Tonight we are camping at the Blackwater Wildlife Refuge near Cambridge, MD. I’m parked behind the CASTnet site BWR139, and I’m mooching electricity to run my electric heater. Tonight I grilled a sirloin, and also had salad and rice pilaf. Yummy Yummy. Oscar and Anna had the usual lamb meal and rice kibble.

Last night I stayed with Joline and Danny in Va Beach. Tasha and Christopher were also at home with their significant others. We had a nice spaghetti dinner, and then had a huge breakfast this morning. Thanks for all the hospitality!!

Well, the pups are finally figuring out how to comfortably sleep two in the front seat. Most of the time, there is one in the front seat and one on the couch in back. I’ll see if I can manage to take 25 pictures a day. It might prove interesting!

Well, Yesterday was my first official day on the road. I spent most of the day in Tallahassee taking care of a few things, and then headed up to Alabama. I spent a noisy night at a rest stop near Grady, AL along US 231. This morning was really nice, fixing breakfast and coffee in the Vanagon before starting off to Crossville, AL. Tonight I’m camped in GA north of Atlanta along I-85. So far the van is running great, and getting 30+ mpg! I’ll try to take some pictures soon to post up here. I haven’t really run into anything yet that was worthy of pulling over and snapping photos. Stay tuned.

I have decided to try converting my Vanagon to run on waste vegetable oil. By try, I mean that I’ll try to finish a project that I’ve started. You can keep track of my progress by visiting the link on the sidebar entitled 1982 Vanagon WVO project. I’ll update that page with the conversion details rather than add them here to the main blog page. This will be an extremely rush-rush type project (the usual for me) since I’m leaving for AK in a few weeks. I’ve already got about 40 gallons of used peanut oil, so if I can make things work, that will get me app. 1200 miles!

Check out these pictures of my cool new (1982) VW Vanagon diesel camper! I got it from my friend Raphael, in trade for my 1/2 of the sailboat and my Nissan truck. It will serve me much better than either of those vehicles for my long trip `cross country.

Saturday I decided it seemed like the right time of year to be brewing beer. There is a relatively new supplier in town called Hoggetowne Ale Works, and so I went by and purchased the ingredients for a Weissebier (Wheat Beer). Sunday I brewed it up on my turkey freyer and got it into the carboy. I decided for this batch to do a single fermentation in the glass carboy to get the beer finished sooner. It will have more sediment on the bottom, but that is traditional anyway. Hopefully in 3-4 weeks, there will be 48 bottles of beer on the wall! Everyone is welcome to come and sample.

Yesterday I visited the 20th Annual Hoggetowne Medieval Faire at the Gainesville Fairgrounds with Raphael, Stephanie, and Noah Sioux. We showed up an hour before closing, and so enjoyed free admission and a free meal with all the exhibitors. I think it was more fun than if we had gone earlier in the day with all the crowds.

Linked to this very kool school bus I found at the faire is a slideshow. The owner of the bus has lived in it for 20 years, and has travelled all over the U.S. and South America.

Little Noah Sioux is now 7 months old! He’s starting to become quite mobile at this age, and likes to get into whatever he can. He’s almost bearable to babysit now too!

I made a cool slideshow page for all the pictures I took in Jax. You can access it by clicking on the picture below: