What a day to choose to start an entirely new and first time ever blog! If you are here you are either VERY lost or looking to follow our adventures as Moose & Mitzi. Welcome regardless.

While there is much backstory that may or may not be coming, we shall start from the point of now. This will be a learning process for all of us.

Moose, at this point, is where we live. Moose is a 1985 GMC P-30 Value Van and is 23 feet give or take from bumper to bumper.16 of that is what we call livable space and we have grown quite fond of it. From what I can tell this van came originally with a Chevy 350 and an SM465 manual transmission. While that same transmission is still here and in use, the engine is now a Cummins 4BT swapped in by some unknown entity years ago. The 4BT is five-nines why I bought this particular van some still undisclosed number of years ago.

Moose has been converted (by us) to a motorhome. There is so much more to this part of the story/journey, but on a basic level we did the following.:

• Raised the roof 18 inches and built a 12 inch sub-floor for storage, batteries and water tank.
• We have a 98 inch long kitchen counter, 88 inch long couch (including arms with storage), full height (8′) tub/shower stall, composting toilet, his & hers hanging closets, a California king murphy bed and open shelving with fine height adjustments.
• The front slider door was removed and a wood exterior residential door was installed (twice, but best not to talk about it now). We also removed the rear roll-up door and built a far too sturdy wood framed rear wall.
• We installed a diesel air/parking heater, propane water heater, 800 watts of quality solar panels, 4 crap lead-acid batteries and the cheapest 2000 watt inverter you can imagine.

Mitzi is another story altogether and a sad one at the moment, in my opinion. Mitzi is a 1987 Mitsubishi Minicab Estate imported from Japan some 7-8 years ago and in our possession now somewhat less than a year. It’s goofy (I love goofy), rare, small, light, has a surprising amount of room inside, and did I mention goofy?  Mitzi was/is intended to be our tow-behind/exploration vehicle.  There is a downside to goofy and rare, though, and long-story-short, the transmission has failed and it is not driveable at this time, parts are very hard to find and, when findable, on the expensive side of what our current budget can tolerate.

I miss this microvan every time we go somewhere not in Moose, but I hope to bring you many wonderful stories of Mitzi’s joining us on the road in the future.

OH, we live on the road in Moose, we stay on public lands most of the time and move often. This began in earnest a bit over a month ago prior to which we bounced here and there for about 6 months, not wondering far from our tether. Can’t say yet how often this blog will be updated and I don’t do New Year resolutions anyway. There should be pictures and links to videos in the days to come and just maybe a place for you to leave comments and such. Still learning all this so there could be tags to follow and possibly a way to sign up for notifications of posts. Lets see where this goes.