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Date:         
Sender:       Vanagon Mailing List <vanagon@vanagon.com>
From:         
Subject:      Rainy day Vanagon (f?)

	My wife and I took off for an overnight camping trip this last 
weekend in our '88 Vanagon. If anyone is looking for a nice place to 
camp on the California coast, try Sunset Beach State Park, near 
Watsonville. It's between Santa Cruz and Monterey, about one hour from 
the south end of the San Francisco Bay Area. Make reservations, tho.

	We arrived just after noon on Saturday, and found a camp site 
in our favorite part of the park- a hollow shaded by pines. There was 
one other VW van there, a green, late-70's Westy with the pop top up.

	As is our custom- we don't get enough sleep during the week- 
we started our stay with a nap in the back of the Vanagon. Sometime 
after we lay down, the unmistakeable sound of *rain* on the roof 
started. Oh well, at least we brought stuff to make sandwiches with 
for dinner. The rain stayed heavy all day and into the night, but we 
were content to rest, read, etc.

	I got to thinking about the feeling of lying in a VW van with 
the rain coming down on the roof, and realized that's a very 
deep-rooted experience. As a small boy I rolled my sleeping bag out on 
the rubber mat in the back of our family's '68 VW Bus; rain often fell 
on our camping trips in the mountains of Washington state. And I 
always liked that sound. In college, I remember sleeping on the floor 
of my friend's '71 VW Bus, as thunderstorms poured around me in 
Yosemite. My wife and I enjoyed the sound of the rain coming down in 
British Columbia on our west coast road trip two years ago. And now, 
there we were last Saturday, listening to it again.

	Just me and my wife, cozy in our faithful blue Vanagon, 
listening to the rain come down. 

	Happy Motoring,

	Ian Abbott
	'69 VW Beetle
	'87 VW GTI
	'88 VW Vanagon
	'9? VW Concept 1