A friend of ours was trying to offload a Volkswagen Westy that had been producing more headaches than adventures. The current condition of Merle was promising however she wouldn’t move under her own powers. She needs a whole new engine and a couple other things done “under the hood” for her to breath again. Brian and our friend Aaron took a trip up to Redding to pick her up and tow her to her new home. She has been sitting in our vacant lot behind our home, creating a constant reminder of adventure that will hopefully be on the horizon shortly. The first step, however, is to find and purchase a donor car…

Brian is a airplane mechanic. He says cars are a lot like airplanes, just tinier and things are a lil more crammed in smaller spaces. We have done several maintenance and improvements to our cars, however this will be the first time we overhaul an engine. So everything will be done by us, we hope. And we happen to have a lovely Westy specialty shop not far from us if we end up in a pinch (which Merle has already visited prior to us owning her and received new seat liners. They’re pretty). She also has a lil mold problem on her roof (something that is very common) and we’ve already been YouTube’n the processes to get that cleared up.

We are gonna document our journey with Merle and we plan to share with you all of our adventures with her as well. Currently, she is being loved and explored as she sits motionless in the “back back yard”. The kids love her. We love her. Winston loves her the most.