Van History – The History of My Life
Historically speaking, my Ford Econoline conversion van holds a lot of the history of my life for the last twenty years. I’m not really a car person, but I feel a strong attachment for this good old van.
Purchased new when our old Chevy conversion van died, we didn’t have a lot of options from which to choose. We were only a month away from leaving on a long vacation road trip to the West Coast. A new auto had to contain the power to tow our old 24-foot Coachman trailer over the Rockies and the Sierra Nevada mountains. The only vehicle that met all our needs, this brand-new Econoline practically drove itself into our garage.
Van History – To California and Back
Its first big road trip, it drove us dependably through Colorado, Utah, Nevada, Arizona, and into California. The TV ensured that the kids didn’t have to miss watching “1776” on the 4th of July! The lovely window shades turned it into a dressing room at the beaches we visited. It carried us to the Grand Canyon, Legoland, Disneyland, Hollywood, and then up into the mountains to Sequoia, Kings Canyon, and Yosemite National Parks.
When we turned towards home, we encountered road work in Nevada that stripped the road down to rocks. The van survived okay, but the camper took it badly. My hubby had repairs to do when we made it home after our three week odyssey.
Van History – The Daily Grind
That same year, the Econoline towed Boy Scout camping supplies on weekends and for summer camp. We made the first of many road trips through the Sandhills to church camp in Burwell with a load of youngsters. It carried teens and equipment on mission trips. Some kids gave it a name – The Furmanator. It dropped off and picked up kids at school each day, one year from three different schools. Then it squired them to music lessons, scouts, and practices.
Van History – Canada and the Northeast
Our second year with the van, it took us to the East Coast, through Ontario, Quebec, Maine, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, Vermont, and New York. We soaked up the Revolutionary War vibrations, visited with Pilgrims, and met literary lions. Again, the Furmanator became our beach dressing room. Tight rotaries while towing a camper provided challenges, as did the traffic signs in French. We made last stops at Niagara Falls and at Chicago to see the dinosaur named Sue and a Star Wars exhibit before heading for home. The camper bore more battle scars, and we sold it.
Van History – The Southeast and Gulf Coast
The next year the Furmanator carried just us to the Southeast and the Gulf Coast. Without the camper, we crammed everything into the van – suitcases, pillows, entertainment, food for picnics and snacks. Our three kids were about their maximum height by this point, and they appreciated the foot room. We said “Hi” to Elvis in Memphis (he answered “Thank you very much.”). And we paid our respects to Martin Luther King, Jr. in Atlanta. Revolutionary War battlegrounds beckoned in South Carolina. We hiked in Great Smoky Mountains National Park, explored Mammoth Cave National Park, swam in the Gulf on the beach in Mississippi, listened to jazz in New Orleans, and searched the swamps in Louisiana.
Van History – Lewis and Clark
We asked a lot of the Furmanator the following summer, treading in the footsteps of Lewis and Clark, starting in Omaha and ending up on the coast in Washington and Oregon. We didn’t ask the van to drive in the Missouri or Columbia Rivers, but many miles of barely existing roads lay behind us by the end of that trip. As our kids said, “Lewis and Clark took the long way and they were lost a lot.”
We heard elk bugling near our camp in Lemhi Pass where we gazed at the Bitterroot Mountains with an apprehension similar to Lewis and Clark. Would the Furmanator and our borrowed pop-up camper make it down the one-lane dirt road and back up the next mountain? Our horsepower wasn’t as edible as theirs was, nor did we have to resort to eating tallow candles. And luckily, we had a large gas tank that saw us through to the next available sign of civilization.
Van History – All Over the Middle
In later years we wandered around Texas, played in Colorado, explored New Mexico, took a number of trips to Yellowstone and the Grand Tetons, had some fun in the Black Hills, camped in Glacier National Park, went to the Grand Canyon and Mesa Verde, and traveled to the East Coast to visit our 49th state, Delaware. Sometimes we stayed in motels, sometimes we camped in a tent, sometimes we camped in the Furmanator.
Van History – Woe Is Me
The Furmanator acted a little more persnickety. The radiator sprang a leak in Rapid City. Wheel bearings (that supposedly had been repacked before we left) fried and stranded us at Four Corners. Literally the middle of nowhere. The alternator faded in New Jersey. Over-heated wheel bearings or brake parts blew up a front tire in Yellowstone and then again in Douglas, Wyoming on the same trip (after being repaired).
We learned a few things through all this:
- Some repair places aren’t worth spit!
- We don’t know how to tell the difference between repairs and prep done well and those bound to fail.
- It’s kind of fun to ride inside the Furmanator on top of a tow truck trailer.
- It’s not so much fun to ride inside a tow truck.
- Cell phones are a marvelous invention.
- Maybe it’s about time to go vehicle shopping.
When my husband retired at the end of 2017, we were forced to think about what that meant. The one thing we knew we wanted was to keep on traveling. And once we decided that we wanted a camper again, we knew that meant a new towing vehicle. An almost twenty year old van with over 216,000 miles isn’t up to that job anymore.
Van History – Family History
Silly and sentimental, but I can’t say goodbye to the Furmanator without a few tears. I watched my children grow from elementary school through high school in that vehicle. We packed all their belongings to different college campuses and back again in that van. We moved them into apartments and ferried wedding presents in the big green Econoline. Last year we took our one-year-old granddaughter on her first vacation to Yellowstone in the Furmanator.
Family and friends. Memories made together. Some great, some not so great. Here’s hoping the history made in our new vehicle will be as interesting and sweet as the history we made with the Furmanator.
The Great Alone
