Date: Fri, 3 Jan 2014 08:27:10 -0600
Reply-To: Julia Schrenkler <juliaschrenkler@GMAIL.COM>
Sender: Vanagon Mailing List <vanagon@gerry.vanagon.com>
From: Julia Schrenkler <juliaschrenkler@GMAIL.COM>
Subject: Kicking off the 2013 Alaska Trip report: Departure
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Our friends are right, it's about time for the trip report. We took 2.5
months off last year to travel from Minneapolis, Minnesota to wander
northern California, Oregon, Washington, back east to catch the Kootenays,
Banff, the Icefields Parkway and the Alcan. Then after fishing, hiking, and
surviving mosquitos in the north, we wandered back.
I'll be posting memories and photos to our currently-under-REconstruction
site http://wanderwagen.com and will email links & text each Friday to this
wonderful list.
Happy Friday, all.
-Julia
Update 1 focuses on the departure. Lesson: Don't wait for perfection.
May 11, 2013
Nothing was perfect.
Our van, the ’89 VW Vanagon Westfalia Camper, was in top running condition
thanks to my Uncle Paul who also happens to be an exceptional mechanic. The
vehicle was spic, span, and ready to camp because over the years we
installed the most livable camper mods like an awning, a vented furnace and
a larger refrigerator that actually chills.
My beloved organization granted me a two and a half month leave of absence
from my dream job of 11 years, and I’d documented, trained and otherwise
prepped for walking out the door without worry.
The promising project house we just purchased was in a welcoming state, if
you walked through the front door and found the living room ready for
company.
But nothing was perfect. Our trip pack job on the van was hurried at best,
with us actually skipping the list and tossing in weird stuff but hoping we
included the can opener. While I wasn’t compelled to check in on my work
email and had a delicious start-of-summer-vacation feeling, the back of my
mind worked at the worryknot of what I’d return to at the office in the
coming months. Our new home was actually a badly organized dumping ground
for our just-moved life in boxes except for the things we were packing (and
the serviceable living room). Then surprise! The car radio installed
earlier in the week had an unexpected and stupid-on-my-part untested side
effect of making everything on the aux battery rely on a key in the
ignition. Sort of a drag considering we’d be leaving the camper for hours
and would like the fridge or furnace running and this meant another errand
run to the installer on a half-staffed Saturday morning. Luckily our friend
Kurt was around to send us off and went with me to keep my mind focused on
important things, like how to make the radio display disco colors.
At one point we seemed to just stand around. We looked at the mess of it
all with our five month old puppy tearing about the middle of this jumble,
and wondered how we were going to get to a point we could actually leave.
Nothing was perfect.
We didn’t let that stop us. After all, we saved for this trip for years,
prepped our boring adult paperwork, and the 2 1/2 month timer ticked…so we
put the van into gear and headed south.
Just one picture taken right before turning the key. From left to right:
Cindy in passenger seat, our german shorthaired pointer Wren in the back
seat, me in the driver seat and stretching to take the pic:
http://bit.ly/KmXZuH
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