Spring is Van Fun Time

Ben has been very busy adding features to the van!

First, he is working on adding a hot shower.  This is an on-demand propane hot water heater.  We will be able to shower out the back of the van!














Here is a cabinet extension we can use while cooking or cleaning up afterwards.  It will be nice to have a place to put dishes.  It can also be used for your drink when the weather is awful and we have to eat inside the van.

It's January and we are beginning to plan for the year ahead. This means it's time to work on the van! To begin with the van is getting a new paint job. The paint they used just isn't lasting. We saw a van in Minnesota that was the same vintage as ours and it had a terrible rust problem. We have put so much work into it that we don't want ours to end up the same way. Next, we are adding a toilet and a shower. The porta potti showed up in the mail today! Now we can stealth camp if we need to. Ben found a fantastic shower setup with a 12volt pump and on demand water heater. More about that will be up coming in the future.

Spring Break - The Van goes to Moab and meets its cousin!

Ben's sister has a Sprinter van too. That makes our vans cousins. Here are the vans together at the Klondike Bluffs trailhead.

We were there to ride bikes! I'm not the biggest fan of mountain biking, so I brought my road bike along to ride while the others were riding technical trails. The first day I rode from Moab to the end of Arches National Park and back. Though I didn't do any hiking in the park, I got my exercise through 3000 feet of climbing in a 50 mile ride. The others rode Porcupine Rim from the campsite in Moab. This is a long trail, even if you start by driving to the trailhead. Everyone was tired and ready for snacks and dinner when we returned.

Sunday started out cold and rainy. We were having a hard time deciding whether to ride or not. We finally decided to take a drive through Arches National Park and forget about riding. While we were driving, the sun came out! We headed to Klondike Bluffs, my favorite trail! It's got dinosaur footprints.

At the top of Klondike Bluffs there is a bike rack and you can take a short hike into Arches National Park. It's worth the view!

The last day I rode up to Canyonlands National Park. The scenery was amazing! The view of the La Sal Mountain Range was clearer than I can ever remember it. Who wouldn't enjoy riding while looking at National Park quality views?

The last night we were treated to a beautiful sunset! Ahh.... Maybe I'll never go home.

Drawers in the Van!

Ben's been working some on the van again! On the St. George trip we had an issue with duffel bags rolling around because the drawers weren't finished yet. This gave Ben the energy to add the drawers to the van for our trip to Moab on Spring Break. We are also now able to fit two single bikes where the tandem goes for different riding applications.

The Van in St. George

We went to St. George last weekend to do a bike ride. The weather forecast was not good, but we went anyway. The weather when we awoke was absolutely horrible. It was in the 30's and raining. We were so happy to be warm and dry in the van! We kicked on the furnace and enjoyed a breakfast of eggs, sausage and english muffins while watching the weather deteriorate. We decided 40 was too old to ride in those conditions. In the end, it rained all day, with snow at higher elevations. We went to the Parade of Homes instead.

Here's the van at Sand Hollow State Park the night before the ride

Sunday night it rained all night long, and snow flakes were falling when we got up in the morning. Once again we were so happy to be warm and dry in the van!

It's only February

Yes, it's only the first full week of February and it's snowing outside, but we've got our plans down for almost every weekend in the entire summer vacation. We are riding across Nebraska and Iowa this year. In addition, we plan to try to get in Lotoja as well. This means we need to ride a century (hundred miles) every weekend. Truthfully, we would have ridden those centuries anyway, so it's not like much will change.

Sunday we rode 20 miles. It was 35 degrees, so my feet were pretty cold by the time we finished. 20 miles is a long ways from the 206 miles we plan to ride the weekend after Labor Day. We've got some work to do.

January Calendar

I've put this calendar up every year I've been a teacher... 16 different times now. It never stops being funny. Do you see the joke? Kids always guess there is some mistake in the calendar. There's not a mistake. That wouldn't be funny. This is truly laugh out loud funny, especially if you are 10 or 11.