Greetings from Prince Edward Island!

We are a retired couple now living in "the Maritimes" in Canada. We bought our first VW in 1995. It was time to get off the ground in the tent so we were shopping for a tent trailer in Salmon Arm, BC. We drove through Vernon, BC on the way home to Revelstoke, BC and what did we see sitting on the VW lot? Two Westfalias!!! There was a white manual diesel and a red automatic gas. We fell in love! Always liked VWs so it was an easy decision.

That year we were able to get out on our 1st camping adventure on April 7th. Our family of three spent many happy years camping in that gorgeous thing, but then...... On a trip to Lake Louise, AB in 1998, she died. Good Sam Emergency Roadside Service took us all the way to Calgary for service. We discovered that it was incredibly difficult to find a mechanic to work on the diesel engine. No one wanted to touch it--turns out that there were only 11 diesels imported to Canada from Germany. Finally found Quattrotech. We stayed in their compound for 3 nights while they did their troubleshooting and then tried to find parts. So disconcerting! They finally got us on the road--by that time it was time to go back to work. She was never reliable after that (even after new injectors). The second thing that happened was that we decided to sell our house and go full-time RVing. We bought a 40' Monaco Dynasty and moved in. It was late 2004. We ended up on Vancouver Island that winter and decided to sell our beautiful Westfalia. We both cried! We always regretted selling her from that moment on!

Fast forward to 2008. We were still full-time in the coach (Ciao Bella) and towing (Bambino) and living near Vancouver, BC. The problem was that we could no longer pull into a nice little campground. We always had to find a "big rig" friendly campground or go to the Walmart (or truck stops, etc.). We REALLY missed "camping". So one day one of my wife's colleagues at work was telling her that they wanted to sell their Westfalia to buy a boat. By the time her lunch was finished, we were the proud owners of a red 1994 automatic Eurovan Westfalia. We camped so much that the other full-time RVer's in our resort got jealous and started purchasing vans so they could go "camping" too.

Now the funny thing..... When we started combing through the glove box we found the original sales receipt. She was the same red automatic gas Westfalia that was sitting on the lot beside our original diesel! Her name is "Isabella" and she now lives in/on Prince Edward Island with us. Her paint is a little faded, but she looks pretty sharp with a good coat of wax.

And we LOVE her! Someday she will pass on to our son as part of his inheritance. Lucky man!

 

Welcome to the forum Isabella.

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