Our first real snow arrived this weekend, just in time for us to head into the woods with Fang Fang to saw down a tree. Wild trees aren't as full as farm-grown trees, but they're a lot cheaper and you get to putt around on unplowed forest service roads. The orange tag on the tree makes it nice and legal.
Ludwig's spot, off the alley.
Winter is finally here! It looks like we're enjoying a downright balmy day, relative to the rest of the Treasure State. Nota bene: these are the highs.
It turned out to be a decent example for its age at a very good price, and soon we found ourselves seriously considering buying it. But alas someone snatched it away this afternoon before we could go give it another look-see. 
If you could zoom in and focus this shot, you'd see that just to the right of the SUV are two Beetles and a Bay Window. This was along I-80, just East of Kearney ("CAR-knee" to all you non-Nebraskans).
If one needed any hint as to what is Nebraska's state religion, here it is.
This nice avocado '77 was parked by Open Harvest, and we pulled around to get a better look.
Guard cat
We found out from the owners that the bus is named "Mogley" and the cat is "Solstice". I thought the owner looked really familiar when Mitch was talking to him about the bus. I think maybe he was this guy, Rick, that I was in Organic Chemistry with about 10 or so years ago. He has dreads now, but back in the day he had short short blond hair, assuming it's the same guy. In case he reads this: Hey Rick, was that you?
On the flight back, E enjoyed the sights from the plane. The big mountain in the foreground is Mt. Jumbo (4764'), and if you look closely enough, you can see the L.
And if you look reeeeally closely three blocks to the left on this side of that bridge over the railroad tracks, you can see our house and even Ludwig. Really, you can.
Actually, the camper setup isn't particularly well suited for hauling cargo around (it can be hard to get things in and out of without dinging up the cabinets and upholstery), but we've always found Ludwig serviceable enough for the purpose, as long as we don't expect too much.
Of course, Fang Fang got in on the action too. Mad props to Melissa for doing so much moving with that big ol' wiggly baby strapped to her back.
...pulling off to get gas in Elmore Ohio, I (or was it McDonald?) pressed the clutch pedal all the way to the floor without getting the expected action at the other end. The cable was broken. McDonald did thirty miles of clutchless driving (including circling in a parking lot while waiting for a red light) and got us to East Harbor State Park, where we set up camp and commenced opening some brews. The next morning he phoned Cram Foreign Auto Parts in Omaha and had a new clutch cable overnighted to us at the campsite. We took the turn of events as a sign that we needed to drink beer all day long during our unintended day off, becoming minor celebrities at the campground in the process (the general state of the truck and its Alaska plates helped). One guy even spent most of his honeymoon sitting at our campfire drinking beer with us. Another guy we drank with until early in the morning almost talked McDonald into getting a tattoo with him. The cable arrived on day four of the trip and was installed without delay, since we were now a day behind and needed to get all the way to Syracuse New York by that night.
Syracuse was where our friend Eric was completing grad school and part of the excuse for the trip was to see him. He and his wife Reagan were very accommodating, so we let Eric take Noel (that's the truck's name) for a spin around his neighborhood (Reagan wouldn't go near it). He was horrified by the gaping holes in the floorboards, holes that during the trip consumed, among other things, my big plastic mug, a calculator, and probably about 10,000 cigarette butts. Noel is a rusty beast.
Finally after another night in the Catskills, we arrived at the Tri-States (New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut I guess) VW Show and entered Noel in Class 'L', pre-1967 non-camper Type IIs. This red-on-white '66 was the only other entrant in the class, so Noel got second place.
Another shot of the Class 'L' entrants. We thought the guy with the nicely-restored '66 was a little miffed that the completely unrestored '60 was parked next to him and so was in most of the shots of his bus.
"Hippie" bus from Jersey.
I hope this immaculate '72 actually gets used and isn't just a trailer queen.
What ACVW show is complete without Beetles upon Beetles?
I can't believe that someone would put such awful wheels on such a nice Oval. Note the tailpipes.
It's either a 1999 or 2000 Beetle, believe it or not.
Sleeper?
That night we headed into New Jersey and set up camp in High Point State Park. The ranger told us to stow our food well, as this part of Jersey has the highest concentration of Black Bears East of the Rockies. I thought this was pretty amazing, given that we were only a little more than ninety minutes outside of Manhattan.
Our last sight-seeing-y thing was a stop at the Latrobe Brewery, home of Rolling Rock (or at least it was when we were there; it ain't anymore). I used to drink Rolling Rock almost exclusively, and always found it amazing that you never knew how a given bottle might taste--sometimes skunky, sometimes smooth, sometimes bitter. I suspected that they never actually wrote the recipe down, but we didn't take a real tour so I'll never know. As we pulled into the lot, we were 133 miles into that tank of gas (Noel didn't have a gas gauge, so we wrote the mileage of each fill on the dashboard in pencil).
(Don't worry: that tablecloth isn't ours, it's in the laundry room.)
It looks like it's a Canadian model. I hope that we can manage the switch from cooking in Fahrenheit to cooking in Celsius. I got it home and fired it up, and it worked perfectly. And it was really clean, looking barely used or at least well-kept. 
Today is Ludwig's 35th birthday. I used to think his birthday was Hallowe'en, but I think now that it's the 24th. I promise I'll get it straightened out for sure by his 36th. [edit: It is the 24th. Thanks, dwill49965.]
Not to toot my own horn, but in retrospect I think it took some guts for a small-town (Stanton Nebraska, pop. ~1600) high school guy to drive a partly pink car. Such was Gretchen, a 1973 Type III Fastback whom I purchased sometime in the Spring of 1991. I spotted her at a dealership in Valley, on the way to a Screaming Trees show in Omaha with my younger brother Bill and our friend Donny. The show didn't happen--tour bus wreck--but the car did and I've never really looked back, Rabbit and Subaru notwithstanding. I blew up the engine (sent a rod right through the case) in the Summer of 1991, got a rebuilt one that Summer, and fatally crashed her into a 1990 LeBaron that Winter. The white car in the background, at right, was my first car, "Yvette", a 1977 Ford Mustang II.
I was shopping around for a Squareback to put the freshish engine into and stumbled across Anne in Council Bluffs very late in 1991 (it was the week after Christmas). What a wonderful car. She holds two distinctions for me: the fastest I've ever driven an ACVW (100mph), and the best mileage I've ever gotten in any car (38mpg). If you've ever wondered how many bottles of Schmidt big mouths you can safely fit in the trunk of a 1970 Type III, I can tell you: 96. She could give Ludwig a run for his money as far as adventures go (the two were acquainted, actually). Anne was mortally rusty in all the typical Type III places though, and sacrificed much of herself for the next car.
Freida was put together with much love in the Spring of 1996 by myself and 01Melcher. She was red when I got her and that paint job was my choice, applied by 01Melcher. It was pointed out to us later that the stripe is on the wrong side, as racing stripes serve the practical function for the driver of reducing glare off the hood. Who knew? Appearances aside, Freida was something of a delicate creature and I never had her really dialed in and running properly. Plus I didn't entirely know what I was doing (still don't, but I'm a little better). But when she was running well, she was as fine a car as one could hope to drive. If you've ever wondered how many 10-lb. cases of hamburgers you can safely fit into the back of a 1967 Type III Squareback, I can tell you: 35. Freida met a deer in the Spring of 1998, which was pretty much the end of her, decent Type III replacement body panels in Nebraska being non-existent. I drove her for a while afterwards with a severely bent passenger-side door and a blue front fender from a '68, but the engine gave up a few months later and so did I.
Westfalia outfitted Vanagons as campers too.
I'm kind of glad they didn't color-coordinate the poptops and the bodies back in the bay window days. I'm kind of not glad they didn't put wipers on the rear windows back in the bay window days.
I lied, sort of, when I said I couldn't tell Vanagons apart by year. I (think I) know this much: if they have round headlights like this one (trust me) they are an '85 or earlier. Sometimes I wish I lived in the possible world where bay window rear hatches were as enormous as Vanagon ones.
Even though s/he's legally a resident of the Centennial State, I put this Westy here because I'm a sucker for just about any automobile that's painted white. By the time this van found its way to this side of the Atlantic they were selling a pitiful 6000 or so Vanagons a year. VW had such a severe midlife crisis/identity problem in the '80s that by 1991 or '92 they very nearly stopped selling cars in the US altogether.
I was on a stroll, thinking about doing some hate, when I saw the sticker (poster?) in the rear window of this van. Whew! Disaster averted! If only people everywhere would just print up and post this mandate--the world's problems would be solved. Am I right or what?
It's inexcusable that we've neglected to show this silver Vanagon on the blog before. The omission is inexcusable because this is easily Ludwig's closest VW neighbor, sitting across and down the alley no more than 15 yards from him. I like to imagine that they have pleasant but shouted conversations in German all day long (they'd have to shout because their backs are usually toward one another).
Siegel Creek Road spilled onto Montana Highway 135 a bit East of the campground where we planned to eat. The trailhead to the waterfall was at the campground also.
Our planned grill out was a complete bust. Melissa did her best to get the last of our ancient briquets-purchased in the Summer of '04-to light, but even after the administration of copious lighter fluid it still wouldn't really get going.
It got worse. The ground beef I'd brought was some ways past its prime, so I had to settle for eating grilled (well, warmed) buns dipped in hummus. We also tried grilling a few ears of corn but the puny fire mocked this effort as well. Melissa's "burger" turned out okay, but I forgot to pack the mustard. The baby however was well-sated with whole milk.
The hike was an occasionally steep upward stomp through a very pretty rocky wood.
Like I said, I ran the camera so there were plenty of pictures of the rocks. Why do I like rocks? My Dad, a retired high school Earth Sciences teacher and inveterate rock aficionado, probably has something to do with it. I also like it when trees grow really close to rocks, like this one.
On the way back we revisited a huckleberry patch Melissa had spotted on the way up and gathered some decent late-season berries. Given the time of day (early evening), food availability (berries, baby), and territory (bear country), in hindsight I questioned the wisdom of our activities. Melissa froze the berries when we got home. They're pretty good; juicy and super tart.
Esmé slept some of the distance back. Melissa didn't surrender her to me once, in defiance to those who might call this new mother a weakling.
The sign tells the story.
Back at Ludwig, we got ready for the drive home. Don't worry: we found Esmé's right hand ("Stephanie") and reattached it later.
