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Another fairly uninteresting day. Do you guys want these, too, or just the exciting ones? I dunno. I try to make the boring days sound interesting. I mean, they're interesting to me but I feel like...do the people want to read about me running errands all day? Because that's what I did. We...

It wasn't all that exciting, really, but it was a day, so I'll write it. We dropped off Mandy for work and punched up an address in Phoenix into the van's navigator. And we set out. I forgot the shocks were still at 2.1 all around so this ride was a bit smushier than it should have been. Oh...

We were once again in White Spar Campground. I guess we "live here", right? Hopefully we don't die here. Although it's not a terrible place for it. We did the morning routine. Get up. Shower. Eat. Lift the bed. Feed the dog. Pee the dog. Drive Mandy to work. Then we ran a couple errands. Me and...

We awoke in White Spar Campground and just got to chill again. No plan. No rush. Just made it up as we went. Sometime mid-morning, we decided to go for a hike. There's a bunch of trails that begin at the campground. We had sort of a map this time, on Mandy's phone, but didn't really refer to it...

To anyone familiar with the area, were those coyotes we heard howling in the dark? It was probably 4 or 5am if I had to guess but I didn't check the clock. Loki was very intrigued, but we got him to calm down and sleep some more. We eventually got up. This was the least-hurried morning we've...

Tucumcari got cold at night. I think the official temperature was 6F, but the weather app said it feels like -9F. We peed dog in the morning and hit the road ASAP. Ain't about that life no mo'. Mandy drove and I zoned out in the back, so I honestly don't have much to report from there all the...

Waking up in Oklahoma was a bit chilly and wet, but not awful. We topped off our fuel supply and hit the highway. Why does the price of fuel vary so much out here?? You can cross any street and get fuel for 50 cents more per gallon. Why? It's so weird to me. We always go for the cheap ones...

We headed to Nashville - no we're already in Nashville - we headed to MEMPHIS from there. I always confuse those two. So, when we started this trip, we were thinking 40 hours of driving over 9 days is a little over 4 hours a day. So that put us somewhere around Nashville, I believe. It was going...

We woke up and the temperature was about 8F outside. It was cozy inside because our heater is excellent, but who wants to stay cooped up inside all day? Okay, once in a while it's awesome, but it's not what we were after this day. So, after a short walk with Loki, we hopped back inside and moved...

Hey overlanders! I know this forum is for real-time trip updates, but this trip began about 6 months ago. HOWEVER, it is still ongoing, so I hope it's alright if I post it in here. I'm cool with it if you are. I've written it elsewhere, so I can copy-paste it here faster than one day per day. I...

I have no idea if anyone's reading this anymore, but if you are, I apologize for the lack of updates. I got super busy on Hot Rod Power Tour, and visiting with friends and family on both ends of that. But I'm back in my groove for now. So let's see, where were we? Oh right. The shocks. So we...

Another piece of tangentially-related work that was ongoing behind the scenes was all carried out by Mandy. She's a pharmacist. So travelling work is more difficult for her than her nursing peers. But she worked hard at passing the Colorado law exam in order to be able to pick up work there for...

Now we began to kind of wind down from the build. There were still finishing touches, which I'll show you momentarily. But in the between times, we were also working on getting rid of everything that wouldn't fit inside. We had a whole house-worth of stuff. Granted, we weren't living super large...

I don't think I've detailed here what we ordered for suspension components. For those who are familiar, it's a Stage 4.3 kit from Van Compass. For those of you who are not, I'll break down what that means because I realize that staging increments is not really descriptive. First, you might want...

When we leak checked the shower, we realized that the valve was 180 degrees off, so when the handle was off, the shower sprayed down our whole kitchen. I fixed that today. Nothing to really show for it. When we installed the door, we put the latch piece in the wrong spot. I had to remove and...

It was a long ass workday. But I got a lot done. I think I can have an easy morning and then enjoy some dank turkey and a day off to digest from binging. [This was obviously just before Thanksgiving, last year] I smoked so many drill bits today. I know you gotta drill slow in stainless but...

Then I cut out the ceiling and rear wall panel. I figured I could try and bend them to install as one piece, and if it didn't work out, cut the bend. I took the panel to the local high school to have it bent in the shop class. I don't know why it took so long to think of that. Probably because...

[From 11/17/21:]26F outside this morning. And my back is basically broken. Not really. Just chronic pain from an old injury. Working the shower is not helping it any but we're making it work. I'm doing the top half a little different than the bottom. I got the top half of the frame welded up by...

I did a bunch of researching on suspension upgrades. This included weighing the van at the landfill, front and rear axles separately. I approximated a remaining additional weight to be added for people, gear, water, and the remainder of the build components to be installed. I ultimately got a...

I know, right?! Thanks for the kind words.