Lake Erie

If you want to buy a brand new full sized van in the United States or Canada  you have a choice of three. In Mexico a Volkswagen model which looks confusingly similar to a Sprinter is also available. Nissan has stopped selling it’s van which leaves Ford and Ram vans alongside the Mercedes Sprinter. 

When we chose Custom Coach Creations to build our home he recommended the Ram for its square shape and more floor space thanks its vertical walls. For me the Ford fanatic after years of driving sedans into hurricanes I have up the Ford Transit dream with regrets. We tested our new home in the Ocala National Forest and were pleased.  

Front wheel drive is an innovation in North American van life with many loud detractors. I don’t really know why as I’ve driven cars with it for decades but my van can turn circles around the other brands with a 41 foot turning circle. Tight turns have saved me more than once in Mexico. The lack of drive gear in the back means the floor is lower to the ground and the lower center of gravity gives a very stable van. 

Spending time with Kip at Promasters Only has reaffirmed my choice. He has three and has driven them hundreds of thousands of miles and praises their low maintenance requirements and dependability. He found no issues with our van, not surprising he said with our “low mileage” at 52,000 miles…And he hasn’t seen some of the roads we’ve driven. Or the potholes and speed bumps we’ve hit. 

Without getting into boring van details I’ve known for two years that GANNET2 as designed by Layne makes an excellent home and I love living aboard. After spending time with an expert, and judging my terrible photos you know I was hanging off every word, I know that we have the best possible mechanical machine for our kind of journey. The drive away from Barberton on our way to Erie saw me feeling really good about our choice for a long term journey to Argentina starting in December. 

Our style of travel is not so much off roading as driving with a destination in mind. We’ve never been afraid of the road less traveled and over time I have developed a pretty good idea of what our low slung 9400 pound van can cope with but I enjoy city driving, beach camping and exploring fire roads in the woods. Four wheeling in mud sand or rocks has never been my desire and if it were I’d have a different vehicle (and most likely be traveling solo). 

We stopped, exhausted on the Ohio  Turnpike, a toll road cutting across the north of the state to Pennsylvania. Our Florida Sunpass Pro works in all 18 states where EZ-Pass is used which made our choice simple. We found a rest area unlike any other. They even have RV parking for $20 a night with full hookups, a dump station and drinking water. 

We parked in the car area and discovered free hot showers and first rate laundry machines to do our wash for three bucks. No one else was in the “Truckers Lounge” area, rather forbiddingly named! We asked a trucker if it was open to car drivers and he laughed and said “Of course!” so we dived right in. We brought dinner, teriyaki chicken on noodles at a restaurant in Akron so we went to bed with chores in hand. It’s a funny part of living on the road, the freedom yes but only juxtaposed with the need to manage your time and get manual jobs done. 

I carried our toilet tank to the dump and then hand filled our water tank with our buckets and siphon. Easy in and easy out! All that fuss about hygiene to suppress Covid comes naturally when you don’t have a utility company to take care of your life for you. Van life requires a lot of attention to details in between the You Tube sunsets and diaphanous nymphs going surfing. We got our details taken care of before we set off for Erie, the city on the lake. 

We were last in Erie around 2001 walking in the beach with Emma who came before Cheyenne and had traveled with us on the boat from California. It was a cold stormy winter day and we moved on. This time was different. 

Erie in September is a pretty town with an abundance of green trees and thick lawns. The city was bursting with activity on a Saturday afternoon, gatherings on porches, food trucks, running races, dog walkers and anglers. On the water it was the same scene of activity. I guess in a place where you can’t take outdoor weather for granted you get out when you can. 

With no ocean swells to slow you down the slightest breeze can be enough to keep your boat moving. It looked like fun actually, edging the boat through light airs in flat water. 

I was astonished to see, on a side note, a 20 foot Flicka sailboat motoring into the marina. I lived on that model of boat for a decade and sailed (and motored it) up and down California as well as the Gulf of Mexico and the Bahamas. I sold it in Ft Myers when Layne, my new wife, decided it was too small for two and we cruised a catamaran. All that went through my mind standing on the edge of Lake Erie.

And that in a way is part of the privilege of van life, being able to drop in on life in progress. I have no desire to stop and settle in any one place but it is really a pleasure to find oneself in the middle of a sunny afternoon’s activities. 

Anglers in a boat came by close to the sea wall and started chatting with the fisherman standing next to his pole. Layne overheard them chatting as the boat idled. In commiserating with the fisherman on land and his lack of luck, the boater offered he’d been out ninety miles (!) looking for fish and shared his catch with the luckless man standing on the wall. 

Then I heard a woman ask another man fishing if he owned the Plymouth glistening in the sun nearby. He allowed he was and she noted he was dressed in matching teal…It turns out he’s owned the car since he bought it when he was 15 and that means he’s owned in for 39 years. He also volunteered at top volume he’s spent $200,000 on the car and doesn’t regret a penny of it! 

When Rusty had finished walking and sniffing we sat together at a picnic table watching the afternoon unfold on the lakeshore. Layne was back aboard GANNET2 washing Montana potatoes bought at the side of the highway for our dinner of bangers and mash, to be eaten at our wild camp later in a state forest in New York. 

We drove out through the city, past the lakefront mansions, under a thick canopy of trees, on crappy torn up streets in the poorer neighborhoods with families sitting on their porches, through a bustling restaurant going downtown and past the ring of brick industrial palaces of industry. 

It was a pleasant stop but we’ve been here in the cold, leaf-free winter days and we’re glad to be moving on. We’ll be far south when that happens this year. 

Highway 5 along the Lake Erie shore ran mostly out of sight of the water and gave us a taste of the sights of rural Pennsylvania, a mostly empty roadway rising and dipping through farms and woods. 

All we got to see of the Amish was the signs warning of their slow moving presence. 

Missionary zeal is on view reducing religious belief to a bumper sticker statement. I was rather more impressed by the cheerful neighborliness I saw at the lake. 

Ride on lawnmowers on steroids. 

I really like the neat and tidy homesteads. I would be an untidy embarrassment we’re into live in such a place. 

I think many of the fields that looked like watercress to my suburban eyes was probably soybeans. 

There was no mistaking the grape vines which grow thick and hearty in this soil. I was surprised how close together they plant the vines but there were miles of grapes along the highway both sides of the stateline. 

And then we found ourselves on Highway 5 in New York. I’d like to have seen more of Pennsylvania, a state of excessive beauty which I enjoy every time I drive though. 

This trip I’m keen to see the St Lawrence one more time on our way to Vermont. 

New Beginnings

And just like that I feel out of date. “Her Britannic Majesty’s principal Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, requests and requires in the name of Her Majesty…”

All very well except that now there’s a King. There’s no European Union anymore on the new blue British passport and so it goes. The money will change, postage stamps will change and the national anthem has changed of course. Done and dusted. A reminder that nothing lasts, not even a 96 year old Queen. The Elizabethan era into which I was born is gone. 

I’m hoping two year old GANNET2 lasts a bit longer.  We dropped the van off at the suitably named “Promasters Only” for some upgrades and a general mechanical check.

At first sight I wondered if we would fit inside so as we waited for the shop to open I got the tape measure out. It showed about 9’8” and I was pretty sure we’d have two inches to spare. We need 9’6” (2.90 meters) to clear the top of the air conditioner. 

And so it was. 

Kip Amore has been a voice of mechanical reason online where the Promaster Owners Forum is filled with angry negative voices tearing down the front wheel drive van. 

When he opened a shop earlier this year repairing only Promasters (the hint is in the name),I got in touch and made an appointment for 9am on Thursday. We were there at 7:45 so Rusty and I went for a walk to get acquainted with Barberton. Kip is a funny guy but very sensible when it comes to these vans. 

He used them to make expedited parcel deliveries, a service that has come into existence after I was driving full sized trucks around the San Francisco area in the 1990s. His oldest Promaster has 760,000 miles on it driven hither and yon making deliveries. That gives me a goal! 

Kip has a sense of humor and a philosophy that appeals to me. Talking to him I felt very reassured about my choice of house on wheels. He is a big fan of the durability and simplicity of Promasters which he points out use mechanical parts found in Jeeps and Dodge minivans since 2007. They are easy to work on and I live in hope that if we need help on the road in South America we will find it. Oddly enough Jeep and Dodge dealers are everywhere. An engine hanging out in the shop:

Kip is checking the van out from front to back and is installing a couple of upgrades, a metal oil cooler to replace the plastic factory part that can leak. Apparently he has only one and saved it for me. More are supposed to be delivered soon…

His able assistant Lincoln got to work taking off the wheels to replace the sealed factory universal joints with new after market parts that are tough enough to last forever but only if I grease them regularly and frequently. They will need regular lubrication with a grease gun so I imagine that will be my job groveling under the van every 5,000 miles when we change the oil.

Rusty managed to impress everyone with his laidback outlook. “One chill dog.”  I pointed out if we die in this South American endeavor there are many people lined up to look after Rusty. He’s not going back on the street. 

Prior Proper Planning Prevents Piss Poor Performance according to the US military and it’s an adage I have tried to live by. As Kip put it if you’ve done everything you can to prepare and if you’ve kept up with the maintenance and something still goes wrong - and it will!- you can at least reassure yourself you did everything you could. 

The journey from here to Tierra Del Fuego goes through Key West and back to Mexico on our way south. I will travel reassured that GANNET2 with 52,000 miles on the clock will be ready for a fresh start on the road.  

A new beginning indeed. 

Harvest Village

I am missing Michigan. Ohio has its own forests, miles of neatly farmed  fields, tight farmhouse complexes tucked into isolated copses connected by the usual crappy frost heaved roads. Michigan is all that and more of it, deeper valleys and bigger hills and more appalling potholes.

Two years ago we came across a small farm on the Harvest Host program and we remembered the quiet under a starlit night sky followed by a superb breakfast brought to our van. They still do that. 

The farm is still there as is the breakfast. They sell the meat they raise as well. We don’t eat meat all the time but we aren’t vegetarians. I am not a fan of factory farming -who is?- and I’m fine with paying more for meat raised humanely and in nature. Not everyone can or even cares about the old fashioned way to raise farm animals. Dan Cool said to me that his pigs have only one bad day in their lives. He had to yell at them repeatedly to come out and get their dinner. 

They were napping in the bushes out of sight but eventually we heard grunting in the darkness under the trees shading their field and out they came ready to stick their snouts in the trough. 

Dan told us his first batch of pigs were pink skinned and got sunburned living outdoors. Now he raises more expensive dark skinned pigs. They live outdoors and they live it, only using their shelter to escape the rain. Usually they are sent to the butcher before winter but he says they have enough fat to be comfortable even in cold weather. A little straw and they pile under cover when it’s cold out. And they are smart. Sometimes they do something stupid he said with a laugh and then he had to remind himself they are just six months old. They’d be puppies if they were dogs. 

It was getting dark and time to bring in the sheep. And Dan has a couple of sheep dogs. 

Rusty was locked up safe in the van so the sheep could be herded to the barn for the night safe from real predators:

Happy animals mean better meat and happy animals mean more relaxed humans looking after them. Dan is proud of his husbandry. 

Dan and Arlene have traveled abroad as missionaries but they came home to join his seven siblings  who farm here. He has ten acres of his own and shares 80 more with his family. They cut wood and heat their water and their home with a remote boiler. Twice a day Dan or Arlene come out to check and feed the animals and throw some wood on the fire and they live through the winter with no heating hills. It’s not a bad life. 

I’m retired and not into chores but park your RV and you have a place to walk the dog or read the book of listen to the sounds of dinner fading into Autumn. 

They sell jams and stuff in the gift shop. They have a bed and breakfast apartment. They live on a dirt road near LeRoy Michigan. 

I can’t wait to come back.