Painted Rocks State Park

We went down the Bitterroot a few weekends back with the intention of camping at Lake Como, one of our favorites.

But it wasn't to be, as Upper Lake Como campground was full, and Lower Lake Como campground kinda sucked. Just down the road (if 25 miles is "just") is Painted Rocks State Park though, so we hauled Ludwig down the West Fork and found this site.

Luckily, it was free! Unluckily, it was free because they had some water contamination problem and thus, no water. Luckily, Ludwig's tank has had about three gallons of water in it for a long time. Unluckily, his sink faucet is broken. Luckily, Melissa looked at the set-up and found that we just had to yank off a water line underneath that has a valve on it to get at the water. Unluckily, the water in the tank had been in there for several months, and had froze and thawed at least a few times. Luckily, the water tasted perfect, as good as the water in our water bottles from home. Above we let Tater Tot do some exploring.

What's that?

A snake!

Unluckily, Melissa has found her old sunglasses and won't be wearing this much better pair anymore. Luckily, I now have two pairs of sunglasses and will hopefully never have to squint again.

Unluckily, I'm always more groggy in the morning when we're camping than at home. Luckily, I keep some super nice tea in Ludwig at all times for just such occasions.

E likes her own chair, the pink one, just fine until she thinks about it and realizes it's different from our chairs.

Three thumbs way up for the awesome WalMart awning score! I'll do a bit of sewing sometime to improve it a bit, but it's pretty nice regardless. We can't really afford the fancy-schmancy bus specific awning, however we've always thought it was pretty nice. I've got to say, I think about shade a lot differently now that we are living with a little kid.

The fam atop the dam. The three-point turn I had to execute to get off of it made me a little nervous.

Ludwig above the spillway

Melissa took this video of the dam and reservoir. The end is a little vertigo-inducing.

Trapper Peak, at 10157', the highest point in all the Bitterroots. Some of that precipitation up there is still falling as snow.

On the way home, we stopped in Hamilton to picnic in Ludwig. E is enjoying some bread dipped in hummus.

Thanks, Ludwig, for another trouble-free trip!

(miles 221,777-221,978)

And sometimes we park them in the yard

Ludwig needed a little one-on-one time with us since he's been given slightly less attention since the addition of Gertie. I spent a LOT of time shining him up, and Mitch helped me with the final wax.

Compare the photos above to the ones over here for a before and after. I'm ashamed (well, not really) to admit that in my 19 years of car ownership, I can count on one hand the number of times I've waxed any of my cars--and have fingers left over. But after seeing so many other buses up close that, frankly, looked better from afar, I realize that it was mostly their being clean that caught my eye, not their condition. And after seeing so many more buses up close in the past few years, I realize that Ludwig is actually in pretty stellar shape considering he's never had any major body work, has his original interior, and still sports his OG paint (and he's been driven and camped in regularly throughout much of his life).

It makes me wonder about Gertie's life before us when I see the condition of her seats. How could any self-respecting ACVW owner ever allow this to happen? Oh well, no point spending money on covers or replacements when Mitch has a set back in Nebraska from one of his previous Squarebacks. We'll be swapping them sometime in the (hopefully near) future.

I threw some t-shirts over the seats too, mostly because I was tired of my hair getting caught in the duct tape.

I love driving Gertie, and she loves these forest drives. This was on the way home from a hike in the Rattlesnake with some other moms and toddlers we know.

Ludwig shouldn't be the only one having fun mountain drives.

Damn we have pretty vehicles. They look like a couple escapees from a box of crayons.

Post Falls-Missoula

I hope that people aren't overly bored with this trip by now. (A little bored, that's okay.) When blogging there's a fine line to be walked between pictures and text, and length. On the one hand, not everyone has a good internet connection and photo-heavy posts are going to take forever to load, or crash their computer altogether. On the other hand, I get sick of hearing my writer's voice sometimes (like right now), so I must assume that others get sick of it too. Anyway, this is the last post from our Maupin '09 tour.

Yarn! Yarn! Yarn! Finally, after 1068 miles and three failed attempts we finally found yarn! Yarn! Yea for yarn!

This little store is CDA Yarn and Fiber. I spent a good 30 minutes in here wandering around and eavesdropping on the little knitting group that was chatting away. The conversation was just a touch bawdy, in the most rated PG sort of way. It could've been the Missoula knitters, you know, except for the fact that I didn't know any of them and we weren't in Missoula. I couldn't leave without some Fleece Artist Trail Socks yarn (colorway Stone) and some Boku wool/silk blend (it's similar to Noro, but less pricy). The owner couldn't have been more helpful or friendly.

This little gem is Harmony Yarn Studio. The shop is gorgeous (to a knitter at least), and it was another 30 minutes well spent.

Tater Tot seemed to enjoy the table and chairs. Maybe she'll look through some patterns with me next time. Here I bought three skeins of Ella Rae Classic wool, to use with some hat patterns I got at the Big Sky Fiber Fest a few weeks before. I'm also ordered the Tulip Cardigan sweater kit (you can see it in my queue over on Ravelry). Again, the staff was a dream! She was so helpful and kind, and even gave us a free sticker, "Knit Happens", that will eventually make its way on to Gertie.

Knitting porn

And that's it for yarn on the L & G blog until my next birthday (which will no doubt coincide with Maupin).

Now, I'm not trying to be mean, but Melissa and I were talking about Ludwig and how happy we are that he keeps up just fine with sane highway traffic, and how not all bus owners--particularly those ≤1971 owners saddled with Beetle engines--can say the same. For the skeptical, here is proof that Ludwig can easily break 70mph; he had some pedal left at this point.

In Nebraska, you'll see a deer crossing sign with the tag below, "Next 4 miles" or some small number like that. Montana allegedly has six deer for every citizen, and the signs out here say things like, "Deer, Next 160 miles". I think this sign gets it right: You're in Montana, so watch for wildlife. Period.

Tater Tot relaxing with her new shoes, bought at Fred Meyer in Coeur d'Alene. Finally, shoes that don't fall off.

Piney-fresh

Home at last: Missoula. Our house isn't too far from those in the foreground.

(click for map→ miles 221,523-221,701)

Memaloose State Park-Post Falls Idaho

We spent the night at Memaloose State Park, not far past Hood River. Driving through the most scenic part of the Gorge at night precluded any sightseeing (or pictures) but did alleviate that damn Gorge headwind that seems to know which way Ludwig is traveling.

The next morning after breakfast this ground squirrel made a bold move for the pantry, but was thwarted by Tater Tot. We told her, "look at the squirrel trying to get inside Ludwig!" and, hands on hips, she took a couple steps toward it and shouted "NO!" at the top of her little voice. We don't generally encourage the harassment of fauna, but it was pretty cute. She was more than a little shaken by her new-found power over nature, and ran away from the scene nearly as quickly as the squirrel.

Melissa might think that we took US 97 North toward home just because Ludwig could climb a couple new passes on the way. Well, I guess that's partly true, but I also wanted to get out of the Gorge and its incessant headwind. I didn't expect this sign or this view though, which made the shortcut more than worth it. My pictures don't do it justice, but I could see all of them listed save Mt. Rainier (last eruption in 1854; look out, Tacoma). The one in the picture is Mt. Adams. The Type III exhaust strapped up behind the wagon is courtesy tristessa (thanks, Hal).

We saw this farm along I- 82. What the heck is it, hops? Imagine the time it would take to put those fences up.

We stopped at the city park in Ritzville Washington to give Tater Tot a nice long break from her carseat. Ritzville was a the second best place (outside of Montana) we stopped on the entire trip (second to Maupin of course). The park was nice, the public bathrooms were nice, the people were nice, everything was nice. 

Luckily Tater Tot was good and tired, and slept through our completely disastrous attempt to find a campground along the lakeshore in Coeur d'Alene Idaho. We wandered all over the town in the dark for well over an hour, looking for a couple places that I'm now convinced aren't even there. Fortunately our trusty Rand McNally 2009 Road Atlas always gives the location of the nearest WalMart, the last chance campground of choice. A little backtrack on I-90 to Post Falls Idaho later, and we were nestled safely in Ludwig under the mildly annoying glow of parking lot lights.

(miles 221,116-221,523)

Pee Dee Ecks

Ludwig made it from Maupin to Portland with no trouble, not even on the "two" mountain passes (Wapinitia and Blue Box, see map at right) between. Rainy mountain weather past Mt. Hood meant we also made it without pictures either.

It had stopped by the time we drove over the Willamette, on our way to IFBWax's house, a fellow ACVWer, who'd offered us a place to stay for the night.

The next morning before we left for the zoo, Esmé's discerning eye detected an out-of-spec screw on Ludwig's AC power plug in.

Pointing out the loose screw

For good measure, she helped me tighten all of them up. Thanks, Tater Tot.

That green bus ahead of Ludwig is The Party Pickle, who the IFBWax family (blog here) clearly love and enjoy. (This is a link to Charlie Brown, their other bus I which couldn't manage to photograph well. This bus probably ranks in my top 10 all time favorite VWs I've seen in person. Hey, it is brown after all...) They let us spend the night in their guest room, where after E fell asleep we enjoyed a rare treat: cable television. Thanks for the hospitality, Party Pickle family. Incidentally, their driveway marks Ludwig's new Westernmost (known) point.

We went to Portland after the VW Jamboroo mostly because we wanted E to see the zoo (Montana doesn't have one). It was pretty decent, but then Melissa and I are spoiled by having visited the Henry-Doorly Zoo so many times, one of this country's best zoos. Ludwig waited patiently in the parking lot.

After the zoo we headed downtown to meet up with a bunch of ACVWers who regularly meet up at The Lucky Labrador on Quimby each Monday. This was just a cool bridge on the way to downtown.

A good-sized crew eventually assembled, mostly people we'd spent the weekend with. Now that he's been there, Ludwig can wear the Lucky Lab sticker Gypsie gave him last year without embarrassment.

After some pizza, we decided it was time to eat up some of the distance between Portland and Missoula, so we headed out of town.

(miles 220,991-221,116)

Deschutes River RendezVW 09, Maupin Oregon

The bus count this year at Maupin was 70+. It was nice to be one of the early families that set up, because it's fun to watch everyone roll in. This year, we sort of forgot to take pictures of anything until the last minute. So on this year's summary of the RendezVW you'll see just a sampling of the busses that stood out to us the most.

One of our neighbors was this '75  Westy from Oregon City, Jiminy Cricket. I love white, and I love Ludwig's orange, but I think this--VW called it "Bali Yellow"--might be my new favorite color for buses. The owner had sold him sometime in the 1980s, then recently found him all these years later and bought him back. Ludwig's in the back left of this photo, and you can see we weren't so conspicuously in the front after all the other 70 some busses set up camp.

This cat's name is Lucifer and he is 18. He chilled out in The Sunny Bus the whole weekend.

Totoro (right) got a roommate recently, a '87 Synchro (left) that the bean family (who blog about their Vanagon adventures here) picked up for an absurdly low price. We also got to meet the other new addition to their family, Juniper. I am as excited for them to have gotten that Synchro (yet to be named?) as we were to get our Gertie. It's sort of weird how these VWs find their people.

Given the talent present, it is amazing that I scored highest on Gypsie's Name-That-Part Quiz. First prize was a nice temperature sensor that I've already used a million times, including at every stop on the way home. Ludwig's temps seem to be pretty okay. Thanks, Gypsie.

Spiffy is a 1978 Rivi who's owners we met last year when they brought their '67 bus, Bill. Since then Spiffy has become famous for having appeared on a bunch of Dave Matthews Band concert posters. They have a good blog here.

Much to my own chagrin, I like this.

The last of these striped buses is The Green Flower Bussy, a 1976 hightop who was named by the owners' daughter. I'd never given it much thought before, but it turns out that I'm a really big fan of pinstripes. And stripes. And I have given it much thought before, and I love love love pinstripes (from the 70s)!

I've got to be honest here. Usually when I see a high top bus my knee-jerk reaction is to silently gag to myself. BUT, I totally stand corrected. The Green Flower Bussy was very cool. Not only does it have some killer pinstripes, but it has a stove in a drawer. Cool indeed. And I totally dug how there was a raised seating area. It really was a nice high top, that has forever changed my outlook that all high tops are lame.

A week is a long time from home when you're a cloth diaper family. So we hauled our laundry, and Tater Tot, into town to wash our duds. Thank goodness we had the wagon because we had to cross this bridge.

And climb this super steep hill. It was even more cumbersome taking all the wet clothes back to camp. Especially since the hill was almost harder to go down (as we're about to do above) as it was to go up.

Utilitarian clothesline. Someone said it reminded them of Tibetan prayer flags.

E really enjoyed Betty's accordion playing. She sat in rapt attention through several songs and asked for more. She also enjoyed listening to Mike (one of Spiffy's drivers) play the tuba.

On the last day, Tater Tot helped us clean up the camp. As a reward for her hard work, we let her have a cold beer. (Not really; please don't report us to CPS.)