See page 16 of the new May issue of CMS...
I won't be participating, but it sure made me remember a couple of microbus trips I made in years past. One was driving my '64 from Santa Fe to Durango by the back roads in March of '77 or so, via Tres Piedras, Tierra Amarilla, Chama and Pagosa Springs. Way too much of that was over 10,000' altitude, in a blizzard, on mountain switchbacks, and a long way from any visible habitation. There was nothing to do but just keep slogging though it. The driver-side wiper froze to the windshield and broke off, so I did have to stop once and swap the other one over. The radio antenna blew off. The thing probably made about 20 HP at that altitude, but it got me through okay.
The other trip was in a '68 bus sometime in the early '90s, when we lived near Ventura. Wife and I saw some California local color show on TV about a historic saloon at a place called Pozo, which turned out to be about 15 miles east of San Luis Obispo, and we thought we'd go check it out. To make a real day trip of it, we figured we'd go there the back way, Hwy. 33 over the mountains, the 58 westbound, and then on an unnumbered road to the saloon.
That unnumbered road started off smooth, but after a mile or two there was a sign saying RVs Not Recommended Beyond This Point. Well, a microbus is hardly an RV, no prob. Road turned to gravel, then dirt, then goat path, and then the goat path went down what felt like more cliff than grade... and it did that for a long, long time. Kept telling the wife that a bus could go anywhere a dune buggy could go, and hoping I'd believe it myself.
We got there. Mentioned to the waitress that the road in was pretty exciting -- she couldn't believe we'd come that way. TV show crew had helicoptered in, which the host had failed to mention. Fortunately, the road out to SLO and US 101 was real pavement -- don't know if we'd ever have been able to go back UP the goat path.
