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Farewell, old mechanical friend!
As my wife and I considered our upcoming move from Seattle to Martins Ferry, Ohio, we shared three concerns:
- Leaving our adult children who live in Seattle
- Our daughter’s corn snake, Bethsaida, which we’ve been caring for
- Our Dodge Caravan
I think most all of you can relate to the challenge of separating from family, but our daughters and son were supportive of our move. Our daughter, who lives in a small place, still didn’t feel ready to take the snake back, so it’s going to Ohio.
Now about that van… It’s at 280,000 miles and we weren’t sure it was up for the trip. But we didn’t want to just sell it. Because, well, it’s been a good friend. A long friendship.
That friendship began in 2007, when we were considering getting a new vehicle for a cross-country trip. We’d been driving a Chevrolet Lumina (like the one Meryl Streep drove as a rental in the film Adaptation) and that sedan was getting too small for three teens, especially for a long trip.
My wife went with our youngest daughter to a dealership in Cloverdale, CA. A van caught our daughter’s eye because it had a DVD player built in. My wife called me about it. The 2006 Caravan had been a rental on the lot and had 60,000 miles. I came to look at it; we decided to buy. Our daughter named the van “Harold Bijoux” because it was a mobile movie theater.
It served us well on many family trips; to Yosemite and Yellowstone, to the snow and Disneyland. But the biggest trip was to come.
After our kids were grown and out of the house, we decided it was time for adventures. In 2015, we spent our weekends visiting churches throughout California to prepare for our big 2016 journey, to go to a church and a bar in every state. (If you want that full story, you can read the book.)
So, Harold Bijoux took us to all of the contiguous United States. (Sadly, it couldn’t come with us to Alaska or Hawaii.) We didn’t get stickers for the back of the van in every state, but some we particularly cherished. Such as:
A sticker from Booked Up, Larry McMurtry’s bookstore in Archer, Texas. We also visited his favorite fast-food stop (I recommend reading McMurtry’s Walter Benjamin at the Dairy Queen.)
A sticker reading “All Writers Are Local Somewhere” from Flannery O’Connor’s childhood home.
“Scum of the Earth” is the sticker with the name of a wonderful church in Denver, CO (referencing I Corinthians 4).
Of course, a sticker for Wall Drug in South Dakota.
“Life is a Great Adventure or Nothing at All” from NASA in Florida.
“NOLA Til Ya Die,” a sticker from a dear new friend in New Orleans.
So many more, but one of my favorites must be the “I Like Ike” sticker we bought at the Eisenhower Presidential Library in Abilene, KS on election day 2016.
That trip made for one of the best years of our lives, and the van really never gave us any problems through the whole year. Except that one time. For our time in Alaska and Hawaii, we flew out from New York and left our car with a friend in Connecticut. When we got back and started the car, it made some truly frightening sounds. We wondered if Harold was seriously ill. If it was the engine or the transmission, we didn’t have enough money able to pay for it. It might have been the end of the trip.
We took it to a shop our friend recommended. Turned out they only needed to change the spark plugs. One of the mechanics said 2006 was a great year for Dodge Caravans. Just how it is sometimes, he said. Some years for a car company everything comes together. The models for that year just last. He said if we kept regularly changing the oil, the car would last for a very long time.
Harold hit 200,000 miles at the end of 2016, when we were driving back into California, the state where we started and ended.
And it was our only vehicle until last year. But when it hit 275,000 miles and the shocks were pretty iffy, we thought another vehicle was needed. We bought a Ford Edge. We’ve been using two cars this last year. But it didn’t seem feasible to bring both vehicles on the move to Ohio.
So, we wondered what to do with Harold.
I’ve been working at Seattle’s Union Gospel Mission. Last month, the truck of a friend of ours was hit by a drunk driver. Our friend was a program graduate who now works for the Mission. He needed something to get him to work. We didn’t have to sell or junk Harold, we could give Harold to a friend. A friend who would keep Harold’s stickers. And off to Ohio, we can go.
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Thank you for sharing this journey. And a fine end for your time with the car.
I’m not a minivan kind of person, but we rented a Caravan for a family trip from NC to Maine. It was perfect! Plenty of room for 4 adults and one kid. Very comfortable and easy to drive. I’ll have to look back and see if it was in 2006. Glad you found Harold a good home.
Edit: I looked back at the pics and it was May of 2001.
You’re abandoning those stickers? That doesn’t seem right.
Caravan.
The moniker evokes several images for me, some good (plenty of cupholders), some not (transmissions falling off, motors falling off, transmissions falling off again.)
It is great to hear that even Caravans can have a good year. I never knew that!
Did Trabants made in a certain year exhibit exceptional reliability?
FWIW, that church in the third picture down is St. Joseph’s Catholic Church in Tuolumne City, CA which was a filming location for 1952’s classic Western, High Noon.
We weren’t minivan people either, but we became as such after we adopted our girls. Having a MommyVan was too darned convenient, especially when traveling with luggage for four females . . .
Thanks for sharing your story and the story of the van in your life! I kept itching to get to the end and respond “Just keep the thing. If you’ve taken care of it, a few day drive across interstates ought to be easy peasy for it.”, but you took that reply right away from me and did something even better. I hope your acquaintance is able to keep Harold chugging along for many miles more!
We had two successive minivans from Chrysler Corporation: a 1991 Plymouth Voyager (same as the Dodge Caravan, but with different upholstery), and a 2001 Dodge Caravan. We kept each only until about 120,000 miles. They were very useful for family road trips. The kids could each have their own space, and we still had room for luggage.
Near the end of its time with us, the Voyager carried two adults, two adolescents, two pet rats, and a cat on our cross country move (Orange County, California to Rochester, NY). It carried a license plate frame “Mom’s Transit District” derived from a neighbor’s comment about the amount of shuttling our children around that Mrs. Tabby did in that van.
The Caravan spent a couple of summers on many college visitation trips. The license plate frame for that one ended up being “Parental Moving and Storage” because once children entered college, it moved stuff into and out of dorms, and it brought friends’ stuff to our oversized home garage for storage during summer breaks.
We are not bumper sticker people. Mrs. Tabby finally put a brightly colored stuffed critter on the dashboard of the Caravan so she could distinguish our silver Caravan from the many other silver Caravans of the era in the supermarket parking lot. On at least one occasion our son started to enter the wrong silver Caravan in the school pick-up line. There were a lot of Caravans in our town through the ‘oughts.
That identifying critter Mrs. Tabby added to the Caravan dashboard lives on some twenty years later riding the dashboard of our daughter’s silver Toyota compact SUV with her husband and children.
[Side note: That 1991 Voyager had the most comfortable driver’s seat I have ever had in a car. Perfectly shaped for my body, complete with a bolster at the perfect place for my lower back.]
A small trend may be in the making as “senior men” shift from large pickups to small SUVs and minivans.
Do I spy with my little eye a sticker from the Luna Park Cafe to the left of the Silicon Valley sticker?
Too bad! My tan 2002 Honda Odyssey (which looks a lot lot your Dodge) was just pronounced “on life support” by my mechanic yesterday. It has a little over 200,000 miles. I am in the market for another used one, and I live in Cleveland which is just about on your way from Seattle to Martins Ferry.
Interesting. I had an ’89 Plymouth Voyager (same car, different nameplate). It was, hands down and by far, the worst car I’ve ever owned. Bought it new. On the way home from the dealership the transmission went out. It went back to the dealership for two or three weeks. On the way home the transmission went out. Back to the dealership for another month. From then on it was downhill. I think we went through five transmission overhauls & rebuilds, assorted engine issues, I don’t remember how many radiator fans. At least a couple radiators. I don’t remember the mileage when I donated it to the Salvation Army. But wait! There’s more!
A month after I got the car back the second time, I was taking kids from our church youth group to Yosemite to go ice skating. Rounding a curve, a Volvo lost control and slid along the driver’s side from the driver’s door to the rear tail light. My Voyager was of course not drivable. The owner of the Volvo gave his fender a pull to get it off the front tire and drove home. I don’t remember for sure, but I think the Rangers gave the kids a ride to the Valley, and they had a great day skating, while I dealt with the car. So another month, now in the body shop. Insurance surely would have totaled it if it hadn’t been a brand new car. In retrospect I so wish they would have. But wait! There’s more!
We did take the van on our cross – country trip, and it served us well. I think I only had to replace one radiator fan – maybe two – on the trip. A few more years passed, and it was finally time to get rid of it. We decided to donate it. Several years later we started getting invoices for something in four figures from an impound yard in the S.F. Bay area. It turned out the Salvation Army never received our car. Apparently the tow truck driver who picked it up, um, didn’t exactly deliver it where it was supposed to go. It had a wild and crazy life, eventually being impounded after a high speed chase. And the “new owner” never bothered to register it. Thankfully, after much research and digging, I obtained a copy of the notice of transfer of ownership that I had filed with DMV. That’s the only thing that saved us some thousands of dollars in impound fees.
Here are the lessons to the wise: when you sell a car, immediately file the notice of transfer of ownership with your DMV. Then make half a dozen copies and file them with all your important papers. Add a copy to your will. Put a copy in a safe deposit box, then have it tattooed on your back.
Yup. Blocks from where we currently live.
Mrs Tim & I bought a 1997 Dodge Grand Caravan when we came back stateside from Okinawa. It was a nice ride – looked good, handled well, and was very comfortable for a family of five. It just wasn’t put together very well. The transmission broke about a hundred miles after the warranty ended. I had it fixed at the local Dodge dealer, and they were unsympathetic to my complaints. So I wrote a letter to the corporate HQ, not asking for anything, but telling them how disappointed I was in their product. Lo and behold, they covered the cost of repairing the transmission. They stood behind their cars.
But after the transmission failed two more times and the OIL light came on as we were going to my Mama’s for Thanksgiving dinner (forcing me to wait in the rain for the tow truck), we’d had enough and sold it. We bought a Honda Odyssey that soldiers on as my daughter’s ride.
I bought a new Dodge Caravan around 1998. Chrysler invited all new owners to Universal Studios in Orlando for a ‘thank you’. We went. After regular hours we had the park to ourselves. No lines and all food was free at all the concession stands. That was a great time.
I wish I had fond memories of my Caravan. I traded in my F150 Lariat and my daughter cried for about a week. I felt I caved to the minivan life too. At about 80,000 miles the transmission had to be replaced. It cost $2000. I was on the fence whether I wanted to junk it or fix it. I fixed it. Two months later the engine went. I got rid of it.
We bought a used Dodge 2008 Caravan. Ran it for about 100k. Sold it and bought a used 2006 Toyota Sienna. So far we have put 180+k [260k total] on it. It has a well-matched engine and transmission. No unexpected expenses. Just tires, battery, shocks, alignments, and oil changes–every 5k.
Driving from the contiguous U.S. to Alaska and vice versa is more common than you might think. It sounds like the van wasn’t reliable enough to risk it, but there are plenty of mechanic shops along the way, after long stretches of wilderness, that are experienced in fixing vehicles taking long trips.
In Fairbanks, I occasionally see vans and campers with valid European license plates, and a couple of summers ago, I drove around the Wal-Mart parking lot in the morning — they allow campers to use their parking lots overnight — and counted three European license plates, one being from Sweden or Norway. I don’t know how they go about shipping these vehicles, or whether they’ve driven them from the east coast of the U.S. or Canada.
With all the military in Hawaii, I’ll bet that shipping personally owned vehicles to Hawaii is common too.
I don’t know what the pricing is, but Europeans don’t make as much money as we do on average, and that some of them will ship their campers here, even if it’s once in a lifetime, is significant.
The issue of driving to Alaska was time. We were going to every state in 2016, spending about a week in each state. So we didn’t have the time to drive through Canada.
I don’t usually point out typos, but it sounds like you have plenty of time.
Fixed
My good friend James says that in their shop, Honda blocks never need re-boring, just a light hone of the cylinders. Our 1987 Civic Si (blindingly fast) died at 237,000 miles when a moron ran a red light. Original clutch.
Canada, the 51st state?
Try telling Canadian customs that. Your trip may be disrupted.
So many people look down on minivans with disdain (I was one of them), but they are great for family trips and work out pretty well for most hauling jobs. Glad to hear you marked yours with memories. My family of two adults and three children covered a lot of the upper Midwest and the East with our minivans. Every year we’d make the trek from Minnesota to our families in NY and PA with two kids in the middle seats and our oldest in the third row (her “apartment”). Early on I strapped a portable VCR/TV to the center front seat arm rests, and they’d watch our favorite movies (while we listened). Later that became a much smaller DVD player with two screens strapped to the front headrests.
Our 2001 Windstar lasted until about 2019, though sometime in that interval we had to replace a manifold gasket at Ford’s expense. When the two oldest daughters took it over in their teen years, it became known as the “Swagger Wagon”.
That is great with me. It means I can get one for a cheaper price!
I’ve always gotten full-size vans. I’ve moved myself a few times with them, and a minivan would be incapable of that. Also the engine/drivetrain are more robust and easier – hence less expensive – to work on. And, I don’t really care for front-wheel-drive which is a big part of the drivetrain concern.
I’ve never owned a full-sized van, but I’ve driven them at work. When roads aren’t icy they’re ok. They handle badly on icy roads.
Depends on the tires, etc. It’s also possible nowadays to get all-wheel-drive.
I’ve been watching the full-size van market for maybe 10 years now and while they were routinely a little more expensive than minivans, in the years since the COVID-19 lockdowns the prices have gone crazy (more than I’d expect having observed other vehicle prices) and the selection has been reduced. I long figured I’d replace one of my cars when they finally wear out or we size out of them with a full size van, in lieu of something like an SUV or full size truck, but the price point even for something basic is way out of my desired range.
*Yes, I know that Chevrolet and GMC still produce their large vans, but the rear bench seats have no provisions for head restraints for adult or taller children passengers and is a non-starter for me due to that fact. Custom seats can be had, but trying to figure that out is a bit messy and more complicated than I desire.
I do not fathom how Ram (of Stellantis Corporation, formerly Chrysler) can have front wheel drive on its “full size” van (and I know Ram’s “full size” van does not come in a passenger format). It’s basically a Fiat design that was probably used extensively in Europe before coming to the United States, but how can front wheel only drive move a big van with a lot of weight in back?