Buses No Where Near the Arch......anyone going?

[andrewtf]

I was just wondering if any Sambanistas were planning on heading to this meet up?

We are taking our buses Big Emma and Murphy and would welcome the opportunity to put another face or two behind the avatars we see nearly every day.

Hope to see you there.

Andrew (Deborah)
Emma and Sven
_________________
'75 Riviera - 'BIG EMMA' (Pan American highway trip paused for a make over)
'77 Riviera - Murphy' (being reborn.... slowly)
'63 Austin Healey

[andrewtf]

Since we went, I thought I might as well throw in a short synopsis of the event... from our perspective.
No need for anything lengthy, except safe to say, all in all it was a really great weekend…. My dog got a little stressed though.

We took Big Emma - and this was just a little errand for her.... But for my bus Murphy, it was sort of a next level test. Again, while I have owned this bus for about three years or so, I had put less than 1000 miles on it in my ownership. It has not been fully mobile for more than a couple of months. The longest trips so far have been about 45-50 miles for weekend camping (twice). This is about 210 miles one way.

Both buses made the trip pretty much flawlessly. One interesting aspect was that - with basically the same engine setup - Big Emma used about 7 gallons more gas than Murphy did. Of course, Big Emma is a beast with a LOT of extra weight, and I’d guess approximately 160,000 more miles on the power plant. Murphy also has those beautiful HAM heads. For Murphy, the trip was 595 miles total, and averaged a bit over 18 mpg. Other than that, I added about 1/4 of a quart of oil when we got home, and had to re-attach a piece of pop top trim. Murphy did have an issue keeping the refrigerator powered up, but the electrical engineer (Sven) and I are going to trouble shoot that in the coming days. I'll go ahead and speak for Emma and Sven and say we all had a great time.


Buses Nowhere Near the Arch officially began on Friday morning. We had initially planned to drive about half way on Thursday after work to make the Friday morning leg short. We wanted to get there a little on the early side since camp sites are strictly first come, first served. Our start, scheduled for Thursday at 5 pm actually happened near that time as we pulled out about 5:15. At some point along the way (I think when we stopped to eat), we all decided to just make the entire drive to the park, arrive late on Thursday with the idea to move to the event group campground portion of the park in the morning. As luck would have it, pulling in round about 11:15 pm we were able to go straight to the group camp area and snag our weekend spots.

We set up next to each other and awning'd between our buses. We did have to throw a small tarp over the gap between Big Emma's awning and Murphy to keep our combined set up water free. Worked like a charm and although we had some spitting rain for a while on both Friday and Saturday, we stayed comfy and dry.

The event had about 120 or so buses, I'd guess, a little less than half were splits, a quarter were bays, and the rest were type 3, and other miscellaneous vehicles. As usual, some dropped gear head type rigs, and some museum diorama's, and everything in between. Emma and Sven - and Big Emma - were recognized by some and they spent a fair amount of time weaving tales of travel. A lot of people were also interested in the new Big Emma fit out for enhanced travel comfort. It does have some interesting and unique features.

On Saturday was a drive/tour thru the country side to Hannibal (Mark Twain-Huck Finn). We did this event about five or six years ago and I’d guess 40 or more buses went on the tour. This year it was a disappointing approximately 20 buses. The drive does not accomplish much, but it is fun to see and take part in. As always, the drive included a stop at the dam for an overhead group bus shot. It would have been nice to hang out in Hannibal for a while, enjoy lunch and a beer…….. but they also had a “Steam Punk” festival downtown, so it was all blocked off, too crowded, no place to park, ……….

So – several random photos of the event:

And the scene about an hour or so before we pulled out........
Just to demonstrate why we don't own Splits.

I'd highly recommend this event to anyone who might be considering going in the future. It is very well organized, there are plenty of activities, and an overwhelming amount of really nice buses and bus people.
_________________
'75 Riviera - 'BIG EMMA' (Pan American highway trip paused for a make over)
'77 Riviera - Murphy' (being reborn.... slowly)
'63 Austin Healey