California with Vintage Surfari Wagons
Windows down, hair flying everywhere and we are in one of our kombi’s cruising along the Great Ocean Road. For our family me (Alyce) husband George and kids Mae and Kim, this is the best place to be, out on the road in our vans.
As we stare out the windows, never tiring of the beauty surrounding the cliffs edge, we would excitedly chat about all our dreams and our future with our kombi’s. Kombi’s which I have watched George spend sleepless nights working on. We have so many ideas for our business but it always ends with we will be able to do it as soon as we finish these resto’s. (A whole other story for another day)
Despite still pushing wet poo up hill on finishing resto’s we bit the bullet this year and over Instagram messaging, Dianne from Vintage Surfari Wagons and I, said “bugga this, lets do a kombi swap”! I’d go out to the shed and ask George should we, can we, do you want to and his head was always too deep in an engine to answer and I’m sure Dianne experienced the same with her husband Bill so we women made the executive decision to live life in the fast lane and book flights. Knowing the monstrosity of work that we both had we also both needed a holiday.
Emotions were high. We have been in business 6 years and we have been on call 24/7 every day since we opened. Bill and Dianne have been in business 14 years (yes lets all take a minute silence for them)!!!! The thought of shutting business for 16 days was massive and to think we were finally going on our first holiday made my throat burn every time I thought about it and I’d cry. A lot.
Anyone who knows us well knows we don’t get out much so it was a big deal. We were going from not being able to ever go camping with friends, seeing the Grampians, Wilsons Prom or venturing past Port Campbell to flying to the other side of the world to drive the West Coast of America!
Knee deep in our own restoration we couldn’t see how it was going to happen but family and friends stepped in and demanded we went. They weren’t letting us cancel this trip and as you will see from the following photos and the screens gone blurry as I write this….but this was the best trip of our lives. The kids couldn’t wait to travel in a kombi in another country and George and I couldn’t wait to switch off our phones and discover what it was like to be a customer. If you missed our Instagram stories here are a few photos to take us back down memory lane of that time two fellow crazy people, Bill and Dianne gave us the trip of a lifetime in California!
We will be seeing the beautiful couple in Australia soon so they too can finally be customers and we can’t wait! We hope Australia is as fun for them as California was for us!
Vintage Surfari Wagons have 3 styles of VWs so for those of you who want to travel further in a newer van they have you covered also. We couldn’t imagine anything other than the kombi and with George being a full time mechanic they kindly trusted us to see where the wind blew us over the 16 days. Their kombi Cardiff ran like an absolute dream up the West Coast from Costa Mesa to San Fransisco over a week and then we headed East to Yosemite National Park where we had another week to mosy back but we wish we had a year!
If you’re thinking of heading to California we highly recommend doing it in a van. So much freedom comes with traveling in a van with your family. You have your food, bed and wheels with you at all times and we met so many people A: because we were in a kombi B: we were Australian and Americans love the Australian accent. We are two Aussies who love a chat so we never really got too far in a hurry but in our opinion this is the best way to travel!
We would wake up in the morning on the beach, look across the road at the motels and know we had the 6 star location. Highway 1 and 101 are really impressive following the coastline the whole way but we did take the smaller roads whenever we could and went through small country towns which are some of our best memories as we met the local folk who were real nice and gave us a real feel for the different walks of life in California.
I could go on forever about our trip and how wonderful Bill and Dianne and their fleet of vws are but I’ll let you take the scroll down memory lane instead and if you have any questions about our adventure we are more than happy to chat so shoot us an email or contact Vintage Surfari Wagons x We really did fly by the seat of our pants with no real plan or structure. We had an idea that we wanted to travel the coast and if we had time for Yosemite then bonus. As it turns out Yosemite was the real heart thumper for us but if you’re planning a trip Bill and Dianne will be able to guide you to the right van for the timeframe you have.
Peace Out x