Date: Mon, 10 Jun 1996 17:29:00 -0400
Sender: Vanagon Mailing List <vanagon@vanagon.com>
From: Erick Sowder <eSowder@rfmd.com>
Subject: Busses on Blue Ridge a story
It was a great weekend. Sent out and e-mail on the vanagon list on
Thursday afternoon seeing if anyone was going my way to the event
(Greensboro NC to Asheville). Friday morning I got a e-mail from a guy
from the Chapel Hill area named Stefan (originally from Germany). Called
him up and decided to meet around 2Pm in Greensboro. We were both egar
to go the show. He has a White 76 weekender and I have a White 74
Westie (Moby). We both got groceries together and started toward the
blue ridge mountains. I highly recommend getting a CB for just such
events because we both had them and it made the trip fun. We arrived
around after 6Pm at the site and met up with Richard Palmer and his
friends, Stefan had met him before. Also met up with Neil and his wife
who were the people responsible for the event( Good job Neil) Got a space
to camp and set up camp. We all camped in the tents only space so even
if you were going to sleep in your bus you had to put up some kind of a
tarp or a tent. With the help of Richard and Stefan and some new friends
we set up my big bus tent on the camping site. Stefan made some great
food and we made enough to feed several people. After dinner we walked
around talking to everyone with busses, it took 5 hours to walk 300 yards
with everyone sharing stories and advice about there beloved Buses.
There were all sorts of buses in various stages of restoration. Also
stumbled into a group with a bunch of split window buses that were firing
off a potato gun and having a TAG TEAM WRESTLING MATCH for VW parts! The
shirt team one that round.
Saturday morning everyone awoke to a chilly lower 40's and gathered
together about 31 busses to go on a drive. It was a really exciting
moment driving on the Blue Ridge Parkway with so many Busses. I loved
the expressions of the people driving past us as our convoy drove buy,
sort of looked like a invasion of hippies . We pulled over and took
some pictures. I hope someone out there can put some pictures out on the
net some time. We broke up the convoy with some going to a waterfall
overlook and some to a Wildlife Fish Hatchery.
At the fish hatchery about 6 of us decided to take a dirt road back to
the parkway. We had the 1990 syncro leading the way with my 74 westie in
the rear. Half way up we encountered another camper coming down the
trail, he did not know there was the bus event that weekend and started
to follow us. We were traveling up the trail when I heard over the CB
my friend Stefan trying to radio me. He was with the other group
parallel to us on the main road. They asked us where we were. The guy
in the Syncro figured out that we were about 10 minuets behind them.
They said they would wait for us back on the parkway. CB's are so much
fun in a crowd! Shure enough we met up with the other group on the
parkway and headed back to camp.
That night we had a bon fire and Neil gave out awards for various things.
A 1962 camper won best of show, and a guy from Alberquque won for
longest distance. He drove a 1960 high top delivery bus imported from
Europe. We talked, drank and ate hot dogs the rest of the night.
Next morning Everyone broke camp and headed to a spot on the parkway for
the group picture. They divided the buses up into two groups with the
first group being the split window busses and the other group being
everything else. In total there were about 49 to fifty buses lined up.
It was wonderful. Everyone took pictures and exchange phone numbers and
E - mail addresses. On the way home we had a convoy of four busses, one
white 70 weekender a white 71crewcab, my white 74 westfalla and Stefans
white 76 weekender. Kind of funny to see 4 white bubble window busses
going down the road.
All in all it was a great weekend, I even met a lady and her young son at
the event, she drove the 70 weekender named Sunshine. We had our first
date this last weekend and it went great! Now we are going camping out
at Cape Hatteras next weekend and the only problem is which bus to
take? Later Erick
|