Blue View – Beyond Blue

Blue is now a memory

If you happened to read last week’s Blue View, you know that we sold Blue, our Ford Transit camper conversion. I won’t reiterate the reasons for making the decision, but the bottom line was that despite the great times we had on our many bike/road/camping trips with him, it was time to try something else. We did learn quite a lot about what’s important and what’s not so important to us in a camper van. And while we were quite happy with the end result, we would undoubtedly do things differently the next time. For example, the electrical system was much more elaborate (and expensive) than it needed to be… I planned for every possible upgrade and contingency that we might ever need or want, most of which was not, nor will it ever be installed.

So are we planning another van conversion? Nah… another van upfit isn’t on the radar right now. We may change our minds in the years to come, but we’re not contemplating anything quite that daunting at present.

Are we ready to give up traveling? Not a chance! We still can’t fly overseas (nor do we choose to fly anywhere else for that matter), but camping and road trips are something we very much want to continue.

What we are planning is to go back to tent camping. We quite liked that in the past, but this time around, we’ll make some additions and improvements to make it more comfortable on our old bodies; more of a glamping version of tent camping. We decided to buy a mid-sized SUV that could carry our bikes and camping gear, that is also comfortable to drive and easier on the fuel consumption. We have some thoughts that we’re currently refining on how we might upfit it and add many of the important amenities that Blue provided, but on a much simpler platform. Can we add and power a small fridge? How about building a chuckwagon type of box for the rear that can provide a cooking surface, storage and work table for the times we’d like to go boondocking and get away from campgrounds? How do we carry our bikes, but still allow access to the rear tailgate? How much water can we store? We have a slew of questions to be resolved, and I think it will be fun figuring out solutions.

To decide on which vehicle to use as our platform, we looked at all the SUV options. We wanted something new enough to have some of the important safety features, like the collision avoidance technologies. It had to be big enough to carry all that we planned to haul around, but not so big that we sacrificed fuel economy and maneuverability. A good warranty was important as were good consumer reviews and ratings. These criteria narrowed the field down considerably. Our pricing goal eliminated the luxury SUVs, narrowing the field further. Then I ruled out the Ford contenders based on our abysmal experiences with the Ford service departments we have encountered with Blue over the years.

In the end, what came the closest to meeting all our criteria was a Kia Sorento, and after a significant amount of online shopping, we found a well priced, slightly used 2020 model in Phoenix. Roadtrip! We drove our rental car to the Arizona dealer, finalized the deal, and drove our new (to us, anyway) Kia back home.

Marcie and I have been busy since then, making lists of what gear and amenities we consider to be essential, what things would be nice to have, and which things we can do without. At the same time, I’ve also been taking measurements and sketching out ideas on how we might best organize the space we have.

As you have probably observed, Marcie likes to name her vehicles and assign a gender to them. I find this to be somewhere between endearing and eccentric, but I’m willing to go along with it. Her logic is that we name boats; why not vehicles? At this point, we’ve decided its gender is definitely male, but we haven’t agreed on a name yet. Since our new SUV is ebony black, the current contenders are Eb, Ebbie and Bones. So far, none of the names has really taken hold… more often than not, we still just refer to him as “The Kia”. If anyone has suggestions, we’re still open to other possibilities.

Introducing Bones,,, Eb?… or is it Ebbie?

The next few weeks will be devoted to upfitting Bones/Eb/Ebbie into a bike and camping platform, and I’m quite excited about the project. I hope you stay tuned!