CalExpeditions

Tag: Van Life

  • And That’s a Wrap!

    And That’s a Wrap!

    Well, all good things must come to an end and so it is with the epic road trip. Just a few factoids and random pics you’ve seen before.

    7,417 miles in 152 hours of driving at 14.2 mpg, across 15 states in 37 days. That’s about 522 gallons of diesel and nearly 30% of the way around the Earth. The mod to the van that was the purpose of the whole trip worked out great. Xena passed her first 3-hour solo AC test. The trip produced 12 blog posts with 146 images. And only 3 of the 16 stops on the original notional route actually happened; the rest of the trip was improvised.

    For the data driven among us (I’m thinking of you, Pat)

    MetricValue
    Total miles7,417
    States driven15: CA, NV, OR, ID, WY, NE, IA, IL, IN, OH, PA, NY, CT, CO, UT
    Longest day554.74 mi / 9 h 36 m (8 h 43 m moving): Offutt → Buckley, Thu Oct 15
    Top recorded speed80.8 mph (Nebraska I-80, Oct 15)
    Biggest climb in one day+5,231 ft (Omaha ~900 ft → Denver 5,600+ ft)
    Highest point~11,158 ft: Eisenhower–Johnson Tunnel on I-70 west of Denver (Oct 16), the highest point on the Interstate system
    Loneliest roadUS-50 across Nevada (Oct 18), “The Loneliest Road in America”
    Earliest wheels-up logged~06:15, Buckley SFB (Oct 16)
    Odd roadside findFAT DOGS sign: “YOU ARE NOWHERE” (North Platte, NE)

  • Coast to Coast

    Coast to Coast

    I’m off on another epic journey: Oakland to East Haven (Connecticut) to see new parts of the country and have some mods done to the van. And I got my blog working again! Technical notes for curious gear heads at the bottom; normal people can safely ignore them.

    This house is Buckland’s Station. Built in 1860, it was a remount station for the Pony Express and a general store for the soldiers at nearby Fort Churchill, Nevada.
    This curious round courthouse in Lovelock, Nevada was designed by a famous architect I had never heard of and immediately forgot.
    Atoms for Peace! I visited the first breeder reactor. It creates more fuel than it consumes, thus demonstrating that there is a perpetual motion machine!
    People were silly in the 1950s. This was an early experiment is creating a nuclear powered aircraft engine. Any wonder why it never flew?
    Spent a couple of days in Idaho Falls. It is a pleasant little town in Idaho.
    Did you know the name of”Idaho Falls” came before the waterfalls? It did and remained an aspirational statement until the waterfalls were constructed out of concrete and artfully placed boulders.
    This was my front yard for a night…Antelope Lake, Oregon.

    Xena takes a hike

    The promised technical note: When I started this blog years ago, I had no idea how to do it. Naturally, I got a great many things wrong, like hosting it at Bluehost, installing a ton of plugins I didn’t need and getting the commenting feature wrong. So, I decided to fix it all and host it on my own machine. It turned out that removing all of Bluehost’s tentacles from the site was tedious and took much longer than I anticipated. But now it is done! (I think.)

  • Great Plains? How about Plain Plains.

    My van developed a water leak, buried way back in its innards. So, since untamed water ruins everything, a repair was required. Winnebago dealers throughout the upper Midwest must be swamped with work; they are taking appointments 4, 5 and 6 months in the future. Fortunately (I guess), the dealership where I bought it was able to get me an appointment within a week! I only had to drive 1,000 miles to get there, hence the trip across the Great Plains.

    Isn’t this a idyllic little homestead, with pond and hills for a backdrop. The stream in the foreground is the Wind River, in eastern Wyoming.

    We found a lakeside pavilion for wild camping and climbing. This kind of tree makes for difficult climbing, Xena needed a little assist to make it to the top.

    This is some nice dispersed camping! So green and quiet. Except for the birds, who commented on everything nonstop.

    Tyger! Tyger! burning bright
    In the forests of the night,
    What immortal hand or eye
    Could frame thy fearful symmetry?

  • Charging up my batteries…at the Estuary

    Charging up my battery at the Oakland Estuary.

    Even the very best batteries have a “self discharge” rate, so they run down just sitting by themselves, doing nothing. For me that means that, between adventures, I have to take my truck to Aquatic Park in Oakland—just a half mile from my house—and set up my solar panel to top off my lithium battery. A couple of hours, enough time for a nap, and I’m ready to go again at a moment’s notice.