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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


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