Seriously, must postpone documenting my final two SE Asia trips (Jeju Island, ROK and Vietnam motorcycle tour) to get caught up with (seemingly accelerating) current events...
I am back in the US and my primary tasks are to find a vehicle and acquire health care and get out to Michigan in time for a long overdue reunion with some (hopefully eventually all) of my cousins whom I haven't seen in a coon's age.
Breaking news tonight: I settled on and closed the deal on a vehicle which valiantly attempts to meet all my needs as my sole vehicle (because I don't have anywhere to park a second vehicle) which are:
1a) I can sleep in the back of it, OR 1b) a SUV I can tow a small pop-up trailer of some kind with
2) reliability
3) gas mileage
4) economical-ish
5) some towing ability
6) 4wd/Awd (had to forgo in the end)
7) Clearance (had to forgo in the end)
Turns out it's very difficult to hit three of these much less al and after many hours of educating myself about what was actually available and what I actually wanted I ended up with this:
which is a 2014 Honda Odyssey minivan with 56k miles. The groovy thing is you can stow and/or remove all the 2nd and 3rd row seats and have enough room for me to stretch out and get a good night's rest (and I don't have to deal with a trailer). But.... it only has 4.5" clearance (which sucks) but fwd is better than no wd so what you gonna do?
To relieve the stress of car shopping since I've been back I had several fun get-togethers but the only one I thought to take pictures of was the overnighter with Dave S. when we camped at a shelter up in Golden Gate Canyon State Park. Apparently Dave was going to do this with Brad but they got rained out whereas Dave and I only got rained in! (our gain). There are way too many awesome pictures from that trip to bore you with so I'll try to include just the best. As for commentary, I'll let the pictures mostly tell the tale to avoid laying the foundation for any kind of perjury case against myself since one can't be too careful these days.
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| It's not raining now! |
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| Dave doing his Christopher Walken impersonation, which still needs audio development. |
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| "End of the Trail" |
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| Dang, we really pulled off a good one there, eh? |
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| "Let's go for a walk" |
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| And the very next morning... |
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| "What do you want to do?" "I don't know, maybe go for a walk?" |
