Camping with kids

Last night we took Craig’s kids camping for the first time. We went to Grime’s Creek which is near Idaho City. We had a fantastic time doing several traditional, cheesy camping activities. We threw rocks in the river, made a smoky pine needle fire, roasted marshmallows…and dropped them in the dirt, ate smores, the boys peed in the river, went for a hike, and slept semi well and semi coldly in the beautiful, quiet, peaceful wilderness. It was really fun and about 100 times more pleasant than I thought camping with the kids would be. So fun, in fact, that I’d call the weekend nearly perfect even when taking today’s emergency room trip and stitches into consideration.

Last night we took Craig’s kids camping for the first time. We went to Grime’s Creek which is near Idaho City. We had a fantastic time doing several traditional, cheesy camping activities. We threw rocks in the river, made a smoky pine needle fire, roasted marshmallows…and dropped them in the dirt, ate smores, the boys peed in the river, went for a hike, and slept semi well and semi coldly in the beautiful, quiet, peaceful wilderness. It was really fun and about 100 times more pleasant than I thought camping with the kids would be. So fun, in fact, that I’d call the weekend nearly perfect even when taking today’s emergency room trip and stitches into consideration.

Road Trip!

Sometime last year in the middle of Craig's toughest semester, we decided to plan a vacation that'd we'd take after his graduation--partially as motivation to get him through the tough moments. Several hot tub sessions, spreadsheets and weeks later, we decided that it would be really fun to take a road trip in Penny.

We planned out this fabulous trip that would take us 2500 miles from Boise, through Utah to the Grand Canyon, to LA, Las Vegas and back to Boise.

Craig spent three nights putting in a subwoofer, after all, you can't spend 49 hours in a car without mind blowing tunes. We packed everything snuggly into Penny's cabinets and drawers which was so exciting since we'd never before fully utilized her built-in storage space. Craig and were so happy with our impecible preparation. Our campsites were reserved, our daily routes were mapped and printed, our neighbor was ready to take care of our garbage, mail, house and cat, and we were stoked to get going.

We headed out on our potentially awesome (albeit ambitious) road trip. Craig--who is always the pilot--was ready for a good 8 hour stretch of driving. We got 5 miles out of town and realized that, while we'd considered the fact that we'd have to take it easy so that Penny wouldn't overheat, we didn't realize just how much hotter Penny would run in the summer (we bought her in October). We got several miles out of town and Penny's engine temperature had reached 245 (warranty is void at 250) so we pulled over into a rest stop to consider our options. We were both upset and frustrated. We pulled the engine cover off to let Penny's engine cool down and amid our frustration, Craig said--wait--just how many miles did we make it? We checked the odometer and discovered that we had made it a whopping 15.6 miles of our grand road trip. At this point, the irony was too much and we both burst out laughing.

To make a long story short, we decided that if we had to make the trip in 15 mile intervals, stopping one hour between each leg to cool down, it would take us approximately 3 weeks to get to SLC (okay, we didn't really do the math). We decided instead to fly to LA and then drive to Las Vegas. Our trip turned out fabulously, and while it was much less secluded and grass-root-esque than our originally scheduled trip, and we were, for a while ready to give Penny away to the highest...or lowest...or really ANY bidder, after talking to our mechanic and getting some new tips, we have renewed faith in her and we are ready to take another trip up to Kirkham next week.

Somewhere in the Lake Mead Recreation Area

Craig's improv version of a road trip...airport video games.

At the Las Vegas temple.

A mine we hiked to in Nevada.

Never too cold to camp...

I decided a while ago…probably mid-December when it was REALLY cold that Craig and I should go camping for his birthday (March 19th). I had it in my head that March would be so much warmer than mid-December. I was wrong. March may actually be colder than mid-December.
Anyway, we went ahead and took Penny on her maiden camping voyage of 2008 last Friday.
We went up to Kirkham Hot Springs which is, in a way, more pleasant in the cold because it is 1. not crowded and 2. the water temperature makes the trip worth it—otherwise you’d just spend all day frozen in the bus.

So, here’s the photo tour of our trip. We took the Highway 55 route on our way up which was nothing less than heavenly. When we left Boise, it was pouring rain and I was cranky, which made my husband cranky, but we recovered and managed to have a fabulous drive through the country. It is amazing how wonderful the country feels when you’ve spent the winter more or less cooped up in the city. We saw no fewer than 200 elk and deer (including bull deer—I think that is what the boy deer are called—I’m a bit of a wildlife doofus). Here are a couple of photos that we took on the way up.





When we got to the hot springs, we found a place to park and went straight down to the water. It was snowing a little when we got there which turned out to be a very interesting combination of hot and cold. Here’s a picture of the hot springs…someone else’s picture, but it gets the point across.

Here we are upon getting back to Penny after our first trip down to the hot springs.

I always get incredibly nervous about getting CO poisoning. Craig has to spend half of every trip trying to convince me that if we crack the windows we will be fine and that since Penny was built with a propane stove, it isn’t deathly dangerous to use the stove. Despite all of his persuading, he finally caved and bought me a CO detector which we set up in Penny so then I spent the evening trying to convince Craig that the CO detector was broken because it wasn’t detecting dangerously high levels of CO. At this point you can understand why he might have been mildly frustrated with me…
Anyway, we watched some South Park and went to sleep in our 15 degree bags with a comforter on top and slept quite comfortably (aside from my feet which are ALWAYS cold).
When we woke up in the morning, there was 3” of snow on the ground. Here's a couple of photos after the snow on the ground had mostly melted.

We had planned to stay until after dinner on Saturday, but we decided that all of the people who had told us that we were crazy for going camping in March were right and we decided to hop in the hot springs one more time, eat breakfast and head home.

We had a very exciting discovery on the way down to the hot springs. I saw a little creature flit by and Craig said—what was that?! I said—oh, probably just a snow covered chipmunk. He had run under a rock and then as we were passing by, he darted back out a couple of times and we named this adorable animal “merret” because we thought he looked like a tiny white ferret with a mouse head. It turns out that what we had seen was an ermine, which neither of us had ever seen before. It was fun.

When we got down to the hot springs, we found a bunch of garbage had been left by the kids whose headlights we had seen late the night before. The beer cans and glow sticks were tolerable. The empty bottle of Jager was terrifying (knowing that they had probably made the two hour drive to Boise after downing it) but the thing that pisses me off more than everything but the wind are cigarette butts. I don’t care that people smoke, but it drives me nuts that they leave their garbage everywhere and throw burning cigarettes out the window at bikers who get their legs burned by their carelessness. Anyway…dismounting soap box… We felt rewarded by cleaning up the mess because we also found a Mag-lite that was left behind. Score!! You can never have enough Mag-lites.

We made breakfast burritos and then heated some water up for my frozen feet (my husband is so sweet), cleaned up and headed home. We decided to take the Idaho City route back to Boise, which, as it turned out was nothing but snow and ice. Here’s a picture.

All in all, we had a great time and yeah, maybe we were crazy, but at least when my co-workers asked me what I did over the weekend, I didn’t have to say “nothing”.

Dimes Nickels and Quarters...

It has been brought to my attention that I didn’t do a sufficient job of explaining where Penny got her name. Okay, seriously, it isn’t that hard. What color is Penny? Copper. Copper…Penny…Copper…Penny. PENNYS ARE COPPER COLORED!

Additionally, we became friends with a doe on a backpacking trip last year that Craig named Penny. For some reason the name carried over as being a cute name for a car.

Well, I haven’t made ANY progress on the curtains; as we went snowboarding in Sun Valley last weekend and then we bought a cat (see my blog for additional details). Speaking of our trip to Sun Valley—Penny was a super star. She maxed out at 76 MPH. This was the fastest we’ve ever driven her. So what if it we were going downhill with a tailwind—it still counts!

The curtain fabric will at least be unfolded and measured before Monday! (Somehow saying that on the internet for the world to hear makes it seem like more of a possibility!)

Purists vs. Functionalists

Most VW enthusiasts know that there are two schools of thought when fixing/repairing your VW. Craig and I fortunately subscribe to the same school of thought; therefore avoiding the arguments that would inevitably ensue if we had opposite VW beliefs. We are functionalists, which means that when we make repairs, replacements or updates to our VWs we don’t care whether the new carpet matches the original carpet. Actually functionalists often prefer that the new carpet doesn’t match the old carpet. We want it to be the most fun, functional, and fresh carpet around which also means that we will never be able to sell one of our VWs with a $20,000 price tag advertising it as “fully refurbished with original parts”. No, ours would only sell as “fun and funky—totally customized beyond recognition”.
My point in sharing with you our views on VW customization is that I’m about to fill you in on our current Vanagon project.

THE FOLLOWING MAY NOT BE ACCEPTABLE FOR VW PURIST EYES.
THE WRITERS OF THIS BLOG HOLD NO RESPONSIBILITY FOR YOUR REACTION TO OUR NEW CURTAINS.

Oh, damn, I gave it away. Yes, last night we went out and bought new fabric for replacement curtains.
We finally decided on a dark green microfiber that has a various colored stripes stitched through it at random. It is #1 really cute and #2 entirely opaque—which means I don’t have to line the curtains—making my job of sewing the curtains SO much easier. Yea! I don’t have pictures of the fabric yet, but they will be coming next week. My goal is to get these babies done before mid March so we can go camping!

About our Girls...

First, a brief history of our VWs.
Tranny is a 1964 Samba. Craig bought her in high school, sold her when he went to college and regretted the sale for 7 years when one day his dad got a new job. Irrelevant to my story—you say? I think not. It just so happened that Craig’s dad’s new secretary pulled up to work in Tranny herself. Finally, after much coercion, the secretary (sorry I don’t know your name) sold Tranny to Craig. Yea! Craig was whole once more. You may ask—why do you call her Tranny? Well, Tranny is fickle. She has a thing for transmission problems…transmission replacements…and transmission leaks. We’ve given her two new transmissions in the last two years. (I should point out that we got royally screwed on the first one, so it hardly counts and is not Tranny’s fault. Shortly thereafter we got a new mechanic and HE ROCKS!)
Last summer we took Tranny camping—I’ll point out here that Tranny is not a Westy, a Riviera, a Campmobile or a camper of any sort. We were on our way to a backpacking site and decided to spend the night at a hot springs, so rather than breaking out the tent, we stayed in Tranny. It was awesome, but by about midnight the kinks in our necks and cramps in our legs started to sink in. By about 2AM we were coming up with plans to build a platform that we could put in Tranny that would allow us a comfortable night’s sleep. By 4 AM we had a cot system with mattress planned out and then by 7 AM we had decided to get a camper.
Enter Penny: We looked, and looked and looked on ebay, samba.com, craigslist for a camper. At first my heart was set on a bay window, but finally decided that it might be nice to have a vehicle that was happy traveling over 50mph. So, we decided a Vanagon would do the trick. We finally found Penny on the internet and decided that she was the one after discovering that our mechanic was the one who had rebuilt Penny’s engine two years prior. So, we flew to Park City and drove Penny home. Penny’s a little hottie. We didn’t realize this when we bought her, but her engine had been severely overheated. The result was that we got to buy her a new engine and our third transmission. (No, I don’t need your advice about how you should always take a car to your mechanic before you buy it. Yes, it is good advice—no, I’m not smart enough to take it!) Anyway, we love Penny and she is very happy at 65 mph.
We love having two buses in our garage. Sometimes we just stand at the door and stare at them. Our kids love them too. They have their own names for them: Big Red and Little Brown…the ironic part of these names being that Penny is much, much bigger than Tranny. If anyone out there is thinking about getting a camper—yes, they do fit in the garage. Craig and I measured our garage prior to getting Penny and determined that—no, she will not fit. We got her home and very nervously drove her right in. Home sweet home.