Well, we packed our '80 Westy up and headed south to see all the flowers
in Death Valley.  Didn't get far -- about 100 yards (not even out of the
driveway!).  Van stalled, and would not start again.  We fired up the
LandCruiser and pulled the bus home.  I fiddled a while, gave up, and moved
some of the stuff into the '86 GL.  We got out a few hours late.

We drove south through the *lovely* central valley of California (some of the
ugliest places in the nation, IMO).  We did a motel in Mojave, and then went
up to Death Valley.  The flowers are quite something -- almost unbelievable
that there could be so much growing.  We camped out two nights in Furnace
Creek, and then drove home.

My son and I walked from Furnace Creek to Badwater, 20 miles across some of
the worst terrain I've ever experienced.  Some was covered with flowers --
and sharp rocks.  Some was salt.  Some was mud.  Strange place, and eerily
beautiful.  We left by the park's east side.

For VW bus sitings, we started out well, with a bullet-turn-signal singlecab
tooling along north on highway 99 near Fresno.  We saw about 8 buses, and
about the same number of Vanagons.  We parked near a '91 Westy in DV.  There
was also an '86 Country Homes conversion there as well.  As we pulled into the
campground, there was a Rialta pulling in as well.  We saw two EV/Winnies as
well.  The singlecab was the only splitty we saw )^:

The Westie failing us was something of a blow -- it fails often, but it
has always just taken a bit of tinkering to get going again.  We took a
trip at Christmas across the southwest, and had the clutch slave cylinder
fail in -18'F temps in Durango.  I replaced the cylinder with a spare, but
it proved to be leaky as well.  I finally put in a different cylinder (two
types were used on 1980 Vanagons) and it is working fine.  The van had been
running great -- I could not believe that it would fail this way.  It appears
to be flooding when I attempt to start it -- the only engine work I had done
was to fix the leaky dipstick.  It is really frustrating.  Tomorrow I'll
start checking the injectors -- perhaps I've a leaky one.

But this is definately the year and time to see Death Valley (and perhaps
the poppies at Antelope Valley near Lancaster...we did not have time)

Malcolm