So much so that my 7-year-old son spent more than an hour rolling like a puppy in the master bed and playing fort before I was able to persuade him to go outside and do what we’d gone there for: throw rocks in the stream, run through the woods collecting burs in our socks, build an inept campfire and burn marshmallows that somehow wound up in our hair — all of which we did. Eventually.

At nightfall, my son and I claimed the master bed, the equivalent of a full-size mattress, at the back of the trailer. My friend and her 8-year-old daughter played geometry and deconstructed the kitchen seats into a fold-out bed of a similar size. I found the bed comfortable and probably would’ve slept well if not for my snoring, diagonal sleeper of a child.

My body had finally given up and fallen asleep in the wee hours, only to be waked by a crowing peacock of an alarm clock at 7 a.m. A coffee maker, real ground coffee and a mug were godsends after such a night. All of those things were on board the Airstream, as well as running water from a 30-gallon tank, a four-speaker stereo and a flat-screen TV, which the children were forbidden to watch. Camping, in my opinion, should be a break from the city, as well as Cartoon Network.

The Airstream was glorious. It’s also expensive. The 2010 International isn’t quite the top-of-the-line Airstream, but the model I tested still costs $59,207. Pickup truck not included.

susan.carpenter@latimes.com