Revisiting old friends (and old camping ways!)

Six years ago, I signed up for my very first T@B Trailer camping rally unaware of the long-lasting friendships that would result.  That 2007 rally in Minden, Nebraska was a heck of a fun time, and it lead me and a fellow T@B owner, Judi, to host two of our own T@B rallies in the Midwest during the next year where we met and formed even more cherished camping friendships.

While some of us have long-since traded our T@Bs for different camping vehicles, and others have taken over the duties of planning and hosting these camping rallies, the group continues to grow and and welcome everyone who loves to share good food at a potluck or good laughs around the evening campfire.

T@Bbers enjoy the insides of their tiny campers, but enjoy spending time outside of them even more—whether it be reading a book or playing cards beneath their awning, cooking outdoors, going for a hike or a paddle, or chatting with friends around the campfire.  This group isn’t into catered dinners, guided tourbus excursions, or annual board member elections.  We’re casual, come as you are, do as you like…everyone is welcome and accepted.

But, even so, I still thought I’d better bring my T@B if I was coming to a T@B rally!

It fit in nicely with the real T@Bs at Rock Creek State Park (in central Iowa).

While I could have easily taken the View, I decided to push hard to get the Lynnebago van ready for its first campout.  Accommodations were pretty minimal, but were surprisingly comfortable (the LynnieViews blog has full details on my initial Lynnebago camping gear).  There wasn’t a whole lot from the View that I missed (other than the bathroom with hot shower!), but then again, the weather was absolutely ideal for camping—low 70’s during the day and upper 50’s at night.

It took me much longer to sort through all my camping gear and pack the van for the first time, but by 5:00pm, we were finally on the road and headed to Iowa!

I stopped to get some dinner to bring back to eat in the van and realized I had forgotten to bring a Table-Mate tray table.  But my new AC/DC cooler fridge was tall enough to serve as a handy side table when my driver’s seat was swiveled around.  The passenger seat also made a nice footstool!

We arrived to the campground just before 11pm.  Fortunately (or not), there were still some loud campers partying so my Sprinter diesel did not wake up the neighborhood. The van was easy enough to level with just one of my Tri-level ramps set beneath the rear wheel.

For my fancy electrical needs, I simply threw a long extension cord out the back door of the van and plugged it into the standard household socket on the campsite’s electric post.  On the other end of the cord inside the van, I plugged in a basic multi-outlet power strip.  Pretty simple!

Most of my stuff could run either off the AGM battery except for a ceramic heater (which I only needed to use one morning for a few minutes), and this lovely rope light that I ran around the ceiling line of the van to give the Hillbilly Hilton a more upscale look!

Outside, the next morning, I put up my new PahaQue screenroom to add another 100 square-feet of living space.  Millie considered it her new dog house and enjoyed napping in there all day long.

Once camp was set up, I took Millie down to the lake to do what she loves to do best….swim!

Our nice garden flag post from my camper friend, Judi, made a nice place to hang Millie’s water toy to dry out!

On Saturday morning, the camp rally’s host, David, wanted to take me paddling to the northern section of Rock Creek.  We had talked about doing this for a few years but I had never managed to make it to the Rock Creek rally until now.  But this time I was ready and brought my inflatable Sea Eagle in the back of the van.  I proudly got it out and ready to start pumping up when I realized I had forgotten to bring one critical element-- my paddle.  ARGH!!! 

Not to worry, though.  David ran up to the concession stand, and the the gal that runs it scoured the storage room to find one lone, neglected kayak paddle in the back.  That’ll do!  We finally got onto the water around 9 am and had a wonderful 3-hour paddle across a beaver dam and up into the far narrows of the creek seeing lots of birds, raptors, and water fowl along the way.

Back at camp, it was time to prepare for the evening potluck dinner.  Skies were threatening all afternoon, and my little Weber grill cooked my grilled veggies a bit slower than anticipated, but we managed to get the dish delivered as the first few raindrops started falling.  The rain then stopped long enough for us to all enjoy our dinner and share a few laughs.

While crowded with lots of “weekend warrior” campers, the park was delightful and relaxing, especially in the early morning for Millie’s first walk of the day.

I left the rally on Sunday to head back towards the Quad Cities to camp overnight with my good T@B friend, Judi.  On the way, I stopped to take a quick drive through the Grinnell College campus in Grinnell, IA where my grandfather had once taught back in the 1940’s and preached at their nice chapel.  What a pretty little campus!  It reminded me a lot of my alma matter, Stephens College.

We arrived to Scott County Park and found Judi waiting with her terrific little white stealthy Sportsmobile in a peaceful camping loop called Pine Grove.  We did not let a few rain drops or a few thousand buffalo gnats deter us from a fun visit.  We each took turns sitting in each other’s new van, and by evening, the rain and gnats had subsided and we were able to sit around my little LP campfire to talk the night away.

The next morning, Millie and I awoke to a magical fog that had settled into our cozy camp.

We said our goodbyes mid-morning and by the time we headed across the Mississippi river at Clinton, Iowa and back into Illinois, the sun was shining on a beautiful day.

My master naturalist class has recently been studying tall grass prairies, so I decided to stop at Nachusa Grasslands near Dixon, Illinois, a restored prairie run by The Nature Conservancy.  No “prairie dogs” allowed, so Millie had to stay in the van.

It’s still a bit early in the season for the prairie flowers to bloom of grasses to get super tall, so I hope to return later this summer to do more exploration and photography.  A lovely place, that gives one a real sense of what Illinois must have looked like before John Deere’s steel plow got a hold of it!

We meandered along the back roads all the way home (getting well over 20 mpg to boot!).  A restorative long weekend for both Lynne and Millie, and successful maiden voyage for the Lynnebago!

I bought a Lynnebago!

There’s something about the 3rd week of May that just seems to make me buy motor vehicles!  Four years ago, I bought the View, and 2 years ago this same week, I bought the Tracker.  So, true to form, earlier this month I found myself searching the internet casually looking at used Sprinter vans.  Most of them were not very tempting (heavily used and abused boring white cargo vans with 150,000 to 350,000 miles and various commercial racks/partitions in the back).   But then I saw this little green beauty with no rust, no gobs of industrial racking in the back, and only 62,000 miles on it!

The “3rd week of May” curse strikes again-- time to pull out the checkbook!

It’s a high-roof 2005 Freightliner Sprinter 2500 (meaning no dual rear wheels to fool with—yeah!).  It’s the mid-sized 140” wheelbase and comes in at 19’ feet long.  Short and narrow enough to fit into a standard parking space (but still enough floorspace in the back to make a decent camper van).

My Winnebago View Sprinter came with every possible comfort and convenience already installed.  This Sprinter came with none of that.  It’s got some reflectix insulation and carpeted plywood covering the bare floor, walls, and ceiling in the cargo area, but the rest will be completely up to me to design and build.  So, I’ve decided to name this Sprinter van my “Lynnebago”!

The van was down in the northeast Georgia mountains, so my first task was figuring out how to logistically get it home.  Luckily, it had a nice Class III hitch already installed and the dealer verified that the plug worked fine.  So, I packed my towbar and suitcase into the back of the Tracker, Millie hopped into her backseat bed, and away we went on a roadtrip down to Georgia!

The Tracker is a great in-town car and off-road vehicle, but not a comfy cruiser for a 750 mile roadtrip!  But, it did it’s job to get us to our destination safely and without any mishaps.

After a final inspection and test drive, the dealer had all the sales paperwork ready to go, so the whole purchasing process from Jacky Jones Ford in Cleveland, GA was speedy and friendly.  They, admittedly, don’t see many single ladies come down with their own towbars (and dogs), so as I started getting the ReadyBrute hooked up, the dealer guy came out to watch and learn how to attach the cables!

The first 100 miles was a bit nerve-wracking through the curvy, mountain backwoods.  I realized later that this van has an auto skid control feature (that I should have temporarily turned off) as whenever I was descending a pass and making sharp hairpin turns, the van would automatically apply it’s brakes!  Pretty disconcerting for sure, but no harm done, it was just trying to keep us safe.

As luck would have it, my world-traveller and very talented and amusing blogger friend Suzanne ( Take to the Highway) was staying at a campground just north of Knoxville, so I reserved a hotel room nearby for Millie to catch up on her missed afternoon napping, while Suzanne and I headed out for a great dinner and catch-up conversation.  Who knew there was great Thai food to be found in tourist-infested Sevierville?  But we delightfully happened to find a great little place tucked into an unassuming strip mall.

After dinner, we stopped at the campground to see Suzanne’s new full-timer RV home—a gorgeous 2008 J-model Winnebago View.  Her RV has the light maple cabinetry and also has cabinets in front (rather than the cabover bed). Combined with the 2 cab swivel seats, and custom memory foam dinette cushion and bed mattress replacements, Suzanne has one of the most comfortable (and nicely functional) Views I’ve ever seen!  So happy for her giving me the grand tour of her lovely new home!

The next morning, Millie and I hopped into the Sprinter for our drive back home to Chicago.  First unexpected bonus discovery?  No need to park and walk inside to get a morning traveler breakfast--- just pull right into the drive-thru lanes!

The Sprinter towed the Tracker easily, and managed to get a decent 18 MPG towing 65-70 miles per hour through the Kentucky hills.

Millie was not quite sure what to make of this new Sprinter, but she quickly mastered jumping into the driver’s seat whenever I got out!

And she liked the big side-door easy access to jump in and out of the van!



I set up her little padded bed right behind the 2 seats and she spent most of the drive hanging out there.  But discovering she now had a big, unobstructed space to move around in, she also had fun chillin’ in the rear back corner of the van too!



The Lynnebago is, indeed, a pretty “blank slate” at this point.  But it did come with a few unexpected benefits:  both front seats already have the swivels installed (that’s one less upgrade I’ll need to make, and a $500+ savings)!  The dash radio turned out to be a really nice-sounding Alpine stereo system with 2 Alpine speakers added to the OEM dash speakers— a great van to “sing-along” with road tunes!

The only downside discovered thus far—the existing ceiling vent (and interior ceiling paneling) is a real hack job, giving it a decidely “Hillbilly Hilton” look.

The previous owner seemed perplexed by the curved roof lines and just threw whatever scrap lumber he had to finish it off.  The ceiling vent was apparently cracked at one point and rather than simply replace it, the guy decided to duck tape the outside and paint the inside of it with some kind of black sealant goop.  I’ve now ordered a new Fantastic Fan and this will be my very first upgrade to get done! 

Since there are no current auxiliary electrical or water systems, I’ll need to remove and re-do the ceiling, wall, and floor coverings anyway, but until I’m ready to do all that, I’ll initially just connect the new fan directly to a spare AGM battery, and use my old tent camping gear to make it immediately functional as a bare-bones camper.

So, why another vehicle?  Well, a girl can never have too many Sprinters …..but seriously,with my current situation requiring lots of in-town hauling of stuff from my house and my mom’s house, replacing my in-town vehicle (a Subaru Outback) with a full-sized cargo van seemed to make a heck of a lot of sense.  My brother has been after me for a few years now to buy my Subaru (as his current Outback is getting up in miles), so that took away the trade-in hassles!

I also really want to get to Mexico next winter and would prefer to take a “stealth-ier” looking van than my big white Winnebago.  This 1st-generation T1N Sprinter doesn’t require ultra-low sulphur diesel fuel (like my 2nd-generation NCV3 View does), and as Mexico is not yet known to have wide availability of ULSD fuel, it will be much more capable a vehicle there than my View.

Beyond that, this Lynnebago has serious potential as an international vehicle!  Sprinters have been widely used in Europe and in many parts of South/Central America as well.  Perhaps I can follow my friends’ Evelyn and Tessa’s leads to RV far beyond the continental U.S. borders!  Lots of possibilities for this little green Lynnebago!

p.s.  As some of you might not be interested in the new van’s conversion process, I’ll put those posts on a separate blog called LynnieViews.  I’ll continue to keep travel, Winnebago, and general posts here on this main WinnieViews blog site.