Family First
We arrived back in the States and to Kerri’s parents’ place in California, where Marcel was awaiting our return since we left him wrapped up like a burrito back in January. It felt good to see the towering beast sitting there in the woods, just outside the window of our room. We pretty much slept the first day thanks to the long airport and flight from New Zealand, but on day two of our return I got straight into preparing Marcel for our departure. When asked I told Kerri it would take about a week. She looked at me and said, “No way will you get it done that fast.”
Marcel awaits
With the cover removed I got straight to repairing a few mechanical things—new alternator and transmission filter/fluid—while Kerri cleaned and packed the interior. Easy enough projects, as most things are on an old Ford. The only thing making the work difficult was that someone on the plane gave me my second head-cold in a month, which I passed on to Kerri just a few days later. Nonetheless, things progressed each day.
Of course, and as we expected, Marcel had some visitors over while we were away: mice. There is no solution to this problem—we’ve tried them all—so we just accept it and try to minimize the damage as best we can. Call it good planning (or forgetfulness) we’d left a roll of toilet paper in Marcel, which the mice tore into to construct their mansions. Good because they had easy access to a material other than the van’s wiring and hoses. Bad because we may as well have put out a sign welcoming them. The first mouse-mansion was found in the silverware drawer (ew), with more found in the closet and under the dash over the following days. Oddly enough, none seemed to have been used. All were perfectly clean—very unlike a mouse.
Mouse mansion #1
We would find out later the reason why. One mouse fell into an open bottle and met its slow and lonely demise inside, unable to climb back out. Another we found inside one of our water jerry-cans, meeting the same fate as the first although in a larger coffin. We inadvertently left out the best mouse-traps known to mankind: an open container. The bottle was easy enough to toss, but those jerry-cans are expensive. But, there’s no way to clean the can out enough—even with fire—to put it back into service as a drinking water container. No way.
On our seventh day back in the states—exactly one week, just as I’d promised Kerri—we had Marcel packed and we were waving goodbye to the parents. We were on our way. With the temperatures in the foothills in the 80s and 90s below in the valley, we chose to make a run straight to the coast to escape the heat. Two hours of driving later and just north of the Golden Gate Bridge is a long-time friend of Kerri’s who we hadn’t seen for some years. The two went out for lunch to catch up while I napped in Marcel (still fighting the cold). Another hour of driving put us on Highway 1 and into the cool temps of the Pacific coastline.
Our first night back in Marcel was spent on the side of a back road. The wind was blasting, but wind doesn’t matter to us anymore. Marcel stays exactly where we parked him no matter the wind, unlike Meriwether. No concerns of dragging anchor, crashing into other boats, nothing. Just good solid sleep.
The following morning we were driving another two hours, back inland a bit, to the Clear Lake area. There, my oldest brother lives, so we picked up a pizza to have another quick lunch visit before turning Marcel right back towards the Pacific to get out of the heat.
Once on Highway 1 the temperatures were perfect, so it just came down to finding a secluded spot without the dreaded “no camping” sign so we could rest our second night away. We were successful, of course. It feels good to be back in a van again (not a vanagon).
