Date: Tue, 13 Sep 94 11:28:41 PDT
Sender: Vanagon Mailing List <vanagon@vanagon.com>
From: Steve Johnson <sjohnson@pcocd2.intel.com>
Subject: Trip Report (looong)
Warning! This is by no means a technical report. It is just a summary
of what went on during my trip. So if you're not into my miscellaneous
rambling, then don't bother reading any further.
*************************************************************************
Okay..Okay. Time for the long awaited road trip story... yeah yeah right
I know you've been dying to know but it isn't all that exciting, but if
ya gotta know then pull up a beer/wine/joint and read along...
Well, we finally got the '91 GL back with the AC working and my wallet
$300 lighter at about 5:50PM PST. So we got home and packed it up and we
were ready to roll at 9:30. We had to drop the key to the house at the
in-laws and that knocked off some more time (keeping in mind that we had
to get up at 3:15AM the next day). After a stop for a fill-up of premium
we got to our friends house and we got to bed at 10:30ish.
ZZZZZZZZ where am I....who cares... ZZZZZZZ what's that noise....ZZZZZ
Bee-Beep.....Bee-Beep.....Bee-Beep.....Bee-Beep..... What the Fuc----!...
Bee-Beep.....Bee-Beep..... Oh man!
We got up at um 3:15ish and (yawn) got the coffee going and left. (Man
this story is gonna be long at this pace.
Bee-Beep.....Bee-Beep.....
**************** SMACK ************* Shut Up! etc.
We headed up I-80 with no problems. One potty stop for the other couple.
We have a porta-pot. I'm smiling the whole way. Linda's dozing in the
back on the bed. I'm sipping coffee and munchin' muffins. Had a driver
pull over from the left lane after he just passed me and slams on his
brakes right in front of me to take a look at the road side rest. I
punch hard on the brakes and the horn swearing the whole time...."you
stupid ASS-HOLE" He just looks around like "what did I do?" Gawd I
wish I had a rocket launcher just then.
Nothing else to speak of except it was a beautiful morning driving over
the Sierra and into Reno. Not much traffic. Mostly trucks and they're
usually courteous. So we rolled into Reno and tracked down an Arco station,
gassed up and swapped places. Linda prefers the straight easy roads. I
can't think of anything straighter than I-80 through Nevada.
So she's toodling along at about 70 and I'm dozing in the back comfortably
and all of sudden I start feeling this slight jerking. You know, the kind
ya feel when you get a bite on your line only this is with the car going
70 mph. So it slowly gets more and more definite and I immediately know that
it's probably the dreaded cruise control hesitation problem that is supposed
to be fixed with some kind of harness. I just happen to have that bulletin
with me and checked it out. I asked Linda how far to the next town and she
says about 20 miles. So she nursed it to Lovelock without to much trouble
and we stopped for a stretch break. I decided from what the bulletin said
that we should turn it off for a few minutes and start again because from
what customer experiences, it appeared that the problem should go away and
may not appear for awhile again. So we took off and the problem never
reappeared again for the rest of the trip. We decided not to use the
cruise control again just in case.
It kinda screwed up my sleeping plans though, cause I was suppose to sleep
till Winnemucca. I decided to drive and the car did fine. We got gas and
some breakfast and Linda took over driving again and headed out Hwy 95 North.
After this point, it was pretty uneventful. It's mostly desert and very
little else. So we drove and drove except for gas and bathroom stops. Oh
the other couple had to stop on the Nevada/Oregon border to do some gambling
at a little town called McDermitt. Linda won $40 and I lost a few quarters
and went and got gas a rearranged the camper some.
I think I drove from there. Not much to see, just mostly high desert country.
We had to wait for a road crew for about 15 minutes but that's about it. We
changed places a couple more times after that. When trees started to appear,
we knew we were getting fairly close to our destination.
So we got up to Idaho at about 7:30 Mountain Time. This was in McCall on the
Middle West side of Idaho. We took a turn that took us on the west side of
Payette Lake and meandered down a dirt road. We met Rob's folks and went into
a really nice quaint old cabin with a superb deck and my god what a view of
the lake and the Rockies! It was really breath taking. Unfortunately, to the
North there were fires. During the week, off and on, we would watch the
helicopters take their buckets and dip them in the lake and haul them up
to the fire and sometimes you could see them dump the water. I did a 2 mile
fishin' hike with Rob's dad and him and caught a 10 incher. Not bad for
an upper lake trout. It was a nice hike although I was huffin' pretty good
as we got towards the top of the mountain. It was a spectacular panorama of a
upper meadow and sparsely tree'd mountains with the lake in the foreground.
It was sooo nice.
The next day we took a small boat and got a tour of the lake. Mostly looking
at the nice cabins on the shore line.
Most of the time we were relaxing or playing cards and enjoying the scenery
and drinking Margarita's that Rob's dad made. Not to mention a few other
tasty drinks! MMMMmmmm.
Friday finally came and Rob and Kim had to go back to Sacramento with a
stop over in Reno so they had a long drive. They left about 4:00AM and
Linda and I got up around 8:00 and packed our stuff and headed on out.
With a tank full of gas and java in our travel mugs we set off for
Bend, OR. We decided to take Hwy 20 (which we got to via Hwy 95) and
meandered along with easy twists and turns through some old canyons with
various shades of red and brown. Pretty nice. I was tired that day because
we had stayed up pretty late and got up fairly early so I snoozed a bit
while Linda took over driving for a while. Stopped in Burns for gas
and a stretch and drove to Bend. It's kind of nice seeing trees pop
up in the middle of desert country. They look so out of place though.
We rolled into Bend around 5 or 6 and looked for a place to stay. We
had camping gear and looked at the local KOA type place. I was too
tired to deal with the camping shit so we stayed in a Best Western
which Linda didn't have a problem with at all. Dinner was Italian
and we strolled through part of the town that must have been the junior
college hang out because there were plenty of college aged kids around.
I contacted John Ritchie for directions to his place and set up a
time to meet the next day.
We went to bed early and slept in till about nine. Got ready to go
and headed over to the VW dealer because I wanted to have some coolant
on hand in case I needed it. :
After heavily drooling over and sitting in some mighty fine Porsche
Carrera's I meandered over to the parts counter and paid $14.00 for
a jug of the 'essence de la coolante' which was a mere $14.00. OUCH!
Anyway, the counter person (notice the political correctness Martha?)
mention in the discussion that an RV place just down the way had some
catalytic heaters that might do for our rig. So after breakfast we
headed to the aforementioned and checked out the heater. Well it
was not too bad for $200 but I didn't want to deal with it there, so
I grabbed a flyer and headed on out.
We meandered on Hwy 20 through the Cascades through some real beautiful
scenery. I really enjoyed the high mountain scapes and the trees and
bluffs. Great mind food! We got to Corvallis at about 5:30 (about
1 hour behind schedule) and found John Ritchie's house after consulting
a map at a local Quickie type market. John was really generous with
his hospitality and treated us to his special home made BBQ burger's
Delux ;). We talked about VW's most of the time and about people who
wave. Speaking of other VW's waving. I got more wave-backs on Hwy 20 in
OR between Bend and the Coast than I have since I owned my camper! So
we talked about the mailing list and Joel, Ric, Martha and others and
had some laughs and such. John thankfully let us stay the night which
was above and beyond the call of VW duty. We had a fairly good night's
sleep and had another delux meal for breakfast 'courtesy of John'. We
checked out each other's rigs and John dubbed our '91 the Luxo-mobile.
John's got a good sturdy set of wheels that is great for his surfing.
The '74's engine compartment looks real clean without all of the
nonsense that comes with the California smog quagmire. Nice set of
Delorto's. De-Lux sleeping accomodations. Our thanks again to John
Surfer-Dude for his exceptional hospitality. I recommend that if
you're going to be in the area to let John know. I don't mean this
to be an open invitation to his house. That's obviously up to him. ;)
We headed out about 9-ish, gas'd up and headed out Hwy 34 as recom-
mended by John. Again another beautiful drive on a nice windy road.
Gorgeous scenery.
We got to the coast at Waldorf and headed south on Hwy 101. The coast
was beautiful. The coastline was clear with excellent views of bluffs
and overlooks. We got to Florence about noon and found the cabin that
my brother was staying at. No one was there but the dogs so we went
in to town to do laundry and get some lunch.
When we went back to the cabin, my sister-in-law was there so we parked
and got situated and relaxed. A beer was forced on me and my will-
power was weak so I accepted. Life just isn't fair sometimes, is it? :)
Later we went out to the nearby lake and watched the dogs chase a ball
and laughed when my step-nephew & wife's 9 month old Mastif get push
into the water and not come up for several seconds, then realize it had
to do something. So it finally came up for air and dog paddled up to the
pier. It was able to touch the bottom and stood there for a while and
paddled in to shore. If this seemed cruel to some people, I'm sorry but
it was funny and we would have jumped in and pulled it out if it hadn't
come up in a few more seconds. You just had to see the dogs face. It
read 'What the hell did I do to deserve that?' Oh well, you just had
to be there.
While we were in Florence, we did some sight seeing. Saw an old light
house that just opened up for touring. We went horseback riding on
the beach in the evening and saw a beautiful sunset. First time riding
for me so I was a bit timid but I had a good time. They were pretty
tame horses that behaved like pack mules if you let them. We did some
crabbing and only caught three keepers because we had to fish in a
spot that was over-fished but had a nice guard rail for the kids. While
I was there, a lady and her two children showed up to fish. Well the
mother didn't know that much about fishin' and the older brother wasn't
much help to his younger sister so I helped her with setting up her rig
and she was soon catching bull-heads every minute or so. The only reason
I new how to set up her rig was because I'd watched a lady the day before
pullin' in bull-heads and so I followed her example.
On Thursday we headed out at noon and decided to go all the way back home.
We headed in to Eugene and went south on I-5. I-5 is nice in Oregon except
when you have to go up hill. But that was expected and didn't bother me.
We stopped only for food and gas and the rest was just driving. Mount
Shasta looked gorgeous even with clouds shrouding the top. It made it
kind of ethereal and gave me something to enjoy during that part of the
trip. I drove all the way from Florence to Redding, CA and then Linda
drove the rest of the way home while I dozed.
We rolled in to Sacramento about 10:45. We got to the house and left
most of the stuff in the camper. Crawled into bed and snooooozed.
I really enjoyed the vacation and hope that everyone gets to do theirs
when they get a chance.
That's all,
Steven
--
Steven
sjohnson@pcocd2.intel.com
