Our Next Adventure, Planning Edition

To the faithful who still follow our currently boring blog; I say Greetings!

To the new readers who have just stumbled here from the vast depths of the internet; Welcome to the great intermission between adventures.

It has been several months since we sold Chuck, it was sad to see him go, but we must continue; spurred ever onward by the relentless and dogged flow of time.

NEWS!

We have found Chuck's replacement!  The as-of-yet unnamed van is a 2004 Dodge Sprinter, here are the vitals.

Origin: Manufactured by Mercedes-Benz in Germany in late 2003

Drivetrain: 2.7L Inline-5 CDI (Common Rail Direct Injected) Turbo-Diesel | 154HP and 243lb-ft |  ULSD and LSD fuels | 5-speed automatic transmission

Body: Arctic White | 140" wheelbase | super high roof (72" interior hegiht) | 5 doors

Equipment: Base Cargo | A/C | Manual locks and windows | 2 seats | rubber and plywood floors

Condition: Good | 105,000 miles | fleet maintained | a few dents and scratches

We flew to Orlando Florida to pick it up and drove back to Tulsa over 2 days.  Besides some comfort issues the trip was uneventful (except for a bit of drama at the outset).

When we were first inspecting the van, I noticed that the turbo resonator was completely split!  This is a common failure point which results in low power and/or limp home mode (LHM).  Thankfully I had a roll of duct tape and the 2 tools required to change this part.

After applying a copious amount of 3M industrial duck-tape the van was mobile once more.

The resonator as we found it.

Some dirty hands for scale.

3M High Temp adhesive tape (great stuff!).

A really hot abandoned Florida parking lot.

We then proceeded to drive the van to a Freightliner dealer who had the part in stock!

mmmmmm fresh....

Then it was off to Walmart for a open space to park and swap.  Two bolts, a box of baby wipes, a well burned back and several clamps later, we were ready to roll!  Only a couple hours later than desired.  Not a bad delay all things considered.

Did I mention hot parking lots?

And we're off!

The rest of the drive was about 21 hours of uneventful-ness.  Although figuring out the climate control system was a bit of a challenge.  Something about European cars maybe?

We have been daily driving this van for several weeks now, and no issues to report (except really cold A/C). The plan as it sits, is to finish up some maintenance items, and a few minor fixes.  Then we will set upon doing upgrades.  Air suspension seats, cruise control, and power locks are at the top of the list.

Then, let the up-fitting commence!  Just thinking about the epic pile of hardware we will need is making me drool...  The final product will be something like Chuck, but so much more.  Giving a couple of engineers a blank slate, is a very bad idea (especially for the budget).  I hope to keep a somewhat detailed log of our build out progress.  The conversion clock is ticking, with approximately 18 months to completion, its going to be tight.

Until next time; make your plans big and keep your ideas grand.

Steph & Joe's Short Enterprise

Hello, my name is Joe and together with my lovely wife, Stephanie, we embarked on our first an adventure with Chuck.  Jon and Jen loaned us Chuck in March 2014 for a week long excursion of our choice.  This is our contribution to the life of Chuck.

The Grand Canyon was the chosen destination- being a mere 20 hours away, this would be perfect for seeing new sights and curing my hunger for adventure (in retrospect, this trip made it worse).
Driving in a home on wheels is great, it gives you the freedom to live life at your own pace, savoring beautiful moments as they come. 

Planning this trip was pretty exciting, I spent most of my free time during school planning, and discovering the awesomeness of BLM land and free camp spots. Below was the break down of the trip, plan would be travel there in 3 days. Stopping and camping in Palo Duro Canyon park in TX, El Malpais National Monument in NM, driving through the Petrified Forest in AZ, and finally arriving at the Grand Canyon. 

Scroll on for photos...

Our first morning waking up in the wilderness...
 Destination B had no vacancy. 

Checking out point C: The Arch in El Malpais National Monument.

Driving Through The Petrified Forest: The view from Chuck is excellent.

We made it! ... 4 days later
 

My wife was excited, you can tell by this specific expression.

The hike is easy going down

Going up... well, we got lazy fast

Cell phone photo seemed sufficient to capture the canyon

Only way to experience it, is to be there

So here's to Chuck, he was a great van and won't be forgotten! We're hoping his new owner is enjoying him as much as we did. 

A big thank you to the Luths for letting us borrow Chuck. We've been inspired to spend a couple years traveling in the future. 

Into the Sunset

Chuck is gone.  Here it is, no easy way to say it.  Lots of memories and thousands of hours gone into the setting sun.  Hopefully we will meet again.

Exactly 7 days and 1 hour ago Chuck was taken by his new owner.  Left for warmer shores (So-Cal Bound!)


Alex, the founder of Genasun flew into Tulsa to pick up Chuck and head for southern California.  He promised to take Chuck camping in the mountains and keep his oil topped off, its the best a van can ask for.


Its bittersweet, but we are looking forward to our next adventure.  The search for the next van is on in earnest now.  No van could truly replace Chuck, but eventually, just maybe, we can find another 4 wheels to call home.  Our schedule is pretty tight, we have about 8 weeks to acquire our next ride, and to begin the long conversion process.  I will be posting build details to this blog as they develop.  This promises to be an epic undertaking, the complete Up-Fitting of an quasi-expedition vehicle.  Look forward to it!


Until next we meet upon the paths that wrap this earth, farewell good Chuck.

“Benedicto: May your trails be crooked, winding, lonesome, dangerous, leading to the most amazing view. May your mountains rise into and above the clouds..."

― Edward Abbey

Chuck's First Road Trip

The Time of Parting

The time has come. After 60,000 miles, countless border crossings, and 5 tires; today I posted Chuck's for sale ad.  I will miss him, but C'est la vie.  Within 4 hours I had a buyer call, after some discussion he decided to pass on Chuck.  His final comment was that I should have a higher asking price!  Something about Volkswagen vehicles inspires loyalty in their owners.  

Why are we selling Chuck?  That subject is going to need its own post.  It has nothing to do with Chuck's road-worthiness.  Instead our needs have changed, don't worry, we haven't yet given up the vagabond dream.  Road-Trip 4 Life!

On the off chance that Chuck's next owner is reading this, the ad is listed below.
TheSamba Ad

For those of you wanting a few parting van shots, here is Chuck all cleaned up and out, ready for his next adventure.

If you are feeling a bit nostalgic here are a few posts to remind you of Chucks long journey. 

Transmission Mission

Exhaust Madness

One Thing After Another

The Casualty List

We are designing our next home on wheels currently.  (it has yet to be named or procured)  We hope to have a vehicle sometime mid summer, and to start the long planning and conversion process.  If may be a long stretch between posts, so if you haven't, I would suggest following us by email.  Thanks again for reading and following us.  Our goal has always been to inspire others to achieve there goals, and to think outside the box.  

The Long Intermission

Well, it seems our travels have come to a pause.   It will be some time before we can once more take Chuck on an Epic Road-trip.  Jen and I have started working again, and will be doing so for the foreseeable future.  For one last hurrah some friends of ours have borrowed Chuck for a spring break road-trip.  They have assented to writing a guest post.  So look forward to it!

If you noticed the font issues, some change at blogger has altered the way fonts render.  I will be remedying that in the near future.

We have some big plans for the next couple years, and we will be posting them over the next few months.

Until then, peace out!

Short Stop at Seosan

Re: 2013/11/2-11/4

We flew from Jeju to Gimpo International Airport in Seoul. The next plan was to catch the bus to Seosan, Steven’s town. We were going to spend the weekend with him before we took off back to the US. We looked for the bus to Seosan at the stops in front of the airport, but we didn’t spot it. So, we stopped by the information booth to ask. Although they didn’t really speak English, they were able to help us find the correct bus. When the bus showed up, though, it was completely full. There were only 2 seats available, and we weren’t in the front of the line. It would be another hour and a half before the next bus, so we decided to go to the Nambu bus terminal, despite warnings from Steven. We actually didn’t find it to be too bad, and the bus was departing nearly immediately after we arrived. We rushed through the station and got on the bus. It must have been rush hour, though, as it took forever to get through the traffic and out of town. Other than that, it really wasn’t a bad drive.

It went almost directly to Seosan. At some point, it got off the main highway and stopped at a convenience store at a small town. We didn’t think this was our stop (we were expecting a bus station), but when I pulled out my offline map, it something about Seosan, and I was concerned we missed our stop. When the driver stopped for gas, I went up and asked him, and he told us we weren’t there yet. So, we went and sat back down. The next stop was in a big city, which was the Seosan for which we were looking. It stopped in a shopping district, but we didn’t get off (our previous experience told us to not get off until we were at an official station). However, as the bus took off again, it made a turn and went right through the bus station there and didn’t stop. Thinking they would stop again in town, we just stayed on. They didn’t, though. So we had to stay on until the next town and the end of the line, Taean. Once there (at a bus station, btw), we had to purchase another ticket back to Seosan. This time we got off at the shopping center, which was the front of the bus station.

They had cute manhole covers in Seosan.

Steven met us there and took us to a coffee shop to get some food. At this point, I had developed a sore on the tip of my tongue that made it difficult to talk or eat. So, we had a bread bowl of soup. Then, we went to Steven’s place. He had several friends there preparing for a Día de los Muertos party. I ended up helping to paint several people, including Steven. Then they all left to meet up with other people at a bar, then eventually go to a norae-bbahng (karaoke). Jonathan decided to join them for a bit, while I stayed at Steven’s and went to sleep. He later regretted it, mostly because there was too much smoke. It really aggravated his wind pipe, and he spoke huskily all the next day.



The next day, Jonathan and I left before anyone else was awake to get breakfast. We just grabbed a bite at the Dunkin Donuts. We wandered around a bit, then wound up back at Steven’s. Since everyone was still asleep, we just read for a while. We went for lunch next, at Pizza Hut. We got the BBQ Chicken Pizza, which was done differently than expected. They used normal pizza sauce under the cheese, then swirled the BBQ sauce over the cheese. It looked pretty. When the server left us after taking our order, she did a little jig as she walked. I interpreted it as she was excited that she figured out what the Americans wanted. Afterwards, we wandered around again and got a hotel for the night.

The menu is always interesting at American chains in other countries.

By then, Steven and May were awake and hungry. So they went out to eat and we joined them (not eating, though). We went to a park and met up with a few more people, before walking to the street where persimmon trees grew along it. We soon developed a method to catch the ripe persimmons without bruising or missing them.

At the park.

Catching persimmons. We didn’t want to bruise or drop them, hence the scarf. Plus, some of them were overripe and would explode.

After harvesting persimmons, we walked back to the hotel and Jonathan and I went shopping while Steven and May went back to his house to cut up the persimmons. I did manage to find an acceptable purse right before the shops shut down. No more off-centered, heavy, barely-hanging-on purse. Then, it was back to Steven’s to try the persimmons. Neither Jonathan nor I had eaten one before. I liked them. Kinda hard to describe, but maybe a mix between an apple (with its crispiness) and a mango or peach in flavor. Apparently there was one bad one that Jonathan managed to try. Next, it was time for dinner. This was a chicken meal, which is normally very spicy. We asked for the mild version, but it was still too spicy for me. So, afterwards, we went to a Mom’s Touch restaurant. Their chicken sandwich was spicy as well, but not nearly as much, so I could eat it. We finished the night off at a coffee shop, but by then, I was pretty tired, so we retired to our hotel.

Dinner with our new friends.

Monday morning was the day we were flying out. However, our plane would not depart until 5:50pm, giving us plenty of time to get to the airport. We were uncertain of which bus we would need to take (I saw 3 different Incheon locations with completely different time schedules). So we got dressed and packed up in the morning to see Steven off. We took all of our gear with us and left the key in the room with the door unlocked, so that we could come back or get on the bus, whichever was needed. However, the landlady saw us leave and locked up the room after we left. At the bus station, Steven pointed out the bus and its timetable to us. We decided we would take the 11:30am bus. Now, we just had 2 hours to kill. We went to a coffee shop with internet and spent time. We figured we should grab a lunch to go with us, so we went to the nearby Mom’s Touch. Unfortunately, we had all kinds of mixups with them. They misunderstood that we only wanted 1 Combo #2. And instead gave us 2. I only caught it as I started signing for the purchase. I guess that meant that they couldn’t cancel it. They tried and tried and tried. So, I asked them to give us cash and only give us one combo. But then, I thought, what would we do with the cash? We were trying to get rid of all cash. Finally, I just let them charge me for two of them and give me both. However, we were short on time by now. They worked quickly to get them to us quickly, but by they time we got to the station, there was only 1 seat left. Defeated, we bought tickets for the next bus at 1pm, which would still get us there in time.

I thought there weren’t enough pictures in this section, so here is a picture of my pretty new fan that I got in Seoul.

We went back to Mom’s Touch to eat our meal. When we opened them up, we discovered that they had put mayo on them despite the request to nix it. I took them back and they corrected the issue. By this point, I felt like it was already quite the disappointing and tiring day, but at least it went pretty well after that. We did get on the next bus and it took us directly to the airport. We made it inside. We hadn’t had a chance to print our tickets yet, so we had to stand in the very long line at the ticket counter, but we were given seats. We made it through customs without contestation. Then, at the gate, we were awarded first-class seats (not just business).

First class is especially nice, as every seat has aisle access and fully-flat beds. They even have a guest seat. Again, dinner was fantastic, with a glorious carrot soup. I managed to watch two movies before falling soundly asleep for 2 hours. Missed several meals and snacks. By the time I woke up, I didn’t even have enough time to finish watching my next movie. Oh well, that sleep helped a lot. We landed in DFW and our exotic trip to the East was over.

Jeju

Re: 2013/10/29-2013/11/2

On Tuesday we arrived in Jeju City (in Korean city is spelled as –si at the end of the name, e.g. Jeju-si) in the early afternoon. We used our transportation app (NaverMap) to figure out how to get to our hostel. For the first day, we decided to stay at B&B Pan, which had the cheapest rates we could find and was recommended by Leslie. After we finally found the entrance and were let in, we got settled in. They offered to provide us dinner, but they were already in the process of cooking, almost done actually, and I told Jonathan they might not have enough to include us. We declined, which was probably just as well, they didn’t look like they had much that we would eat.

My first impressions of Jeju-si was that it was smelly. Between the rotting, fishy smells of the ocean and the poorly-vented sewers, I was not impressed. B&B Pan was particularly smelly, even if they were friendly. For dinner, we decided to go find a restaurant. The owners of B&B Pan suggested a restaurant in the Black Pork street (Jeju-si has sections/streets where similar types of restaurants congregate. Near our hostel was Black Pork street, elsewhere there was a Noodle Street). So, we walked over. We went in, but shortly found out that they only serve pork and that you must order at least 2 servings, which was 400g (0.88 lbs). Jonathan didn’t think he would be able to consume all that, even with leftovers, so we left. After wandering around the blocks near our hostel twice, we decided on another restaurant. Jonathan got another pork cutlet, and I got a bibimbap (a rice dish with various vegetables on top). Trying to communicate with restaurant people is interesting. When your offline dictionary isn’t working, it is especially difficult to do custom orders. For example, I didn’t want egg. Apparently my Korean is just slightly off and she couldn’t understand my pronunciation of the word. Eventually, Jonathan’s phone worked, and I was able to show her the word. Later, this struggle caused me to come up with a chart for determining ingredients.

You can see the traditional Korean bibimbap rice dish in the foreground. Interestingly, in Korea, they always serve a pickled dish with your meal. PIckled radish is popular.

For our first adventure in Jeju Island (Jeju-do), we decided to check out Manjanggul Lava Tube. It is a very large cave formed by lava flows solidifying on the outside while the interior still flowed. It created many interesting geographical designs in the tunnel. We took a bus from Jeju-si city bus terminal to the bus stop nearest the cave. From there we took a taxi, but it was pretty expensive for the distance; definitely tourist extortion. The length of cave we traveled through was 1km long one-way; one of the top 10 longest lave tubes in the world, especially so accessible.

There was a formation that is considered to look similar to the shape of the island.

This flow is a result of lava flowing through a hole in an upper tunnel into the tunnel below. The height of the lower tunnel is over 20 feet here.

Afterwards we grabbed a small meal of steamed manju (dumplings). Whenever I don’t think about it much, I was getting pretty good at chopsticks.

After the cave, we went on to Seongsan-ri to find a hostel. Our first effort was unsuccessful, apparently it had been shut down for repairs. Tired, we decided to try a hotel that was on the road. It was as cheap as anything listed on the internet, so we went for it. The plan was to go to bed early and climb up Seongsan (Sunrise Peak) before sunrise to catch the view at daybreak. So early to bed and early rise. We made it up the hill in plenty of time, unfortunately, it was pretty cloudy.

The fishing ships were still out. They use bright lights to attract the fish. This practice is actually a big concern, as it is extremely effective, greatly reducing fish populations, and it produces mucho light pollution.

The view from the top.

The sun just barely peaked through the clouds for a second.

The view on the way down.

The twisty-windy high climb up the mountain.

After our early morning journey, we went back to the hotel for a nap. Then we used the bus system to return to Jeju-si. Since I couldn’t stand the smell at B&B Pan, we decided to try another location. This time we settled at Backpackers in Jeju Hostel. It smelled a lot better and was conveniently located. To finish off the day, we figured we would make a trip out to the Jeju Love Land with a possible stop at the Arboretum. We took a taxi, since it was getting late in the day.

Jeju Love Land was very entertaining. This was one of the tamest scenes.

Afterwards, we were going to take the bus, but as far as I could tell from the timetables, the bus wasn’t going to show for an hour. We didn’t want to wait, so we walked back to the Love Land parking lot and picked up a taxi to the arboretum. The arboretum was scenic.

Learning to read these was a self-teaching experience. The top row designates the stops and I had to figure out the spellings. The left-hand column is the number of times the bus runs and the times are when it stops at the locations.  The yellow-boxed number represents the bus number.

I love maples.

The next day we decided to devote to hiking Hallasan, the highest mountain in South Korea. We were told the paths on the west side of the mountain were more beautiful at this time of year. I didn’t get to compare it to the east side, but it was definitely beautiful. I found the southwest path even more beautiful than the northwest. We got a bit of a late start, but we were there before they stopped letting people go up the trail (after a specific time, they stop letting people up so they won’t be on the trails after dark). We just wanted to make sure we made it to the next bus stop before the last bus at about 4:30. But we hustled, and we made it with 5 minutes to spare before the 2nd to last bus.

The colors were beautiful by now.

This was the scene as we flattened out at the top of the trail.

You can see why weren’t allowed to go to the peak from this side of the mountain—just straight cliffs.

As we crossed over from the northwest trail to the southwest trail, the clouds started rolling in, making it difficult to see past 20 feet in front of us.

At the view of the 500 Followers of Buddha, we were just looking out into a drop-off of cloudy nothingness.

These beauties decorated the southwestern trail.

Again, the color! Just beautiful.

After that very tiring climb, we got the very last available seats on the second-to-last bus. We arrived back at our hostel. I was craving American-style pasta; and fortunately, on the way back to our hostel, we spotted a restaurant that served just that. We had tasty pasta for dinner with real parmesan. Then the next morning we caught a flight out of town with Air Busan, a budget airline.