Cousin AdVANture!

As we drove down the coast, we met my cousins Jay and George, and Jay's wife Morgan, in the pretty little city of Eugene for an adVANture! Jay and Morgan have just recently purchased a built-up E350, with a 4x4 conversion by Quigley (no, not the Tom Selick Quigley, the motor company Quigley). Their rig is pretty cool, and all the hard parts (slamming an F350's suspension and driveline under an E350) were already done, but all the fun bits like customizing the interior are awaiting their hard work and design.

We headed out on the Coos Bay Wagon Road, a mostly paved, sometimes forested, and often steep road from Eugene to the coast. We had a great time, and Little Foot only broke down once!

My excitement about the chance to have our photo taken going through a covered bridge caused me to stall out Little Foot, and upon trying to restart him, he wouldn't fire. I had a sneaking suspicion the spark plugs needed to be replaced, and THANK GOD we had picked up a spare set the day before. After trying a few normal and easy fixes, like letting the engine breathe, starting with and without choke, and feathering the throttle, I decided to rule bad spark out of the equation by performing some roadside maintenance. New plugs, gapped to 32/1000 of an inch had Little Foot back up and running. For those wondering, Little Foot has an aftermarket solid state ignition manufactured by our friends at PinzSSI.com.

Tuttle cousins and some handsome rigs. Notice the size comparison between LittleFoot and a E350. The bodies are nearly the same length.

We set up camp in the rain, but had a great time under Jay and Morgan's excellent tarp. We made a fire, had some dinner, and generally carried on. It was a great adVANture!

Luckily all five of us hold honorary master's degrees in "Tarp-ology", so setting up the shelter was a breeze. Notice the crucial ladder.

Roseburg: Reorganization, Solar Power, and Shower Version 1.0

In Roseburg we stayed with Chelsea's fantastic Uncle Paul and Aunt Debbie. They opened up their driveway, home, and workshop to us for a few days, and man we needed it. Chels tore all our storage stuff out of Little Foot for a reorganization and pairing down of gear. We sent away a pair of skis to my brother, sent a box to storage with the rest of our moth-balled gear, and reorganized everything else.

Also, I spent some time finally wiring up our solar components, and fully charging our batteries. We also built what would turn out to be a leaky solar shower. We hadn't planned on failing, but we learned that you need to use big, full strength PVC instead of the lightweight irrigation tubing we used. Because we failed, we'll do a full post on our final product in the future, but there's some shots of me drilling holes and such below.

We can't thank Paul and Debbie enough for taking us into their home for a few days. Everyone out there who has helped and hosted us, thank you SO much, especially for the use of your bathrooms! Showers are like gold to us.

Our solar shower (version 1.0, super leaky!) was constructed from 4" PVC irrigation tubing , two caps, and a T-joint with a screw on inspection cover we use as a fill port. We included a tire tube valve to pressurize the chamber and a radiator drain plug to allow for the water gravity feed without air locking. Like I said, we'll do a whole breakdown in the future with version 2.0.

The solar power also got wired together, finally, and is charging our house batteries and powering our Whynter Fridge as I type. Pretty cool!

Installing valves into the screw cap on the T-joint.

Finishing Out the Oregon Coast

Oregon took a while, in real life and in Blog updates! We're going to try to cram together some weeks of travel in the next updates. The end of Oregon was punctuated by AMAZING coastal views. We spent some time wandering around beaches, impersonating statues in seaside hamlets, and hiking up a forested trail to a coastal peak. Long story short, visit Oregon. There are too many adventures to be had in a single lifetime just inside this great state.

We found some statues. I had to impersonate them. For more BAD performance art, see our Rusty Does Arches blog post!

The beaches are outstanding. Check out the driftwood! It collects and naturally barricades the exit from the stairs in this photo. Pretty cool.

Me at the peak of Humbug, doing my Peter Pan stance.

The light coming through the trees was AMAZING.

Chelsea looking a bit disheveled after nearly slipping and falling down some mud.

Chelsea got her big camera out of the drawer this past week and it shows. The following post contains some great images in the latter half. We both mostly shoot on our iPhone 6+ cameras, partially because they are always on us and partially because they produce above average content, but when Chels brings out the DSLR, it shows.

Portland was fun. We saw some of Chels's old friends, visited the previous owner of Little Foot, and slept on the streets with the homeless van-dwelling population of the city. More importantly though, we went to Ikea and Chelsea finally got the mattress she's been dreaming of for an entire year. (That's right, we've been sleeping on sleeping pads since we did the build out on Stubbs the bus!)

Everyone in the city was friendly, homeless included, and while driving around city streets is stressful in any vehicle, it's that much more in a 34 year old military surplus van that likes to start in 2nd on the flats but needs to start in a non-synchorized crawler gear on hills.

Toby, the previous owner of Little Foot, welcomed us back and assessed our work. He also offered us MUCH needed showers and a fantastic breakfast. On our way out, he also surprised us by hooking us up with a an expert european car mechanic who tuned our carburetors quickly, pointed out some things we needed to fix, and told us we've got the right idea about hitting the road and escaping.

A shot of Little Foot adorning the on-street parking outside his old home.

Little Foot joined the ranks of the car/rv-dwelling homeless for a few nights on the Portland streets.

Powell's Book store…always a favorite, but Portland's 90 minute parking limit meant we had to browse quick!!!

Brady, a wonderful mechanic in Portland that the previous owner of Little Foot put us in touch with to check out our carbs.

After leaving the city we headed towards the coast for beauty, and stopped along the way for cheese. Tillamook, OR is like a gateway city to the coast, and also home to the world famous Tillamook Cheese Factory. We had to check out the cheesy automation, factory lines, and of course the cheese samples. It was fantastic.

Another glorious campsite, this time in a State Forest.

After the cheese, we started driving down the coast, making many stops along the way. Chels had us stop at a beach she'd been to on her previous trip up the coast four years ago that had a cool tunnel through one of the sea cliffs.

Little Foot posing by the Pacific, no big deal.

There were a million places to pull over, and we pulled over at many of them. We couldn't not play by the beach a little. The Oregon coast has a power you can feel from hundreds of feet above the shore as you drive on highway 101, and when you're down on the water's edge that power becomes incredibly apparent in an immediate sense. The waves are large, and the signs warning of playing near the edge of cliffs are certainly necessary. Explore wisely.

The wave action, both crashing in and draining out, was phenomenal.

Me playing like Mickey in Fantasia's Sorcerer's Apprentice. — Me playing like Mickey in Fantasia's *Sorcerer's Apprentice*.

We found a deserted campground up a forest road that night, and settled in. Loulou got to explore the forrest floor, Chelsea had some fun with crosswords, and I tried to split and set fire to REALLY wet wood. Everyone was successful, except for myself.

One of our best free campsites to date…thanks to some intel from a National Forest Ranger.

We went for an amazing walk the next day, through some very-near rain forest and right down to a deserted beach. The walk, which was short, really illustrated the craziness the Oregon coasts' ecosystem. One moment in a lush rhododendron forest, and the next moment walking on sandy shores.