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.)