Thanksgiving weekend, Van closet

Thanksgiving and Adam's birthday were great. We went down to my (Liz's) parents' house in Benicia for the afternoon. Here's a pic of the backseat on the way down:

Good thing we weren't bringing any other people with us! 

Adam requested lemon meringue pie for his birthday (and thus it was our dessert for Thanksgiving). This was an area of major stress for me as meringue is notorious for being difficult to get right. I read up in the Joy of Cooking and was victorious!!! Happy Birthday, Adam!

The meringue was cooked through and nothing was runny or gooey. Very exciting for me and tasty for everyone. 

A week before Thanksgiving I made the cranberry sauce:

Looks amazing, doesn't it? (I'm not being humble on this one...) Well, since Thanksgiving was also Adam's birthday, and there was the stress of the meringue, and planning/packing for the trip we took right after Thanksgiving, plus I had a bad cold all week----I COMPLETELY forgot the cranberry sauce in Davis! When we were getting ready to serve dinner, my mom asked where the cranberry was....I nearly passed out, and I felt SO bad that I had left it at home! Needless to say we all survived Thanksgiving without cranberry. Still getting over that one. 

Well, after Thanksgiving we decided to go to Big Sur, Ventana Wilderness for an overnight backpacking trip to get out of Davis and get everyone some good exercise. We did 21.4 miles in two days. The first day was 14.6 miles. We backpacked from the Big Sur station to Barlow Camp (~7.4 miles in) and set up our tent. The camping area only had about 6 other groups, and no one was close to us so it was really quiet. We were right on the river. After setting up, we left our stuff at camp and hiked another 3.2 miles to Sykes Hot Springs. This area had more people around, but we did manage to get one of the pools to ourselves. 

Here's Adam at the springs and a picture of one of the pools. The pool wasn't really hot but it still felt great after the hiking we had done! 

Here's the view from the pool:

That's the Big Sur river and associated mixed coastal forest. Beautiful!

Here's part of the trail:

We were actually a little surprised about the trail--we had expected it would spend some time along the river, but the trail was high above the river the whole time until Sykes. We did go down and cross some side streams, which were really pretty. 

For dinner we were fancy (only one night, might as well carry heavy stuff)--we made poached salmon with mashed potatoes and butternut squash. I had pre-roasted the squash and froze it in cubes. The salmon was frozen when we left, and the potatoes were the flake kind. Chocolate pudding for dessert...YUM!!! After dinner I was exhausted (still was fighting the cold I've had for a week), and I fell asleep before 8pm and slept with only a few interruptions until 6:30--about 11 hours of sleep! Darn good for backpacking, I'd say. :)

NOW, FOR THE VAN:

Today Adam is working on the closet. Here is the first try of putting it in the van--it's not fitted perfectly yet but it looks fantastic!

Awesome, right?!

This is the prefinished maple. The two big openings are the clothes closet area (and that end piece is just temporary and not the right size). It's going to have 1 shelf in the middle, and the shelf will be covered with fabric to keep things from sliding around. There will probably be plastic bins for socks, underwear, etc (small things). The closet will have 2 sliding doors. The tall narrow area is the pantry and will have small (cans), medium (small snacks, rice mix, misc.) and large (cereal, pretzels, big stuff) boxes in it that will work like drawers but will be easy to remove. That way, if you need a couple of cans, you can just pull the box out and bring it to the cooking area or onto the counter to find what you need. Or, if you want a snack or cereal selection--just grab the big box. 

Adam will probably cut a cubby hole into the area below the closet for accessibility to the under-the-closet area. There may also be a cubby hole with a lid on the bottom shelf area of the closet, which would work great as a laundry basket area. 

I'm really proud of Adam--he works really hard on the van and I think it really shows!

Now, for some concluding dog pictures:

 That's Carex with her new collar.

 This time my pictures are Carex-biased..here's Carex with Adam, snuggling on the couch!

Ok, this isn't the dogs--but it was funny. Adam microwaved 2 eggs (I was not involved!) this morning and one exploded, shooting the yolk out of the white. Talk about a mess......

Bed up top!

Well, because of the unexpected smaller size of fold out bed/seat in the van, we decided to go ahead and buy some wood to make the penthouse bed. Last weekend we went to a super cool wood store (yes, I am my father's daughter) in Berkeley called MacBeath's Hardwoods. We got some less expensive 3/4" birch  plywood for the bed (has lots of plys!). We also got awesome prefinished maple 1/2" plywood for the cabinets. 

So the bed up top is in two pieces. One piece is larger and ends about where Adam's elbow is. When the top is down, this piece actually hangs from the roof (raising it up). The second piece is smaller and remains resting on the rails (the sides of the top that hold the whole bed up) even when the top is down. The smaller piece can also be stored behind the seat below. 

We are going to get some thick foam and upholster it onto the boards. Double bed sheets will work just fine! 

Below is a bad picture of the prefinished maple just to give you an idea of what it looks like. It's really light in color but has a nice grain. It's not as "white" as the birch which both Adam and I like. 

Right now the prefinished plywood and the cushions from the bench seat/bed are being stored in our guest bedroom (also known as the cat's room). It's a little crowded in there, but what with 5 bikes, a motorcycle, stuff in storage, more plywood and hardboard, etc, the garage is full, too!

Cute picture of Carex:

Sportsmobile asked us to come back down to Fresno in December to have the top adjusted after we sent them pictures of the corner of the penthouse top that sticks up. So, we are planning on making a winter camping foray down near Oakhurst (I think) that weekend. 

Other planned travels include going to Sykes Hot Springs for a weekend backpacking trip with the dogs. We have been home every weekend for three weekends in a row--that's not like us!! We are both dying to get some exercise and spend time outside. (We found out about Sykes through another blog The Commentators ).  

Wall panel update!

Check it out:

Totally awesome, right?! 

Sportsmobile!

Well, the biggest event lately has been that we (Adam) got down to Sportsmobile in Fresno again and got the penthouse top installed as well as the seat/bed! Check out the photos:

The top pops up easily, you just unlatch the latches and push up on a padded area with your shoulders. To take it down, you have to pull down fairly hard (Liz doesn't quite have the bodyweight to pull it by herself...). The windows have screens that open, plastic covers for when it's rainy/windy, plus there are roll down shades to keep light out. 

The seat has three sets of seatbelts (2 lap, 1 shoulder) and folds down into a bed. It's 68 inches long and about 49 inches wide when reclined into the bed. The seat slides forward when it reclines flat, and meets up with a cushion that's not installed yet (cushion will cover the back portion of the van and be over a storage area--not shown yet!). 

We are very excited to have these new amenities, but we did have some problems with Sportsmobile:

1. The bed was advertised as being 53" wide and 71" long--which is small but we thought we could make it work if this was the minimum size. Turns out their website doesn't match reality, and from what we heard from the folks at Fresno, no one had ever brought this to their attention! Weird. So, this is really small for us so we decided to pursue the bed that is up in the penthouse sooner than we had originally planned (Which can be at lest 76" inches long--much better for us tall people). 

2. The penthouse top doesn't fit quite right on top of the van. See this photo:

The tops sits flush on all other three corners, but here it pops up and wobbles a bit. This hasn't been fixed yet.

3. The tie-downs for the fabric walls of the penthouse top were secured too tightly, so that the fabric ripped a small hole! Adam made patches which should solve the problem:

You can barely see it but there is a diamond of fabric now behind this bolt. 

Other than those problems, we think we will really love the new situation and we hope Sportsmobile will help fix the issues. Last weekend we put the first coat of paint on the top (it came bright white and we painted it a grey to match the van):

It looks great with the grey top. Due to inclement weather we couldn't put the second coat on, but that should happen this Sunday I'd guess. The paint (Interlux Perfection 2 part epoxy in "Platinum") was scary at first but went on really nicely with a special roller. 

Right now Adam is out working on the wall panels! (And I walk out occasionally to give him a hand...and I made dinner..and I'm blogging....and I do the laundry and keep house...) He's making the wall panels out of 3/16" hardboard. 

This weekend we are going to a special plywood store to look at Appleply, a high density plywood to use for the wood base for the bed that goes up in the penthouse. Also, we are looking for wood to use for our cabinets. We are considering baltic birch because it looks good with unfinished edges, but we're not sure. Adam likes a medium stained wood, and Baltic birch looks weird with a colored stain on it. Liz likes plain baltic birch but Adam insists this will be too light a color..... So we're considering either a different kind of wood or paint! (No idea what color though!)

Also started looking at Corian for the countertops--our project is so small we can use scraps so it will be less expensive. Adam likes the color called "Silt". (http://www2.dupont.com/Surfaces/en_US/products/corian/pr_corian_colors.html)

Obligatory dog photos:

Autumnal Carex

Dude in his nest

AND, this is NOT DOG:

It's a pork loin with a cranberry-apple-walnut filling, and it was amazing!