Wann'a hear more about this "Beautiful Orange Camper?" OK. Just remember Nick, you asked for this. So, here's what I know of the story on SC's long lost orange camper (SC, if I get anything wrong, please correct me) . . .
SC was living on Signal Mt. several years ago and had this "Beautiful" orange 1970 Westy. At some point it started jumping out of 4th gear and he ended up selling it. The guy who bought it lived in Noble, GA, just north of LaFayette. He drove it home of Signal Mt. with a bungee cord holding the shift lever in 4th. When he got it home, he pulled the engine and put it in his Westy and parked the orange camper out back with several other bus shells.
My first campout in a VW was the "Dead of Winter" campout at Cloudland Canyon when my grandson was 2. At that time, Homer was 3 shades of primer with a bunch of glass chalk graffiti decorating him, and he was a transporter. I had removed the middle seat to give Joy and I room to sleep on the floor and we had Jesse bundled up on the rear seat. Saturday night it got down to -10 degrees with a wind chill of -45. I found out that night that two adults can't sleep in a 4' square. The next day it warmed up to +10 so we ventured out of Homer and started trying to thaw out while socializing with all the other nuts that attended this event, but did know enough about camping to bring firewood. Anyway, as we talking ‘bout surviving the night in the floor of the bus, a local VW enthusiast who had the sense to stay home at night and just drive up and visit with everyone during the day was hanging out at the same campfire we were at and told me he had just what I needed . . . a Westy interior for Homer.
So, I bought the beautiful orange camper that used to belong to SC. That’s where the cabinets, z-bed and chair that are in Homer came from. The door locks were a matched set, so they went on Homer as well. The transmission went to some rail buggy guys up on Lookout Mt. At Bug-A-Palϋza 4, the beautiful orange camper became the Volks Folks “Paint-A-Bus.” You’ll see a picture of it from time to time in the banner on our home page. After the show Kyle took it to his place for storage. One of the biggest complaints about Bug-A-Palϋza 3 and 4 had been the lack of shower facilities at Camp Jordan. As we were discussing what we could do about the problem, someone suggested building a portable shower of some sort on a trailer. As a joke, I said something like “we could build one in that orange Westy over at Kyle’s place." Kyle failed to realize I was joking. Next thing I knew he had a heat-as-you-go shower head and we were building a shower bus! I think I was the only person to use it at BP-5 . . . the heat-as-you-go part of the shower head didn’t work after the high pressure blew the head apart and something in it shorted out. Man, that was a cold shower!!! After the show, George Lynn of A-Team Plumbing in Ooltewah remodeled it for us and installed a real water heater.
A few years later SC had moved to Noble, about two miles from where the guy who bought the orange Westy from him and later sold it to me lived. SC joined our forums with the now world famous “Help with a slow starter” thread. Somewhere along the way, we connected the dots and realized that the Shower Bus and SC’s long lost Beautiful Orange Camper were one in the same.
And as Paul Harvey used to say, “and now you know the REST of the story!”
