That is cool. We had a friend whose girlfriend had a VW van some years ago. We attempted a road trip with it, the four of us, but didn't get very far. An hour up the highway, a car in front of us went out of control and jumped the divider. Our friend, who was a paramedic, got out to help. There was an older woman and a young boy. Both were okay, which was lucky, given the way they caught air. The VW was old and slow, too, so we just headed back home.

My favorite tent innovation, though, are the ones with, I kid you not, air conditioning, camped along the causeway to Key West. They just cut a whole at the back of the tent and fit the air conditioner in (I imagine they have a generator). Talk about camping in comfort. Not bad.

Oh I love it. Brings back great memories. My parents owned one of those VW "buses". In blue, too. I remember my mom driving around a sharp curve when my 4 year old brother (seatbelts? what seatbelts?) OPENED the sliding door! Me, being older, got up to close the door - I can still see the road racing by beneath me.

My favorite memory of that van..driving home from the boardwalk in Asbury Park when I was 8 or 9, lying in the back on top of the engine compartment, looking up at the stars, listening to Seals and Crofts "Summer Breeze".

I love it! And redvixen's reminisces are awesome, as well.

I really want to go camping, especially living so close to Yosemite.

What lovely memories, redvixen.

Awesome! I learned to drive in one exactly like that when I was 15, right down to the colour. It belonged to a friend's father and we used to pool all our cash to buy petrol for it (if you put in cash, you got a turn at driving), which never amounted to much and we spent almost as much time pushing it to the nearest service station as we did driving it. Some wild times in that van of the sort that can only happen when you let half-a-dozen or so young, socially outcast, teenage boys have unsupervised access to a car in a time when kids were expected to not hang around at home and the only rule was to be home by dark.

Redvixen, my memory is of two hinged doors in the side, not a sliding door, although later models had a sliding door. Yeah, driving around with the side doors open and a lunatic learner driver at the wheel :-). Good times.