Worldwide audience! Hello world!

So, the other day I learned that I can view our "Stats" (who has viewed our blog, when, and from where). I was amazed that we have a worldwide audience! Check it out: (the #'s are # of page views since we started the blog)

United States 836 Latvia 21 Canada 12 South Korea 8 France 7 Malaysia 6 Australia 3 Norway 3 Germany 2 Denmark 2

Pretty neat! To the person in Latvia, I hope you are building a Sportsmobile or other camper van, and that you are getting some ideas from our blog. Hi!

I don't know anyone in any of the countries other than the US. Hope you all are having a great day! Keep checking back, I'm going to bake something again soon, and there will be more photos of the pets, too, just in case that's why you like our blog. :) (Probably not..)

Problems with Sportsmobile--Quick update

After some conversation, Sportsmobile offered to pay for gas money to drive to their Fresno facility and back, and also to do the fix to the leaky top on a weekend so we don't have to miss work. I can't say we're completely thrilled with the offer (we already had to miss work once to come back for a fix, and missing out on a weekend day sucks!), but we do appreciate that they are having to bring in at least 3 people to work a full day on weekend to fix it, so it certainly must be sort of a big deal to them. We'll be going down there fairly soon, and after we do, I'll post to let you know how the fix went! (With pictures)

Amazing cabinetry!

This post is mostly going to be a bunch of photos of the newest cabinet. Check it out!

The large compartment will hold the fridge, below it the stove and fuel. The smallest on the left side will be small kitchen tools, the middle will be pots/pans/plates/cups, and the lowest is the port-a-potti. Adam cut lots of holes in the supports to reduce weight. It's very airy and open! Adam's hand is on the face of the stash cabinet (see later photos--he cuts out the front) which goes right behind the driver's seat to stash jackets/blankets/small pillows. 

In the van. Fits great!

Some of the holes Adam cut to reduce weight now have hardboard insulation in them (surrounding the fridge). The front of the stash cabinet is cut out. 

This is right behind the driver's side seat. It'll have a  shelf in it, and that front sloped part has a lip on the bottom so it holds our atlas (and a little cut out on the front lip so the atlas is easy to grab!). 

This is the small area right below the fridge. The divider holds the fuel in the small area, and the stove to the right of that. 

Fuel!

Fridge area with fuel and stove compartment.

The whole thing. 

I helped sand for a short time tonight, and Adam is doing some more sanding while I do this post. Once that's done we will finish the edges and put it back together to go in the van. Then the fridge can be permanently installed (yay!). I think it looks fantastic, and extremely well planned out to hold everything we want to carry. Go Adam!!

As usual, I've been continuing my Betty Crocker streak...check it out:

Peanut Butter Chocolate Chip Oatmeal cookies (5 doz):

Oatmeal raisin (4 doz):

Side story:

With a chunk of the money we got for Christmas, we decided to buy a new tent. We plan on using the van a lot to get us to a trailhead on Friday nights, so we can camp 1 night and then do overnight backpacking trips with the dogs on the weekends. We needed a bigger tent--we've been using a two person tent and it's so small the dogs have to sleep in the vestibules! So we went for a Nemo Losi 3p. Aaannndd....it's HUGE! We decided to keep it (after some more research)--it's the best deal for the price and we'll eventually have another person (kiddo!) with us, so might as well buy one tent to keep for the long term. Anyway, here's a picture of the gigantic tent we now own:

Happy New Year.

Another Sportsmobile problem!

I have more updates to do to show the AMAZING cabinet work Adam has been doing. Tonight, I promise.

For now we wanted to share the problem we found this weekend. Where the pop top meets the van top (front passenger side) we pulled back the fabric cover (looking for the culprit of a squeak, thought something might be rubbing up there) and found that they used plywood in the pop top mounting, and water had gotten in and soaked the plywood, rusted and corroded the screws, and began to mold. They also used a TON of screws in that corner compared to the other corners--looks like they knew there was a problem (and "solved" it by making swiss cheese of the van top!).

We have spent SO MUCH time and money on this project, that we are really more than bummed about these developments. Adam already had to go back down to Sportsmobile once, to have them do a "quick fix" on the warped top (which they admitted was a problem since they started having their tops manufactured out of the country!). This cost us time and money. Now, another problem.

Sportsmobile has great ideas, but we have found their execution to be much less than satisfactory.

Here are pictures of the latest problem:

Mold, rust, corrosion, wet wood, tons of screws....

A "good" corner for comparison