Fresh off our first real van-adventure of 2026, we continued north up Highway 101. We still had one more family member to visit on our route up to Washington State, but in between was nothing but weeks of coastline and dirt roads—or at least that was the plan. The small...
We returned from our New Zealand sailing adventures and got straight to work rebuilding our new [to us] van. The original plan was to rebuild only a few small things and get to our land-travels ASAP, but as usual plans change. The change happened because on day-1 I came to...
It took another full week, and weekend, for the issue with Big Blue to finally get resolved. That makes three full weeks we lived in an AAMCO parking lot in the greater Las Vegas area which included Xmas, new years, and our five year anniversary. Before anything I say about...
UPS, with the utmost wisdom, instead of shipping directly from Los Angeles to Las Vegas, rerouted our parts up to Sacramento, Reno, and finally to Las Vegas – all to avoid a single pass being closed for a few hours last Friday. They were further delayed by the New Year...
Well, we got Big Blue to the nearest AAMCO after the long, slow, journey to Henderson, NV (suburb of Vegas) on the back of a UHaul truck. This was the only AAMCO in the Vegas area that would be able to look at our problem within the week, but still...
Leaving our week long boondocking location in the Mojave National Preserve, we were looking forward to a short hike during the warmth of the day followed by revisiting another location that we stayed a night at in the past. We met back up with the asphalt and turned to continue...
A noise emanating from under Big Blue has been growing worse since leaving Washington. Once we arrived in the greater San Francisco Bay Area (San Rafael to be exact) it moved past the “hmmm” stage and well into the “oh shit” stage of noises. I was sure it was the...
After the Cliff Dwellings, Kerri and I decided to pamper ourselves by returning to Faywood Hot Springs. It is here we spent the entire work week with daily after-work dips in the springs. Ah the luxuries of having a readily available toilet… and a hot bath each night. All things...
The last time I was in this area, this road wasn’t paved. I was surprised to see what was once a long and washboard dirt road was now smooth asphalt. I was wondering why they would pave such a nondescript road, well outside the city proper when I saw the...
We have been lingering near Astoria because Kerri had a hair appointment on Saturday morning. It also gave me the opportunity to offload our just-replaced stove/oven. Saturday officially marks Big Blue’s return to oven-less-ness – back to just a two burner stove. After a few hours of waiting around in...
