East Coast Outfitting

Well I thought I'd start out my East Coast adventures by describing our travelling style. We travelled along in a 6-berth Volkswagen Maui campervan, "Spirit of Independence" printed across the side. We had two seats up front with a double bed up above. There's a bench seat across from you when you step in that folds down to become another of the double beds. All of these seats are upholstered in a blue fabric with red flowers that look like pohutakawas and have the texture of airline seats. The pillows and duvets provided by the Maui campervan company were not much better. Some of the pillows were even plastic! Like the camp matresses or hospital beds. Ugh. Luckily, we'd brought quite a few of our own. But on with the tour. Next to the bench seat was the stove, with exhaust fan. Across on the opposite wall was the bathroom, with a toilet, sink and shower all crammed into an airline bathroom size space, i.e. to take a shower, you'd stand in a 1 foot by two foot floor space, shins against the toilet and back against the wall and use the detachable sink sprayer to wash yourself. Luckily, we stayed at several campgrounds with showers, interspersed with our beachcamping nights, so we never had to use the campervan's shower. The sink was a little basin above the toilet that folded down from the wall. To empty it, you'd just fold it back up into the wall and the water would drain out. If you folded it up too fast, however, the water would splash out all over you, instead of draining nicely into the waste water receptacle tank. Next to the bathroom, across from the stove, was the kitchen sink and some drawers and cupboards containing pots, pans and utensils, all provided by the maui company. Bringing up the rear was a U-shaped seat that folded into our 3rd double bed. All around the top were cupboards to shore our gear in. We each got one for our personal stuff and the extras were for food and extra storage.

Now we made a few improvements upon this little arrangement. Namely, Mike, our handyman, added an extra battery specifically to support the sound system that he also installed. Whoa, can you say big ol' speakers! We could rock that van when we wanted to. He also brought along a labelling machine, which as you can imagine, was great fun. We labelled all sorts of appliances and people's cabinets with inside jokes. I got one to wear on my sweatshirt that labelled me as "our little yank". Did I mention that the label machine could do fancy labels as well? So on my "our little yank" tag, the text was surrounded by a candy wrapper! We also added some of our own pots and pans to supplement their supplies and lotsa fresh yummy food. Man, did we eat well!