Vanfest at Kings Canyon

I worked at a pizza shop from the time I was 14 until I was in my early 20s. One of the girls I worked with would come to work after a periodic weekend off and tell us that she and her boyfriend had been to Vanfest. She would regale us with stories about wet tee-shirt contests and girls in slippery pools of jello. Vanfest seemed to be an event where teenage van owners would come to have sex with their girlfriends (presumably in their vans) and then watch those same girlfriends publicly degrade themselves for their entrainment. Charming.

We had a whole different kind of Vanfest on our recent family trip out west. My sister and her husband rented a huge white van in Vegas to take the eight of us on what ended up being nearly 3,000 miles of travel through Nevada, Arizona, and California. My nephew Mike named the van Bruce (nicknamed The Boss when I mentioned Bruce Springsteen). Bruce was a comfortable ride, and he carried us through some scary desert miles safely, as well as through some stunning national parks.

First, let me show you Bruce.



Here's my brother-in-law, Frank. He drove every single mile of the trip!


My sister, Jane, liked to make sure everything was nice and peaceful in the back of the van without ever having to turn around.


This was her usual view. Two kids are missing, but that's just because they're slumped down in their seats, fast asleep.


The van was so high off the ground, that I knew I'd screw my bad back up if I spent a week hauling myself in and out of the thing. Our first stop in Vegas? Walmart, where we bought poor Aunt Sue a footstool.


We joked around a lot about how frequently white vans figure into crime stories. Doesn't this Death Valley shot make Bruce look downright sinister? I promise that we weren't dragging a body into the desert just off camera.


Here's Bruce at Kings Canyon National Park.


We only stopped twice at Kings Canyon. We'd spent the morning hiking around Sequoia, its nearest national park neighbor, so we were pretty tired by the time we were ready to do Kings Canyon. Frank seems to be an indefatigable driver, though, so we set off in search of some good van window views. We were not disappointed. On one of our stops, a lonely park ranger, alone in a visitors center, told us that KCNP was nicknamed "Little Yosemite." One look at its granite peaks and canyons, and you understand why. I wish we had had more time and energy to do this magnificent and under-visited park justice. In lieu of stories, here are some shots from Bruce's window.






Everybody needed to stretch after a couple of hours of driving.








It was a little windy.


All in all, our Vanfest was a whole lot more wholesome than my 1970s teenaged co-worker's. The wildest we got was on the long ride back to the hotel when I entertained my nephew, Mike, by turning my leg into a face.



We might not have had jello pools, but we had fun.

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