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.