Miracle Hot Springs

We headed out of town Friday night. Destination: Miracle Hot Springs. As I mentioned in my previous post, this was our first road trip in BB and she totally kicked ass. We were very happy with her performance and are feeling slightly more comfortable with the upcoming California trip in 17 days (knock on wood).

We camped in the RV park at Miracle where we’d never stayed before. (On a previous trip, we rented the Queen dome at Miracle which was AWESOME.) Grateful for electricity, our space heater ran all night and we were nice and toasty. I went for a nice moonlit middle of the night walk to the bathroom (stumbling like a zombie as I had left my glasses in the bus) and the campground was quiet and clean and felt safe (which is always nice when camping).

Saturday morning, after a dip in the hot springs (aaahhhhhh) we headed to Craig’s parents house in Twin Falls where we changed BB’s oil (and as a bonus saw Craig’s mom, brother, sister-in-law, cousin Melissa and JAMES our nephew--he’s such a stud.) The good news was that there was only a little metal in the oil which our mechanic warned us would be there as this was our new engine’s 200 mile oil change.

We still can’t believe that she’s actually running.

Here’s our “to do” list before April 15

Install sliding door seal
Install rear hatch seal
Install radio
Fix squeaky speedometer cable (it gets old fast)
Try more solutions for keeping rain from coming in the westy top
Remove tint from passenger window
Remove crappy old foam pieces from the underside of the westy top.
Hope for dry weather in California.

history confusion

Sorry for the large gap between posts. It is amazing how moving will do that to you. Now that we’re unpacked and de-cluttered and all of that, we’re taking BB camping! It has been way way wwaaaaaayy too long and we are ready to get out of town!


Everyone (please!) cross your fingers for us as we take BB on her first (little 250 mile) road trip. She got new tires today—6 ply, light truck, load range C, 185 R14s for safety and peace of mind.

We picked BB up from the mechanic last night where he said he is very confident that BB was a European bus. Now—I’m confused as I ran the m-code plate through one of the super awesome online m-code decoders which revealed to me that the bus left the VW plant bound for Chicago (with a little stop at Westfalia). I trust my mechanic when he tells us that a) the fuse box is not correct for American buses and was not hacked in. The wiring harness is original to the bus, and b) there is a European license plate bolted into the engine compartment. I had noticed it but hadn’t thought about what it was. Now, having a European license plate in your engine compartment doesn’t exactly mean that a bus was from Europe, but it is just…well, weird. I understand that m-code plate decoders aren’t 100% reliable and I trust my mechanic, but now I’m stuck in royal history limbo. Any words of guidance out there?

She's Alive!

We picked BB up today and--look!!! Craig actually drove her and she moved down the road willingly with no pushing or pulling or other non-mechanical assistance required! She's got several electrical issues which need to be worked out so I'm going to try my hand at that...again. (Any hints/tips/assistance would be totally appreciated.)

So Much to Say

Ha! My post title has lured you here under the guise that I have something relevant to say! Well, I don’t (although, do I ever?)

1) We towed BB to the mechanic last week where she sits. Surprisingly this isn’t altogether inconvenient as we are in the process of moving across town and we don’t really need a non-running bus in the garage right now.

2) The Bus Pilots Association had their annual February Freezeout on Sunday, so Jasmine got a nice thorough $8 wash. (Usually we keep it under $5.)

3) Because I have so much to talk about, here are some "run by shootings" (i.e. VWs I passed on my running route a few weeks ago.)

4) Also, we went geo-caching up at Tablerock a few weeks ago and parked next to this bug. It was a really bizarre location to find any, let alone two ACVWs.