Colorado Part 2

Paddling in snow melt, skinny dipping in hot springs and climbing mountains in old Buses. What a trip…

- Mark Walker

Last month, I wrote about how my trip to Kustom Coach Werks came about earlier this year during research for my Patina Volkswagens book and gave you an insight into our action-packed first few days in Colorado. As I’d mentioned in that report, we’d been loaned a 1970 Bay Window Deluxe by a friend of KCW Dan Sterner; Dan also has an original paint Mango Green / Seagull Grey Split Bus, so he had a ‘spare’ he could do without for a couple of weeks.

The Bus had clearly seen some off-road action, so the first weekend was spent giving it a cleanup, while Jo and Gretchen made some curtains. Monday morning dawned and a box arrived at KCW containing the front window regulators, so I set to fitting these in the warm sun; the driver’s side install went well, but the passenger side one had arrived bent out of shape and was a total nightmare to fit. Once it was fitted, the ratchet broke in less than two minutes; not having any other option, I decided to leave the door panel off and prop the glass up with a wood baton – I knew that we’d be needing to put the window down in Utah later on in the trip.

While I’d been finishing the Bus, Jo John and Gretchen had been packing the Buses up and were waiting for me to finish the windows, so I quickly showered before we all hit the road; we had decided to take John and Gretchen up on their kind offer to show us around Colorado for a couple of nights. At the last minute, Derrick Pacheco arrived back from helping the guys to retrieve Franz’ broken Baja from the day before and decided to join us on the trip; we all hopped in the Buses and took the road south out of Grand Junction.