Date:         Mon, 27 Sep 2004 09:18:45 -0700
Reply-To:     Steve <laurasdog@WEIRDSTUFFWEMAKE.COM>
Sender:       Vanagon Mailing List <vanagon@gerry.vanagon.com>
From:         Steve <laurasdog@WEIRDSTUFFWEMAKE.COM>
Subject:      Westy sitings at Hendy Woods
Content-Type: multipart/mixed; x-avg-checked=avg-ok-702E6DF6;


I couldn't stand it anymore. If I stayed here in this dusty, treeless
wasteland any longer I was gonna blow a head gasket and leak
my coolant all over the shop....

Thursday afternoon I loaded up the Westy and prepared to head
off to Hendy Woods in Mendocino county first thing friday morning
to chill out in the redwoods for a while. My sweetie had to work,
so she agreed to drive up in the bug and meet me friday afternoon.

Hendy is a nice park, with beautiful redwood groves and some nice
campsites. And showers... (we like campgrounds with showers!)
Hendy has about 90 campsites, laid out in 2 major groups. During
the summer all of the campsites are usually open, but this time of
year the traffic is less and one of the campsite groups is closed,
leaving about 44 campsites open.

It's only about 60 miles to Hendy from here, but highway 128 is
just a bit twisty and it typically takes me about an hour and
a quarter to get there, plus another 10 minutes to stop in Cloverdale
for some food and charcoal and a tank of gas for the Escape Pod.

I leave the house at 8AM, so I figure I'll be there about 9:30....
Wrong. I get to Cloverdale, get the food and gas and head out
Hwy 128.  About a mile out, there's cars stopped in the road.
CalTrans is repaving a section of road and has our lane closed.
There's about 10 cars ahead of me waiting for the flagman to let
us go through. We wait. More cars stop behind us. We wait.
People start getting out of their cars. We wait. A few walk forward
to talk to the flagman. I talk to some people near the front of the line.
They've been waiting for over 45 minutes so far. Lucky me... I've only
been sitting for 20 so far. At just about the 1/2 hour mark (for me), the
CalTrans dude finally signals us it's time, and we pile in our cars and
follow a "pilot car" for several miles, in the wrong lane at about
10 MPH. At the Sonoma/Mendocino county line the construction
ends and the pilot car pulls over and sets us free.
The rest of the drive is uneventful, and I get to Hendy Woods about
10:15.  I make a drive through the grounds, and find that there's only
a few people there (not surprising, it's friday morning) and my favorite
site is open and no one near it. Excellent!

I set up camp. Pretty soon I hear it... that unmistakable Volkswagen
sound. Through the trees behind my camp, I see a red Westy go by
on the road heading in to camp. Another Westy? Cool!

The red Westy winds it's way into the area and stops right in front
of my site. They look a little disappointed. I talk to them for a bit.
They're from Oakland, and drove up to Hendy for the weekend.
They knew about the campsite I was in and were hoping to get it,
but they stopped to taste wine on the way so I beat them to it. (-:
They head off to search for another site. As they pull away, I'm
amused by their two bumper stickers. One says "TURTLE" and
the other asks, "Got Rights?".

Maybe an hour or so later, I hear that sound again... another VW
approaching. I watch through the trees again and here it comes.
A gold colored Westy. It looks just like mine. This is getting weird
I've camped at Hendy dozens of times, and only once seen another
Westy in the campground. Today, there's 3 including mine.

The gold Westy drives by and heads off to the back to camp. After
awhile, I get up and take a walk around the campground, and find
the gold Westy's owner, John. We talk Westy talk for awhile. He
loves his Westy. But he's tired of the WBX problems and
performance. He's thinking about a Subaru conversion, and
wonders if I know anything about them.
Ummm, yeah... I've got an EJ22 in my Westy...
He gets real interested and asks me a bunch of questions. And he
knows the right questions to ask. He's obviously done some of his
homework already. Later in the day he migrates over to my camp
for while to look in my engine compartment. I'm gonna bet he shows
up on the SubaruVanagon list soon. (Hi John!)

I eat some lunch and lounge around camp for awhile, and pretty
soon here it comes. A white Westy. It doesn't head into the
campground, but goes straight towards the day use area and the
big redwood grove. Maybe an hour or less later, the white westy
goes back out again. I'll bet they had a beautiful walk in the grove.
Around 3 PM, my sweetie shows up and I tell her about all the
Westies.
She's amazed. We get a good laugh, because when we agreed to
meet there friday I told her, "Well, you know how to get to Hendy,
and it shouldn't be hard to find my campsite. It'll be the one with
the gold Westy in it."  Now there's 3 westies in the grounds, with
2 gold ones.

We pass more time, and then we hear it. And then see it. Here
comes the white Westy, into the campground. It pulls into a site
not far from us. There's about 15-18 vehicles total in the
campground and 4 of them are Westies. Yikes!

So I go talk to the folks in the white westy. Reynold has a nice
'84 that he bought brand new. He's the original owner. He
says he's going to do a Subaru conversion. I tell him I've got one.
Yeow! What a weird small world. He says he has an XT6 engine
he's going to use. I tell him that not a lot of people use that engine,
but there's a couple of people on the SubaruVanagon list who use
it and like it. I tell him that he can probably search the archives
and find more info about it. I mention that one of the names to
search under is Dimitri. He looks surprised. Dimitri? "We MET
Dimitri at the Van-O-Rama in SF a couple weeks ago!"
The world just got a little smaller and weirder...

So finally I ask Reynold how their hike through the big grove was.
"Huh? We didn't go there."
I ask him "didn't you go down to the day use area a while ago?"
"No, we just got here"
I had to ask the question about 3 more times.. "really.. you didn't
go drive to day use earlier?" He assures me they did not.

Soo, that means that in that little campground there were 4 Westies
camping there, and one other that was there for day use for awhile.
Of the 4 westies that camped, one (mine) had a subaru conversion,
and 2 others were *very* seriously considering it. One had already
acquired an engine (Hi Reynold!)

So what about the white mystery Westy that went to the day
use area? Was it anyone on the list? Did anyone here go to Hendy
Woods last weekend?


Steve
'86 Westy "Escape Pod"
'73 Beetle "ain't got a name yet"