WRITTEN BY JOHN AND MARIE
Apart from cars we have purchased individually there have been one or two that were/are jointly owned by us.
The first one is the subject of this article.
In early 2011, after we had decided to give up our 9 to 5 existence and retire, we made plans for a touring holiday in the USA. Rather than hire a vehicle for many months we thought it would be a good idea to buy one outright and our search began in Las Vegas.
We were looking for a camper van and thought that a VW Kombi might fit the bill but after looking at a couple (one almost derelict and one far out of our price range) we began looking on Craigslist.
In something akin to desperation, we looked at all possible alternatives, a station wagon, maybe a 4-wheel drive or a small RV? Then we saw it – a 3-line ad for a GMC Vandura camper van. Phone calls were made along with arrangements to see it and before we had time to think $1250 USD had changed hands and we were the proud (?) owners of ‘Smelly Nelly’, our home on wheels for the next few months.
The previous owner, Kelly, was, quite obviously, not very houseproud (or mechanically minded). Judging by the food he left behind in Nelly, his staple diet was beef curry noodles and chilli beans (resulting in an overflowing sewage tank)! Thankfully, he also left behind a variety of tools and spanners which proved to be invaluable fixing up the many minor items that needed attention. So, after 4 days of cleaning and scrubbing - plus repairs – to get her ship (or should that be camper) shape we were ready to begin our adventure roaming the USA.
For the technically minded here are Nelly’s vital statistics:
Make GMC Vandura 1 ton (?) dual rear wheel chassis with Shasta body.
Born: February 1976
Length: 21 feet. Width: 7 feet 10 inches. Height: 9 feet 9 inches (approximately).
Engine: 350 cu in GMC/Chevy with 4-barrel carburetor
Transmission: GMC/Chevy Turbo 350 automatic
Fuel consumption: 10 U.S.mpg (approximately) – try as we might, we couldn’t get better than this.
Over a total period of 47 weeks and 4 days we visited all 48 contiguous United States and travelled over 30,000 miles in Nelly. For the first couple of weeks, it felt like a holiday and then it became a very pleasant way of life.
We achieved quite a few things on our bucket list and had pleasure experiencing others that weren’t on the list. We’ve also shared time with ‘new’ family and friends and learned a lot about the hugely diverse country called America and its people.
Surprisingly enough the experience also taught us quite a bit about ourselves while living in the close confines of Nelly.
By the end of the trip, she was starting to show signs of old age, but Marie was dead against sending her to the wrecking yard. So, we decided to donate her to a worthy cause. We tried Ronald MacDonald House first, but Nelly’s age was against her. However, our second attempt came up trumps and we delivered her to ‘TEXAS CAN’ in Arlington where she was auctioned to raise money for the charity.
TEXAS CAN is a not-for-profit organisation that assists with the schooling of underprivileged 14-to-21-year-old students who have “struggled in a traditional high school setting for a number of reasons”. Their school academies will enroll a student at any time of the year, develop a personal plan for them to follow to graduation and assist them with planning for life after graduation.
In a quick ‘small world’ anecdote to the preceding paragraph, when we checked in to our hotel in Arlington, Marie chatted with the young girl behind the reception desk and discovered that she was a successful graduate of one of the CAN academies.
To our great surprise Nelly did us proud and the auctioneers hammer came down on a bid of $800 USD.
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