Third Annual Deschutes River RendezVW Roll Call

These are all the attendees of the 3rd Annual Deschutes River RendezVW in Maupin Oregon. Vehicles were asked for their name, year, model, and hometown.

The first three are owned by the host of the event.


Frau Pfankuch ('72 Westy; sic above) was laid up in Portland with carburetor problems, but her younger sibling (this diesel Golf which gets 50+mpg) brought John, Jennifer, and kids and camped out anyway. What good sports. Their daring showed in the fact that their kids are a toddler and a baby even younger than our E.

The three busses below all have the same owners. If you were in Maupin, you probably recognize Galaxy Starship as the bus that was towed to the event. Its blown head gasket was temporarily repaired on site with incredible creativity by Colin and tristessa. Two days and some RTV sealant later it powered up the hill and on home.

This handsome biodiesel Vanagon is for sale.

Moose has a Subaru engine. Synchro=4WD, incidentally.

Peter is the proud and only the third (!) owner of this gorgeous '70 Westy, complete with original Westy tent. He bought it from his Uncle & Aunt, who had purchased it from the first owner when it was only months old. He has all the original documentation for this bus, which shows it was purchased on the tourist pickup program--you go to Germany and pick it up at the factory gate, tool around Europe for a while, and ship it to the U.S. yourself. Accordingly it had its early check-ups all over Western Europe. Most astonishing among its papers though was that that tent was an $1100 option for a $3800 vehicle. In today's dollars that's a $6160 tent attached to a $21270 car. Good grief!

We admired Philip and Dolores' exceptionally neat (and neatly-lit) bus. They also own a Thing. Their propane campfire helped make them just about the best neighbors one could hope for.

That's Melissa knitting under our fancy $10 awning. It was World Wide Knit in Public Day, and she was doing her part. Note E napping on the Z bed. We're pretty sure she napped better in Ludwig than she ever does at home. Maybe it's all that fresh air. Or maybe it's the orange plaid interior.

Most of the campers were Westfalias or Rivieras, but this bus is a Dorper, converted in Canada. It sat in a garage for for a loooong time and has only ca. 53,000 miles on it. And this photo shows the first time the top had been opened in 30 years.

Totoro!

Colin's bus had been at our place in Missoula only two days earlier, and somewhere along the road he acquired another engine case. We are very impressed that he's owned this bus since he was 18 years old. Very impressed.

Mustard Seed's driver (at right) told us this was the family car when she was a kid. She was lucky enough to inherit it as an adult.

Mitch's very rough field calculations showed that Blue Moon is younger than Ludwig by less than two weeks, and certainly by not much more than a month.Doesn't this bus look extra long? Yes.

Did they ever build them that way? No.

The Party Pickle is another bus with a blog.

This van will be visiting our neck of the woods soon.

One of Bill's drivers told us it's "Bill" because it's been nothing but bills since they got him.

"Ripple" after the song, not the hooch.

We wonder how many drivers near Maupin had this very sentiment on their minds. (spotted on the back of Bertha)

"Orphan" because it was abandoned by its previous owners.

Blue II has a nice rain fly for the pop-top window...

...and a custom burner grate.

The dark panel is painted with chalkboard paint.

Annie, the oldest v-dub on site.

We realized after we got home and downloaded our photos that we had hardly taken pictures of any of the nice people we met but had a plethora of bus photos. It's unfortunate, because we really did meet a lot of great people. We'll try harder next year.

Onward to the Deschutes River RendezVW

This past weekend was our second attempt camping with a baby, and boy, what a doozy: four days, 1039 miles, and four states. Mitch was pretty terrified that either E or Ludwig would have some sort of intractable breakdown. But Melissa was confident it would go well since Colin (wandering VW guru extraordinaire, see future post for details) had just gone over Ludwig with Mitch and deemed him worthy, while Esmé is always satisfied if she's able to eat, sleep, and not wallow in her own filth. We're happy to say that it went off with nary a hitch.

We began our voyage on a Thursday evening after Mitch got off work, and ended the day's travels in Smelterville Idaho.
As is our style when we are just making an overnight pit stop, we opted for the free WalMart parking lot "campground", where there's always bathrooms, hot water and plenty of security camera surveillance.

Lake Coeur d'Alene is pictured above. Idaho is probably one of the most underappreciated states as far as scenery is concerned. While filling Ludwig's tank in Couer d'Alene a woman (moving to Seattle from Cincinnati) approached the bus asking us if we'd ever been there before. After we replied to her that we had in fact been here before, she told us she knew nothing of "this place". We assumed she meant she didn't know about Couer d'Alene specifically, but eventually her account of how she was impressed with the stunning views very clearly implied that she didn't know this part of the country (i.e., the entire Pacific Northwest) existed. Weird.

The wide open horizons as a backdrop to the coal cars along US 395 in Southeastern Washington left us thinking how similar the landscape was to the Sandhills in our beloved Nebraska.

The Columbia River, the only truly mighty river in the American West besides the Colorado, was surprisingly wide, probably because it's dammed along nearly its entire length. This pretty blue bridge spans it at Pasco Washington.

This is a barge plying the Columbia along the Washington/Oregon border. Some little towns along the river are actually seaports. We even saw barges floating grain up and down the river. That was a new sight to see, for a couple of flatlanders who are more accustomed to seeing grain elevators load grain on to trains and trucks rather than boats.

The terrain along Washington State Hwy 14 was pretty scenic, even though the wind gusts up the Columbia River Gorge made for an extremely tiring and slow drive in a bread loaf like Ludwig.

Now in Oregon, Mount Hood towered menacingly ahead of us. At our first Oregonian gas stop, we learned that Oregon (and New Jersey) are the only two states smart enough to realize that the masses are much, much too stupid to be entrusted with the task of pumping their own gasoline. A clerk informed us that this is because otherwise people accidentally blow themselves up left and right. Having never before heard of this apparently widespread phenomenon, we were thankful that the Nanny State in Oregon (and New Jersey) was forward-thinking enough to keep us, and everyone else, safe from ourselves. Unfortunately gas cost about 15 cents more across the Oregon border, and it also took about 10 times as long to get the tank filled since most of the time was spent waiting for the attendant to come take the gas nozzle out of the tank--apparently we were too unskilled to even perform that simplest of acts. Mitch is still buzzing that he had to tell one Oregonian attendant to not top off the tank, actually one of the biggest sins of gas-pumping and something you'd think would be a motivating reason to criminalize self-service. But, we digress.

The Dalles Dam has a fish ladder around either side, so salmon can make it to their spawning grounds. The outflow of this dam looked pretty impressive.

Our destination, Maupin Oregon, lies picturesquely straddling the Deschutes River. These houses and osprey nest were just down the river from the RendezVW where Ludwig mingled with 55 other VWs, all but one being a bus....(to be continued)

June Snow Redux

For the incredulous, we present Ludwig and Fang Fang in their Winter clothes, 11 June 08.

June Snow

We got a little snow this morning, but not enough to stick around.