Part XIII: Home!

This week: Tobin and Christa make it home, but along the way buy 
way too many doughnuts at Wall Drug, drop in on a vanagon@lenti 
list member without any warning whatsoever, and plow through snow 
on a closed interstate.

Hey kids!  See a collection of fine photographs of Tobin and   
           Christa on their Big Trip at 
     -->  http://www.teleport.com/~des/vw
           And why not join us and other list members on a road 
           trip to the Beaufort Sea (on the Arctic Ocean) next 
           August?  Check it out at
     -->  http://www.chaco.com/~coyote/trek 

March 22, 1995   Murdo, South Dakota.

We woke up in our motel room and enjoyed a hot shower and watching 
CNN on the TV.  Our other TV channel choices seemed to be mostly 
stations from either Denver or Detroit, which I thought was 
strange.  I went out to he camper and boiled some water for tea on 
our stove.  We sipped tea, stared at the TV, and I searched the 
road atlas for ways to get west from here without being bound to 
Interstate 90 for the rest of the trip.  

We also realized we had less than a week left before we had to be 
back home.  Christa and I were kind of sad about this. We didn't 
want our beautiful trip to end.

I had parked our camper at the top end of a slightly sloping 
parking lot, so getting started in the morning did not prove to be 
a problem.  We also managed to find a gas station in town with a 
slope just after the pumps, so we were treated to two easy starts 
first thing in the morning.  Who needs a starter?

The auto museum was still closed, so we patted our camper on the 
dashboard and pulled onto I-90, where we'd spend the rest of the 
morning.  We watched the plains slowly glide by, taking our time 
as one big truck after another blew by us in the left lane.  

We read the constant parade of billboards for entertainment, 
editing them for grammar and mis-spellings, or musing what would 
happen if we could just shuffle a letter or two around here and 
there.  We passed one sign that read:

          Either Way...
             DOPE
          Will Get You!

Another neat thing about the sign was that one side of the sign 
had a little picture of a tomb-stone with "RIP" engraved on it, 
and the other side had a guy in striped prison clothes holding on 
to jail bars.  Oooh, scary!

After driving by the sign, Christa and I were both laughing out 
loud and I turned to her and chuckled, "That's almost worth a 
picture!"  "What are you talking about?" she replied, "it IS worth 
a picture!"  I threw the camper over to the side of the freeway 
and stood on the brakes.  As soon as we came to a stop, I threw it 
into reverse and started backing several hundred yards up the 
parking lane, with our flashers on.  A minute or so later, we were 
back at the sign again and we had no regrets about taking the time 
to see it again.  It was wonderful.  Christa piled out of the 
camper with her camera, and started trying to frame up her 
photograph.

Standing by the camper, I became aware of how this scene might 
look to a passing State Trooper.  I though about it for a second 
or two and concluded: not that good.  A VW camper at the side of 
the road with two young folks standing around, taking pictures of 
the "dope" sign?  Hmmm...  We piled back into the camper and got 
on our way before we got our camper disassembled by dope-crazed 
American federales.

We got our second weird South Dakota experience a while later when 
we pulled over for a "Scenic Viewpoint" the interstate highway 
people had thoughtfully built alongside I-90.  We pulled off, 
parked, and looked... at a vast plain that looked more or less 
exactly indistinguishable from what we'd been driving through for 
the last several hours.  We thought this was pretty trippy, so we 
took a picture of us and our bus at the Scenic Viewpoint.  (This 
picture is up on David's web site: the scenic view--we know this 
is the scenic part because a sign near the parking area tells 
visitors which way to look--is in the background of the picture).

We were getting close to the cultural mecca of the Dakotas: we 
knew this because billboards had been counting down the mileage 
for the last few hundred miles.  We knew we'd arrived when we 
could see the 70 foot green brontosaurus looming on the horizon.  
We could barely wait as we pulled off the freeway and worked our 
way along the streets of the small town looking for a place to 
park along a downhill slope.  We parked, and nearly ran to where 
we knew our cravings would be sated.

Finally, we were there: the place everybody stops along this 
stretch of road, a welcome beacon of bad taste in the middle of 
the Great Plains.  Wall Drug in Wall, South Dakota.  The 
inspiration behind such cultural icons as "Where the Hell is Wall 
Drug?" bumper stickers.  But we were there for the doughnuts.  The 
best doughnuts for hundreds of miles.  Christa had been looking 
forward to Wall Drug doughnuts for days, and she wanted enough to 
satisfy her craving.  So I bought a dozen.

Two days later, we still had some of those damn doughnuts--as 
usual, out eyes were bigger than out stomachs.  But we managed to 
gorge on three each almost before we reached cruising speed on the 
highway out of town.

A couple of hours later we pulled over in Spearfish, and found a 
really cool natural food store where we stocked up on Fantastic 
Foods soups and other yummies.  I left the camper parked outside 
with the engine idling, my keys locked inside in the ignition, 
Christa's keys in her pocket.  Not that I'd suspect Spearfish of 
having a real big problem with crime.

We parked on a hill in town and heated up a couple of soups.  It 
was nice to get something nutritious into our tummies after 
feeling bloated from the doughnuts all morning.  After lunch, I 
proceeded to execute my Secret Plan To Get The Hell Off The 
Interstate And Save One Hundred Miles Of Driving At The Same Time.

Instead of pulling back on to I-90 towards Sheridan, Wyoming, I 
turned north on US 85 to Belle Fourche, then turned northwest on 
US 212.  It was so nice to be back on two-lane roads, close to the 
land.  We clipped the northeast corner of Wyoming, passing through 
it and into Montana in half an hour.  We spent the rest of the 
afternoon putting happily through beautiful plains, rolling hills, 
and low mountains.  Our westy pulled strong up steep grades, happy 
to have the monotony of the plains behind it.  We joined up with 
I-90 again at Crow Agency just as night was beginning to fall.

A little over an hour later we rolled into Billings, where we 
filled up with fuel.  Christa was looking through the AAA Camping 
Guide for camp sites in the area when I had a faint recollection 
that there was someone on the vanagon list from Billings.  I 
pulled out the big binder of vanagon@lenti messages I'd brought 
along for technical advice, and after a few minutes of searching 
found the person with the Billings address: a fellow named Will 
Self.  (Remember Will Self?  The ascii-doodle guy?  Hello, Will!  
You out there?).  I walked over to the pay-phone and flipped 
through the phone book.  Ah: a listing for "Self, Will."  I 
phoned, and a guy answered:

"Hello?"
"Hello, is this Will Self?"
"Um, yeah..."
"Hi, this is Tobin Copley from the vanagon list!"
(pause..) "Oh!  Hi!"
"I don't know if you've been following our progress on the list, 
but we've been driving around the country for the last few months, 
and we just pulled into Billings, and we were wondering if you'd 
like to meet and have a beer or something...  Sort of put a face 
to the name."
"Yeah, sure!  That'd be great!  Where are you staying?"
"Well, we don't have a place yet, but we were looking to stay at 
an RV park someplace near here."
"Why don't you come by our place?  I've got a level driveway, and 
I brew my own beer.  Got a new batch ready just the other day!  
Come on over, love to meet you!  Here's how to get to my place..."

Score!  We followed Will's flawless instructions and pulled up 
outside his place (the one with the vanagon out front).  I backed 
into his driveway to make push-starting the next morning easier.  
Will and his partner Margaret were great.  We sat out on their 
back porch in old vanagon seats, drinking pint after pint of some 
excellent ales and a stout.  Will made his brew from scratch, too: 
no mixes for him!  We ordered a great vegetarian pizza, and talked 
until far too late at night.  In the wee hours of the morning, we 
crawled into our camper, and slept like logs.  It was blissful to 
sleep in our own bed after weeks of sleeping in hotel rooms or on 
friends' pull-out beds.

The next morning, Will showed off his cabinetry handiwork as he 
demonstrated us how he had camperized his plain-jane transporter 
vanagon.  He had a huge bed in the back, and massive roll-out 
drawers installed underneath.  He had compartments for tools 
installed in the rear, above the engine compartment, with a pull-
out insert allowing access to the engine compartment lid.  Very 
slick.  We took a few pictures (see Will and Margaret for yourself 
at David's web site!), then all four of us pushed our camper down 
the street outside Will's place to start it.  We jumped in, and it 
fired right up when I let out the clutch.  We waved to Will and 
Margaret, and headed west once more.

It had been quite warm the previous few days, but this morning it 
had turned decidedly cold.  We cruised along I-90 heading into the 
mountains, and I didn't like the look of the clouds on the horizon 
ahead of us.  After another few miles, I also decided I didn't 
like how all the cars coming from the other direction were 
plastered with snow and ice along every leading surface.  And when 
the wind clocked around and started gusting hard as a cross-wind, 
and snow began to fall, I knew we were in for it.  We flipped the 
gas heater on, and made sure the curtain separating the cab from 
the rear part of the bus was sealed up nice and tight.  

It snowed off and on, then settled into a heavy snowfall with big 
fat flakes as we began to climb higher and higher into the 
mountains.  Visibility dropped, and snow started settling on the 
road.  All the traffic settled into a single lane, and the parking 
lane was full of heavy trucks chaining up.  We pushed on, keeping 
our distance from cars in front of us, feeling lucky to have a 
snow plow breaking trail for us just a few hundred yards ahead.  

Snow was building up on the front of our camper in a big way, and 
our windshield wipers were starting to really strain against where 
they had packed up the snow at each end on their sweep.  I eased 
over to the side of the road and jumped out to scrape off the 6 
inches of snow that had accumulated on our windshield.  We pulled 
back on and continued our crawl west, stopping every 10 or 15 
minutes to remove huge accumulations on snow from the windshield.  
Soon we were among only a handful of vehicles still on the road.  
Several times we pulled over to pick up people whose car had slid 
off the road, and dropped them off at the next gas station so they 
could call for a tow.  

I wondered what had happened to the plows, since the snow was 
getting really deep on the freeway.  In places, we didn't even see 
any ruts from cars that had gone ahead of us.  The snow would 
scrape occasionally along the underside of our camper, just to 
tell me that, yes, the snow was deep.  Jeez, I thought, if it gets 
much worse, I might have to get out there and put on our chains.  
That'd be cold!  I was glad we'd bought those beefy rear tires in 
California.  The aggressive tread made for more road noise on 
normal road surfaces, but I was glad to have the traction in this 
weather.

About this time, I realized it was getting awfully cold inside.  
Christa saw this too, and it looked like the heater had blown 
another fuse.  Oh, great timing!  We pulled over into a rest stop 
with an exit ramp that didn't look too bad, and I got out to do 
the windshield snow removal ritual and to have a quick look at the 
gas heater.  As soon as I opened the engine compartment lid, I saw 
a potential problem: the engine compartment had all but filled up 
with snow!  I scooped out the engine compartment, and realized 
that the snow caking the heater must have shorted it out.  I was 
awfully cold, and over an inch of snow had fallen since we'd 
stopped a couple of minutes before, so I decided to get us through 
the snow without wasting time trying to get a soaked heater to 
work.  I walked around our camper, doing a quick check to make 
sure everything was as it should be.  We have a spare wheel 
mounted on the front, but the snow was so deep on the front that 
it looked like we just had a more rounded front end, with no 
bumper, no spare tire, and no headlights.  I knocked off nearly a 
foot of snow over the headlights so other traffic could see us 
coming.  We grabbed more clothes from the back, wiped off the 
windshield once again, and rolled out.  

Visibility was so poor we drove along with our flashers on hoping 
we wouldn't get run down by a snow plow when they finally got 
around to plowing the road.  On the final run up to the pass just 
east of Livingston, things got a bit dicey.  We had to thread our 
way uphill through a freeway strewn with stuck, spun, and 
abandoned cars up the steep grade.  I'm talking literally strewn: 
maybe 30 or 40 vehicles in the space of a half mile.  The vicious 
crosswind here kept snow from building up too deeply on the road, 
but all the heavy-footed folks who had gotten themselves stuck had 
done a nice job of glazing the hard packed snow into an icy sheet.  
I could feel our rear wheels lighting up every now and then, and 
I'd back off just enough to get a grip, then ease the throttle 
back down.

A half mile from the summit, we encountered a problem: I gave too 
much throttle weaving around a spun car and lost traction.  
Totally lost traction.  We slid to a stop, and when I applied the 
brakes to hold our position we started sliding downhill.  Ooops.  
I straightened us out and tried to stop again.  We slid to a 
grudging stop.  I tried to get going uphill again, but the wheels 
spun at the first hint of power.  Our problem was compounded since 
without a functioning starter, we'd be really dead in the water if 
I accidentally killed the motor trying to get us rolling again.  
And our gas heater wasn't even working, so we'd have to fire up 
the propane stove and curl up in bed to keep warm--which wouldn't 
be that bad, except we had a deadline for getting home.

We had to creep nearly a hundred yards back down the highway 
before we found a section of road that provided enough traction to 
get us rolling again.  We set out for the summit again, this time 
a bit faster so we could get through the iced sections without 
running out of momentum.  Not a problem.  We crossed the summit, 
and slowly worked our way down the other side.  In Livingston, we 
warmed up in a small cafe and called some friends we knew in 
Missoula.  We were happy to hear they'd love to see us and give us 
a place to sleep that evening.  But we had to get there first: 
we'd been driving hard for hours, and had only made a little over 
100 miles.  We had over 200 to go.

Back in the camper, I pulled out our little shortwave receiver and 
tuned it to 530 AM.  We'd been seeing flashing signs telling us to 
tune to that frequency for hours, but hadn't had easy access to 
the radio until now.  We listened to scratchy bulletin broadcast 
by the highway patrol, and learned that the section of I-90 we had 
just come through had been closed for most of the day, and was 
still closed.  Travel on the section ahead of us was "not 
advised," and was open "for emergency travel only."  Well, they 
didn't say traffic was _prohibited_, so we pulled out and headed 
west again.

We pushed through the pass into Bozeman, than trotted along 
through the snow towards Butte.  Snow was still falling heavily, 
and there was quite a bit of snow on the road, but at least this 
section had been plowed and sanded.  We blasted along at 30 mph, 
happy to see the snow slowly diminishing.  By the time we hit 
Butte, the snow was behind us, and it had warmed up significantly.  
It was dark by the time we got to Missoula, but our friends had a 
warm fire, hot food, and beer.  Nirvana.

We ran an extension cord out to the camper, plugged in our ceramic 
heater, and slept cozy and warm in our own bed, for the second 
night in a row.   

The next morning we got towed uphill out of our friend's driveway 
by his 5 litre Mustang.  Not a problem.  We cruised along I-90 to 
Coeur d'Alene, where we filled up with gas and Christa managed to 
get a couple of vegetarian burritos at a Taco Bell down the 
street.  It had warmed up a lot since we'd dropped out of the 
mountains, and the sunshine put us both in a very good mood, 
despite the fact that we were rapidly approaching the end of our 
trip.  Besides, we were back in VW bus territory, and saw at least 
a half-dozen busses before we left town.  (They were all 
breadloaves, and they all waved).

We headed north up US 395 to Kettle Falls on the Columbia River, 
then followed the river north along highway 25 to the Canadian 
border.  It was great to be on secondary roads again, and nice to 
be back in familiar territory.  Both of us were very excited about 
returning to Canada, and visiting Christa's dad, who lives in 
Rossland.  

We had absolutely no problems with our sixth international border 
crossing of the trip.  There was no traffic at the tiny crossing 
at Patterson, but the customs agent spent several minutes with us-
-talking about our trip, not trying to interrogate us.  The agent 
welcomed us back, and we put our camper in gear.  We were pretty 
pleased to be back on home turf again!  We continued up the road 
to Rossland, climbing a couple thousand feet in just a few miles.

We spent a couple of days visiting with Christa's dad, getting 
acclimated to family, to being back in B.C., preparing ourselves 
for our return to Vancouver.  Both of us phoned family and 
friends, and they were all glad to hear we had made it back and 
looked forward to seeing us soon.

A few days later, we loaded our camper for the last full leg of 
the trip and putted through the mountains toward Vancouver.  We 
took our time climbing the constant succession of steep grades 
along highway 3, stopping for gas in Osoyoos, then again in Hope.  

Early in the evening, we rolled into my sister's driveway in 
Mission, were we were going to spend our last night on the road 
and pick up all our clothes and stuff we'd stored at her place.  
As we backed up her driveway, I could see a huge "Welcome Home!" 
banner she had out for us.  We had big hugs when they ran out of 
the house, and I got to see my little niece again, who was only 3 
days old when we had left.  She'd grown a bit.  =:O  Their 
Labrador Retriever, Jeffrey, was absolutely overwhelmed with 
happiness at the sight of us.  Their cat, Boris, apparently 
couldn't care less.

My brother-in-law, Bruce, who had been a huge help in getting the 
camper ready for the trip (including helping install the gas 
heater), couldn't believe we'd managed to pull this trip off.  He 
collects "big ugly American cars," as he likes to call them, and 
is partial to Rambler Marlins which I have to admit are big and 
certainly ugly.  He wasn't much on the idea of us buying a VW 
camper and driving it around the continent, but I think he has a 
grudging respect for them now--or at least as much respect as 
he'll give anything that doesn't suck all the blood to the back of 
your brain when you floor the accelerator.

The next day we loaded up our camper with all the stuff we'd 
stored at my sister's place and drove home to our own apartment.  
The people we'd sublet it to left it even cleaner than we'd left 
it for them.  What a treat!  After all the stuff had been unloaded 
from our camper, and our happy camper had been carefully parked 
and thanked appropriately (Good Camper!), Christa and I sat 
together contentedly in our little apartment.  It was nice to be 
home.  It wasn't such a bad place, after all.

I hope you've liked reading about our trip every Friday.  This is 
the thirteenth week I've posted a report on this trip, and our 
actual trip took roughly thirteen weeks itself.  Perhaps someday 
I'll be able to post a report for a trip Christa and I may take in 
our camper down to Chile, around Australia, across the old USSR 
from Europe to Vladivostok, or across equatorial Africa on the 
Kinshasa Highway.  But first we've got to drive to Inuvik, above 
the arctic circle.  Join us!

Tobin
----- 

Here're the final stats for the trip:

Vehicle:	    1976 VW Westfalia camper.  Icebox, no built-in 
			   fridge.  1970 cc FI motor, all stock.
Countries:		 3
US states:		33
Mex. states:		11
Cdn. provinces	         5
Border crossings:	 6
Trip duration:	        89 days
Total mileage:	    14,986 miles (that's 24,112 km)
Longest driving day:     approx. 850 miles
Flat tires:	 	 1 (Sedona, AZ)
Speeding tickets:	 0
Drug searches:   	 1
Max. outside temp:       Real hot (90+ and very humid)
Min. outside temp:     -40 (C or F)
Max. oil temp:         290 F
Usual oil temp:	       225 F at 60-70 F/235-245 at 80+ F high humidity
Oil changes:	         5
Valve adjustments: 	 6
Timing adj need	ed: 	 0
Cruising speed:		57 mph (conditions permitting)
Mech. falures:	 	 2   1) Split CV joint boot, P. Escondido, Mex.
			     2) Starter solenoid, New Brunswick, Canada
Fuel cost:		About $900.00 US
Avg. mileage:		Around 18 - 20 mpg. (only checked occasionally)
Rolls film shot:  	12
vanagon@lenti list members met: 13
   of these, number whose place we crashed at: 5

------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Tobin T. Copley                  Only Somewhat          =============  
(604) 689-2660                    Occupationally       /_| |__||__| :| putta
tobin@freenet.vancouver.bc.ca      Challenged!        O|             | putta
                                                       '-()-------()-' 
Circum-continental USA, Mexico, Canada 15,000 miles... '76 VW Camper! (Mango)