Date:         Mon, 30 May 2005 22:08:57 -0500
Reply-To:     Jim Felder <felder@KNOLOGY.NET>
Sender:       Vanagon Mailing List <vanagon@gerry.vanagon.com>
From:         Jim Felder <felder@KNOLOGY.NET>
Subject:      3-day camping weekend in the Appalacians
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Just got back from a five-person, double-vanagon holiday (me and wife
in the diesel westy, daughter, son-in-law and grand-daughter in the
carat weekender).

We sure drew a lot of attention with a two-vanagon setup. I figure that
20% of non-activity, non-sleeping time was spent answering questions
about vanagons (I get that when I go anywhere, not just camping, it's
just that when camping, people take a LOT of time talking that they
don't otherwise) from people who want to try them or else used to drive
them. It turns out that that's a lot of people. The office manager at
Sequoyah Caverns, one of our stops, regaled me with tales of his old
splitties, bays and diesel vanagons from his past.

I was sitting a ways away from the westy in our screen tent when I saw
a redneck couple amble through our site. The guy stuck his head into
the westy side door and pronounced "this damn thing is COOL."

We were in the mountains around Mentone, Alabama--DeSoto Falls area--so
the terrain was VERY hilly, the roads VERY twisting. The diesel found
torque where you wouldn't expect it, it pulled away from the 90 Carat
in steep places and my son-in-law, who was driving the Carat, reported
that he couldn't catch me on some of those mountain roads. It also
maxed out at about 35 on the steepest, longest straight grades but
throw in a few curves and it could keep up with about anything.

That turbo diesel engine is building up day by day, though. Sometime
this summer...

Jim