City of Heat

We went to Thermopolis Wyoming for the eclipse. I drove.

Melissa slept.

The girls were rowdy.

There was topography.

There was desert.

Thermopolis has quite a bit going on, actually. We recommend it.

We biked everywhere:

...to the suspension bridge...

...to the rock people accidentally made...

...to this '73 Super Beetle...

...and to the Wyoming Dinosaur Center. I challenge anyone to show me a better natural history museum in a town of less than 3,500 people. Among many other things they had a trilobite mass grave...

...a fish eating a pterosaur eating a fish (yes, really)...

...and the best Archaeopteryx fossil in the world, and the only Archaeopteryx on display in the Western Hemisphere. (We also biked to two different hot spring swimming pools.)

Speaking of dinosaurs, these are our chickens' eggs, which we turned into pancakes back at the RV park.

Yes, we like Thermopolis.

Next: the Great American Eclipse

Luna

A couple weeks ago a local VWer (Richie) alerted me to a family having trouble with their '70 Westy down toward the Park.

The description seemed like a fuel issue to me but upon arrival it was clearly the clutch, which is what everyone else already thought. Luna arrived at our garage on the hook.

J and Richie and I tore into it pretty much immediately. Some funniness involving the 1970 bus transaxle and the 1973 Beetle engine meant we had to drop the transaxle and engine as a unit. Fortunately pre-1971 bus engines are the easiest to remove among all air-cooled Volkswagens. That rear apron comes off, and you basically just pull the engine out.

It was the clutch. The ring on the pressure plate had come loose and played havoc. The pressure plate was plenty blued as well, and the clutch disk was just barely within tolerance. J ordered all new parts and new engine mounts (one was sheared in half) and, while waiting for them to arrive, tended to a few other things I gave him as homework.
A valve adjustment and some minor tweaking later (note: fuel hoses have to attach to the fuel pump in the correct direction), and off they went. Last I knew they were in Minnesota.
Happy trails, B, E, and J!

Fairy Lake

Fairy Lake Campground sits at the end of an atrocious 7-mile road in Gallatin National Forest, about 40 miles from our house.

After we arrived E got busy helping with the fire.

Stinkerton just goofed around, as usual.

But she did decide later to sleep downstairs by herself, and succeeded.

Starting at about 5am vehicles were steadily streaming past Ludwig, some sidling up next to him. Whiskey tango foxtrot?

Unwittingly we'd camped at the starting line of a race. Three hundred runners in five waves set off along the Bridgers' ridgeline, the first wave at 7am.

We escaped to the lake.

On the way out we waved 'hello' to some cattle.

Beautiful campground and beautifuler lake, terrible road and terribler timing (because of the race).

post script

Just in time for this trip, me and E replaced Ludwig's faucet. Working sink and 35 L of water! Functionality as originally intended! Yay! And it only took 13 years.

Ten

Ludwig has been running pretty well lately KNOCK ON WOOD so for Colin's stop this year we decided to tackle long-lingering body integrity issues.

We disassembled the guts of the doors.

Then installed all new rubber--scrapers, felts, seals. All new. Colin worked on the driver's side while I mimicked his work on the passenger side. Not shown: kicking out the sliding door and tightening its works so it opens and closes more easily.


Doors finished, we had a choice. Replace the ball joint seals or tackle the windshield lip's rust. We went for the windshield, and good thing we did. Above, we cleaned the lip with POR-15 and applied some bondo.

Then we sanded, more bondo, primered, more bondo, sanded, primered, sanded, painted, and...

...slapped the windshield back in, with a new seal. Melissa and I worked the outside, Colin and Esmé worked the inside. I have to say, Esmé was a big help and I don't mean that in the oh-aren't-you-a-big-widdle-helper way. I mean, she was in the thick of it, and even gave the cord the final tug to fully seat the windshield and seal. 

Thank you Colin. And thank you to Melissa who, on top of being a full-time mom, taught many, many knitting classes so we could set aside enough money for a two-day appointment. I'm glad we were able to use the money she earned on some fixes that affect so directly her ability to use Ludwig.