Wow, we sort of dropped off the face of the planet, didn’t we? Sorry to leave you hanging, readers! We were waiting on our remaining posts until we were able to upload our pictures, which we couldn’t do until we got home for some reason (I think Kay was having trouble with his laptop) and then we got busy with the minutiae of life…

Well, we made it home. I owe you a better post, and I’ll deliver in the next few weeks now that it’s been brought to my attention that I owe you, but summary:

We went back to Flagstaff. Andrew the miracle mechanic was able to fix our turbo and whatever remaining gremlins we had in the Vanagon. We set out again, heading north through Utah toward Yellowstone, expecting every mile to have another major breakdown. We didn’t. We gradually relaxed. We did get a slow leak in a tire on a highway in Utah, but we were able to add air from the compressor we carry (comes from being motorcyclists who rely on our tires) and limp into a gas station that just happened to have a mechanic shop, which fixed up our tire and sent us on our way. And that was the entire extent of our mechanical issues after leaving Flagstaff for good.

Yellowstone was beautiful. We hit the Badlands again, which was also beautiful, although surprisingly green when we made it there. And made it all the way home in time to have Kay back at work as scheduled. Lots of pics up on Flickr now, I’ll try to give you a better photo post when I have a bit more time.

In the meantime, we’ve continued to work on Sally after getting home. Had her in the shop again because we failed inspection for the same reasons as when we got her. Then, we finally scraped together the cash to have her painted! Yay! Sally is now Yellow!

Here’s a pic:

And a before and after:

Since these were taken, we put the solar panel back on and basically all is well.

Oh, except that two days after picking her up from the shop for the inspection issue, her heater/defroster fried, so we’ve gone through the winter with no heat/defrost. We bought a little 12v dealie just to keep the windshield clear, and got used to wearing blankets when driving her. Except that since the first blizzard in January, we haven’t really driven her, because if we move her we’ll lose our street parking spot and never be able to park again. Because she’s too tall to fit into the Boston parking garages, and street parking is down dramatically due to all the piles of snow everywhere. Maybe we’ll be able to drive her again in April.

More updates coming soon.