After Thanksgiving day, Darlene and I loaded up the Traveling Cat Adventure Vehicle and headed down the coast south of Monterey. My intention was for us to stay a couple of nights at the Pfeiffer Big Sur State Park campground, but I forgot it was still closed from the impact of the Soberanes fire earlier this year. D’oh! So we kept heading south as the sun set (there’s no overnight parking allowed along the highway here), passing several alternate, full campgrounds until we found space at the San Simeon State Park campground. We walked to the beach in the rain the next morning before heading out, stopped to let the cats out for a scary adventure when the rain let up later, caught a tour of “Nitt Witt Ridge” in Cambria and made it to Morro Bay by nightfall. On Saturday night, the campgrounds were full so we found a nice out-of-the-way spot to boondock for the night. On Sunday, we visited the bay, the rock, the natural history museum and the Monarch butterflies before heading home in the evening up 101.
We’re slowly building up to longer outings with them and they do seem to be adapting to it as a second home. They’re also learning to go out for a little exploration in their harnesses. Hera’s become quite the little explorer while Pan is still pretty nervous and reluctant. Neither of them are happy about being in the vehicle while it’s in motion though.
Just some pictures from our first real excursion with Pan and Hera in the Mobile Cat House (aka, Traveling Cat Adventure Vehicle). To the beach (Waddell Beach) for Sunday afternoon and evening:
Holy cat snacks! I bought an RV!! To be otherwise known as the Mobile Cat House,Traveling Cat Camper, Cat-Assisted Adventure Van, Traveling Cat Adventure Vehicle? The idea here is to be able to take extended road trips and bring the cats along so that I don’t always have to make arrangements for a cat sitter.
I wanted something small enough to be able to take most anywhere (cities, state/national parks, even dirt roads) and yet large enough that the cats won’t go stir crazy and hate it. Darlene and I intend to use it mostly, if not always, “dry camping” (or “boondocking” without hookups for water or electricity); in other words, our intention isn’t to travel to RV “resorts” or campgrounds. We’ll prefer being able to camp out on open national park, forest service or BLM lands.
Now if this wasn’t mostly about being able to bring the cats along, I’d definitely go for a compact 4×4 Sprinter van conversion that would allow us to go anywhere we would have previously gone and still easily fit in city parking spaces. However, to better accommodate the cats (it is the Traveling Cat Adventure Vehicle after all), I eventually settled on the somewhat wider and longer Leisure Travel Vans “Unity 24TB” (Twin Bed) model, built on the Mercedes Sprinter diesel-powered chassis. It’s a little wider and longer than a normal Sprinter van and thus a “class B+ or C” but it should still be reasonably manageable both in the city and in the wild. Unfortunately, there aren’t yet options for electric drivetrains on campervans and motorhomes, but they’re coming. Mercedes-Benz may well have an all-electric option for its Sprinter chassis in a few more years.
While the Leisure Travel Vans build lacks somewhat in some of the technical features I wanted, many of those aspects can be upgraded after the fact. The rest of the craftsmanship, aesthetics and build quality are fantastic. (I’ve posted my shopping/comparison notes here from my RV/campervan selection process as a sort of a review of what’s available that might be helpful to others.)
Anyway, I found and bought this only very slightly used 2016 Unity from a previous owner in Montana, with just 3100 miles on it, before I drove it the 1250 miles back home. It was great to find a relatively new used one, to avoid the immediate depreciation hit of buying new and also to skip the 6-8 month long backlog for new orders. Leisure Travel Vans are hard to come by and dealer’s orders seem to sell immediately. I wasn’t even able to look at one in person anywhere in California.
It remains to be seen if Pan and Hera will adapt to taking extended road trips in their new Traveling Cat House. If it doesn’t work out with the cats, I’m sure it’ll still be a fun adventure and it should be easy enough to sell again if I find it’s not something I want to keep. In the meantime, there’s a number of changes and upgrades I’ll be making to the Traveling Cat House which I’ll document here, to hopefully help out others like myself: RV Tips, Upgrades and Customizations
Update: The cats are doing great and have adapted well to traveling in the RV. Follow this tag (“RV Travels”) to see and read about Pan and Hera’s traveling adventures!
I noticed Pan looking out the window intently this morning… presumably watching the wild rabbits in the front yard again. But no, it was somebody else looking for the bunnies today! Grabbed a little video, set to the tune of some classic cartoon music from Warner Brothers:
This is some fantastic (and spooky) video footage of several mountain lions hanging around Rancho San Antonio park (near Cupertino and Los Altos). In particular, watch for the part where the lions sit and watch the runner/hiker with the flashlight in the distance:
Here’s also a related news report and video where a runner came upon and recorded a lion capturing a deer at mid-day in Rancho San Antonio park.
Pan had developed a habit of lying in wait on the upstairs deck early every morning, in a perfect spot for an unsuspecting bird to alight nearby on the wall. It was unfortunately a reasonably successful strategy, so I decided to try one of those plastic owls to ward off the birds. Pan and Hera’s different reactions to first seeing it was amusing:
Pan and Hera meet the Guardian Owl (60 seconds, 20 MB)
And yes, the guardian owl has been effective. It’s been well over a year (I’m backdating this post) and almost every bird has stayed away from the deck but Pan continued to go out before dawn every morning for most of a year, oblivious to why the birds stopped coming. All except this one little guy who came along many months later. He was apparently too smart for his own good and not fooled by the plastic owl. He even seemed to taunt Pan through the window over the course of a week or two. However, I’m guessing this is also that same bird that Pan eventually caught a little later.
