1st long trip

[RickJ]

My family and I just returned home last night from a 14 day trip to Oregon. The van performed great, and can definitely hold more gear than our CR-V. Our travels took us to Centralia Wa., McMinnville Or. with a visit to the Evergreen museum of flight, Seaside Or and the Maritime museum in Astoria, the tillimook cheese factory and Tillimook Air museum, Pacific city for some beach driving and a couple of days in Seattle so my wife could run in a half marathon. All in all a great trip. The Pacific city beach driving was definitely entertaining. It seems that people south of the Canadian border have not come across too many Delica's yet so we attracted a bit of attention. The on lookers laughed as we pulled onto the soft sand and quickly became stuck. The laughs changed as we locked the transfer case and drove on. From then on people would stop and ask us what we were driving. Most were more interested when they discovered the diesel. We look forward to heading back next year.

[TardisDeli]

Sounds like a lovely trip. I did similar a few months ago. The tillamook air museum are happy to have us park for free in their RV parking, but we moved closer to the building at night so we could plug in to electricity for the space heater and the microwave and the electric blanket. Then lovely breakfast in their cafe.

Tried the sand driving, yes 4x4 got us out, but it was very amazing to watch it from outside the van, my tires pushed up a wall of sand in front of the tires (like a tidal wave) and it was that wall of sand that actually stopped us when it got higher than a few inches, not the sand itself, so by reversing a bit and changing course every few yards thus one would be on new flat sand, one could traverse (BFG AT 30 tires).

Oregon folk love my L300, in Portland recently a nice homeless guy sat beside my van to guard it and admire it while I was inside a store using wifi, then he was happy to pour the veggie and do all the routine maintenance on such a cool van. I often park overnight at Walmarts in USA with no problem, always park next to the most expensive RV and they protect you and offer you coffee and food cuz the L300 looks so cute next to them (kinda like a dinghy on a boat), but I think secretly RVs admire how we can turn around in mere feet not miles.

Cheers Christine