When was the first time that you realized that you love VW campers?

[clarinetbcn]

I'm reposting mine from another thread.

When I was 16, a friend of mine came up to me in high school and said, "Hey, you want to go to New York?" We were bored with school, so I said sure. We were all good students, so we invented a travel study proposal saying that since we were in the west, we had never seen anything old, and we wanted to get a sense of the history of our country. To our shock, it was accepted, on the condition that we do all the scheduled home work while we were away. So, in 1971, during the school year, six of us, 3 guys 3 girls, nobody over 18, set off on on a 10,000 mile six week journey in my parents' '68 VW bus armed with a file of nearly 50 notarized documents from school, parents, insurance company. We crossed the country alternating camping grounds (4 in the bus, we had removed the third row and built a platform to support a full sized mattress, and 2 in a tent) and staying with friends/relatives. The trip to New York was even more amazing than we had imagined, then continued up to Canada and back through the north to California. Life altering trip. We were arrested twice as runaways. The second time was in Illinois, where we were taken to the police station, and out came the file of notarized papers, enough for everyone there to have 2 or three of something. The guy who arrested us said threateningly, "I'm going to call your parents." We said yes, yes, call Victor! Victor, the father of one of the guys, was a lawyer with the American Civil Liberties Union, the most powerful civil liberties group in the country. We could all overhear Victor screaming over the phone that unless we were all outside calling from a phone booth telling him that we had been released within 10 minutes, he would have a law suit on his hands that he would never forget. So he took us outside, this big fat guy in cowboy boots, big Texas hat and aviator sunglasses, put his hand on his gun and said to us, "Alright, you can go...but I want you out of town by sundown."

That's when my love of busses started.

 

[TripleBee]

22nd of may 2010. 5 days after receiving the papers, on the first stop in Étretat (France).
It's the first time in 10 years to probably not going anywhere in it.

 

[Gary&Heather]

In 1978 when I first passed my test my girlfriend (now the boss) and myself brought our first car together it was a VW beetle really love that car so much character then in 1981 we brought our first VW bay window van and converted it had these vehicles on and off ever since

 

[Bill R]

When I went to the NEC Show 2 years ago to look at tents and had my head turned by Camper Vans resulting in the purchase of a new California Ocean 5 days later!

 

[Auberg-ine]

When I was driving around in one of Bill's busses, with a bunch of screaming chicks at the back.
I must have been 6 then, at that yearly fair....

 

[Nick.C]

About 18 months ago. Our friends were thinking of getting a T6 conversion and we went with them to the NEC just for something to do and we hired a couple of conversions so that they could try before they brought. The weekend took me back to family holidays in a caravan and I absolutely loved it. We had toyed with getting a caravan when our kids were younger, but truth be told I never really fancied towing. The van we hired wasn’t great though and the wife was not keen, so we hired a California for a week in February and we were sold. We brought our Ocean a few weeks later.

 

[Wongo]

Having a T2, chasing the rust around but meeting folks at shows etc. Mind you a side wind causing me cross three lanes on thr M11 got me onto a T6,
first a Bilbo LWB then a Cali,.

 

[Karlos]

We have always camped, tents then a trailer tent when my daughter was born then we moved onto a folding camper.

3 years ago we were planning a European trip to celebrate said daughter finishing Uni. I bought a 3 month old LWB T6 and had it converted and we loved it. Sold it after a year and went back to the folding camper which I still love but need a camp site every night.

Looked at all sorts of options but came back to the Cali, it just works so well for us. I got in it yesterday to put the EHU on and it still smells like new instantly transporting me back to the last Saturday in August last year when it was delivered.

 

[5i1ver8ack]

May 2015.

At the Surrey County Show in Guildford. We'd been around all the usual commercial stands and seen all the animals. We had a look at some Motorhome stands and liked the idea. Then was came across a California Ocean on the VW stand and preferred the idea. Five months later we hired one for a weekend. Four months later we ordered one. We’ve always camped in tents, large and small. But the California extends the comfortable family camping season to cover the whole year.