Meet Moby Dick - Our accessible RV-pulling Nissan conversion

We had a vision and this year it came true.

We loved to travel yet seldom did so. That's because it's an ungodly pain in the neck.

I rely on a Hoyer lift to get in and out of bed. It's a great device, the industry standard. Basically a chromed-out engine hoist, it lifts you up in a sling and then rolls underneath the bed to deposit you down. Lots of people use them, but they are terrible to travel with because hotels can't (won't) deal with them. Virtually all hotel beds these days sit on top of box platforms, that block the lift from rolling underneath. Locating an accessible room without a platform bed, or even a hotel staffer or manager who knows whether there is a platform or not, is close to finding a needle in a haystack. Expect fighting and stress. After a while you give up trying. Travel is supposed to be fun, right?



Anyway, the solution for us is an RV. This is like bringing our own hotel room with us. Mabster retired recently, so it was time to do this.
The problem is that most wheelchair accessible vans cannot tow an RV. We were due for a new vehicle anyway, but being 6-2 in a Permobil F3 I had a hard time fitting into most of them in the first place, without even considering the RV. We looked into larger vans too, each with its own problems (i.e., giant expense, unreliable systems).

After an awful lot of homework - way more than I had ever put into any vehicle - we decided to go large. We chose a Nissan NV 3500 cargo van. The large engine's got what it takes to tow, and the cargo doorway is high enough for me to enter without playing limbo. Incredibly, we just happened to find one with only 5,000 miles on it, and it already had a wheelchair lift! (And the central console ripped out, which we were going to do anyway. GMTA.) Our eyes bugged out. Then we saw where it was: all the way across the country in Pasco, Washington. What to do?

Like the lads said, Help! I need somebody. Help! Not just anybody. Help! You know I need someone… Help!

Enter my crazy, incredible brother and his even crazier, incredibler girlfriend. She works for an airline and can fly for free. On Thanksgiving we were putting together the deal by phone, and the next day they jetted out over the Rockies. They landed right in time for our loan to come through. They swooped into the dealership, took possession of the auto freshly inspected by the fantastic guys at Perfection Tire & Auto Repair in Pasco, and left for Idaho just ahead of a snowstorm. It caught up to them in the mountains and they crawled through and all the way across icy Montana. The storm gained on them again in central Iowa (with me hovering over weather maps at my home and barking directions over the phone), so finally they pulled into a hotel. It was a mighty good move: the next morning driving through Iowa and Illinois, cars and trucks littered the roadsides like great buried toys. They stopped counting at 500.

A few hours later we were never so glad to see them, and our new vehicle. It's a white monster that was an obsession to find and an epic voyage to bring back home. So, naturally, we named it Moby Dick.

Next, the vehicle conversion begins.




In the belly of the beast

When we roll up in our cargo van, people surely roll their eyes. This Nissan NV 3500 is a whole different beast from the Chevy Venture minivan we've driven for 15 years. Especially with its 11'7" high-top roof.

But there was a method to our madness: number one, that I could roll through the cargo door with plenty of head clearance. I'm tall but not a giant, and felt incredibly let down by how few choices of converted minivans could accommodate me. These are way too expensive to be in any way uncomfortable. Anyway, item two for us was the ability to tow. Mab had a small RV in mind, and unfortunately a minivan wasn't going to cut it. So we went with the monster, Moby Dick, that fits both bills easily.



This thing really is a cargo van, built for business, with no creature comforts or windows in back.



We were really trying to yank the passenger seat and have me sit up front. The trouble was in my wheelchair that I sit up high, higher than the windows. We looked into fabricating windows at my eye level, but this didn't work. The solution lay elsewhere. On the ceiling, to be exact.



The cargo area is cavernous. Mabster walks around back there with ease. With that kind of space available, there so many possibilities. So we brainstormed with the guys at Lift-Aids in Arlington, TX. We came up with a different way to sit up front.

They fixed a sliding rail along the ceiling, equipped with a Liko-Rall lift. Now I can transfer into the passenger seat in a sling, and enjoy the same comfort, view and safety rig that everyone else takes for granted. It took some practice, but we've got the transfer down now. For trips of an hour or longer, we do the transfer. Otherwise I get strapped in the back.



Stock, the van floor was unadorned corrugated-type steel, covered by a heavy foam overlay that still made for a bumpy ride. Lift-Aids laid down a sturdy sheet of plywood covered by a layer of stick-grip vinyl. It is well-fitted and snug, vastly improving the space for a wheelchair. Great job. (Photos before and after.)

 

We'll install cargo windows when funds (and safety: still researching this) permit. You have to find the right spots to sit in. This is not a consumer vehicle, not built for comfort, so if you aren't seated and secured right, you're in for a rodeo ride. But these are the trade-offs I bought into, in order to finally travel. We have been waiting a long time for our shot. So while I can do it, let's go!

See you out there. You'll see us coming from a mile away.

Poverty Point Reservoir State Park, LA - Big lake, big trees, big nice

1500 Poverty Point Pkwy, Delhi, LA
(318) 878-7536 Website

Such a spacious, relaxing park in the northeast corner of Louisiana near Poverty Point World Heritage Site, featuring a huge lake with boating facilities, and lots of trees creating separate camping areas, so that we had all kinds of room and privacy. Long gravel pull-through space with water and electric.

Note to self: check into these places during daylight. Because our morning routine is so long, we tend to get a late jump on travel days. Plan shorter drive days or something? Finding our way and hooking up in this place with only a flashlight was a bear.

Arrowhead Lake Campground & Rec Center, IL - Lovely lake and trail, good times

1600 Peterson Ave, Johnston City, Illinois Website

The highlight at this campground off of I-57 in Southern Illinois is the lovely natural lake, that you can hike around on a wooded trail. It starts with a half-mile of gravel that is wheelchair-friendly. Then it climbs and at that point the park signs prohibit wheelchairs. Lucky me, I've got a great Mab who doesn't think twice about driving my wheelchair from the side. I can tell you it's a rare skill, walking and driving a wheelchair at the same time (while she's chewing gum!), and she rocks it, so we plowed ahead. The trail is in good shape - I think it was dirt and the beginning of fall leaves but I don't remember because I didn't write this up immediately - and we did the distance together without a problem. Great walk, and the longest I've been on for years.

Not a large campground, there were a few pull-throughs like ours available, small, paved, adequate but with plenty of distance from the others. Full hookup and water, with a dumping station near the entrance. Illinois has got a fabulous deal for seniors who are residents. We ended up paying $17, maybe less.

Near the entrance there's a cool little clubhouse and porch where the long-term campers hang out. It was fun trading stories and jawing with them. And in the morning waking up to the morning sun on a stand of trees across the field from us: I think I'm liking this camping vibe. We'll be coming back to Arrowhead Lake.

Huntsville State Park, TX - Love these nature sounds

565 Park Road 40 West, Huntsville, TX
(936) 295-5644 Website

Pulled in Thursday afternoon and got a paved drive-through spot with water and electric for $39. The park includes a dumping space. Fridays and Saturdays are typically booked.

Our assigned pull-through spot was number 14, but its grade would have made a steep incline for my wheelchair getting in and out of the toy hauler ramp. We called to request the next spot, 15, that looked more level. Not a problem.

The pavement has a drop-off of 4-5 inches, so you have to watch when you're lowering your lift or going around the site.

There is a Texas state parks annual membership that costs $60, or $30 if you're over 65 and a Texas resident, and it gets you into all the Texas parks. Plus it will take $14 off the entrance fee here.

Our site overlooked the lake but we couldn't see any alligators. My favorite was watching the sun setting in the trees on the other side of the lake, and hearing the sounds of wildlife, bird calls mostly, on the lake.

The hills are alive – Poverty Point Historic State Park, Pioneer, LA

History comes alive as you climb (but not wheelchair) 3,000 years into the past on a towering Indian mound

A system of grassy mounds tell the story of an ancient Indian city that thrived on the banks of the Mississippi a thousand years before the birth of Christ. Poverty Point Historic State Park is a UNESCO World Heritage Site (and US Historical Monument), one of 22 in the US recognized by the UN cultural body as the most impressive places in the world. The site is particularly interesting because it was a city of hunter-gatherers, when most every other ancient city was made possible by the introduction of farming. The Poverty Pointers were overachievers.

Site of an ancient building.

Panning for relics: This scientist was so cool

We just happened to visit on International Archaeology Day and the center had live demonstrations all day long in ancient fire-starting, toolmaking, archaeology and most unusual, the sling-like weapon called the atlatl. Now the Mab throws atlatl: beware! Rangers, guides and scientists were all super-informative and fun to talk to. There was plenty for kids to do, too.

Atlatl

Making arrow tips

The museum, grounds and sidewalks are all level and easy to use. There is a tram tour Wednesdays – Sundays at 10 a.m., 11:30 a.m., 1 p.m., and 3 p.m., March through October, weather permitting, and it is wheelchair accessible. Though it was a challenge to shoehorn my Permobil F3 (45 inches length including feet) into the available space on the old tram, we made it work and it was well worth it.

The only thing that isn't accessible is the greatest feature in the park: the climb up the wooden steps to the top of the majestic Bird Mound, shaped like a gigantic bird and dominating all the other features in the area. I hear the Acropolis in Athens is now wheelchair accessible, but this is a Louisiana State Park (and a seemingly well-run one at that). But it was wonderful watching Mabster scale the stairs that climbed the length of the tail and spine all the way up to the head of the ceremonial bird, maybe three stories tall.

Like the national parks, UNESCO World Heritage Sites like Poverty Point are awesome destinations, especially if you like history and native cultures.

They stand vigil over the river - Vicksburg National Military Park, Vicksburg, MS

On a high bluff overlooking the Mississippi 60 miles from Poverty Point Historic State Park is the site of one of the nation's most important battles. During the Civil War, the river was the lifeblood of the U.S., and whoever controlled Vicksburg controlled the lower river. Here the river winds like a snake, and the Confederate fort at Vicksburg, perched on a high bluff and stacked with artillery, could obliterate anything going by. Both sides needed Vicksburg.

The Union, led by Ulysses S. Grant, laid siege, pounding the fort with heavy guns. We already know that the Confederates had the artillery to hit back. Both sides dug in and let loose, making hell on earth for weeks on end.

This is going to be a picture-heavy post. That's because there are no words to say it like we seen. In the park you drive a narrow loop a couple miles long. Everywhere you turn you see monuments to the detachments, commanders and the states who fought here.

This batch, the Illinois Monument, modeled on the Pantheon in Rome

The place is hilly and green with moguls: these are the entrenchments and bunkers where the cannons fired from. You drive a long, narrow loop. Only a couple hundred yards over those low, rolling hills you can see the cars of tourists on the other side of the loop. Those cars are in enemy territory. These boys firing the massive iron balls were practically on top of each other. This realization, and the sheer number of dead, are the things that affected me most.

You settle into a somber, respectful silence as the battlefield tells the story more viscerally than all the books and documentaries you've ever seen. Honestly, I would have liked even more help visualizing where the actual walls and other landmarks stood - but the experience is profound.

The visitor center is easily accessible. By itself it did not strike me as a great museum resource, but there the Park Service offers a number of free or cheap resources like guided or self-guided driving tours to do. We spent three hours max, and covered some 80 percent of the park, all from inside the car.

National Park Service: Vicksburg National Military Park

Rollin' on the river - New Madrid Historical Museum, New Madrid, MO

As a kid in Illinois, part of the folklore that got drilled into my head alongside Abraham Lincoln and the Great Chicago Fire was that the biggest earthquake in American history did not take place in San Francisco or anywhere near California, but in southern Illinois - a tremor so strong that it rang bells in Philadelphia and made the Mississippi River run backwards. Later on I found out it was really centered just south of Illinois, in New Madrid, Missouri, and occurred in 1831, but in my mind it was still a monster on a par with Godzilla. The New Madrid earthquake was something I've always wanted to learn more about, especially having driven through the area several times over the past few years. It killed me that there was never enough time to pull over and check out this storied place. But now, with the RV, we can.

New Madrid lies in the bootheel of Missouri, flat river lowland prone to flooding, and it was here that I first saw cotton fields. (The lady at the museum told me how in the days of Big Cotton, one of the growers was so powerful that he nixed his land going over to Arkansas and arranged for it to go to the Show Me State instead, creating that crazy, lazy bootheel hanging there like an appendix, that makes you scratch your head whenever you see it on the map.) Present-day New Madrid has a few thousand people and its own levee on the Mississippi River, which you can see and drive upon in a beautiful river outlook that is also a part of the Trail of Tears, where Cherokee refugees waited in the cold for ferries to bring them across from Tennessee.

Gorgeous Mississippi River overlook on the levee

Less than 100 yards downhill stands the historical museum. It is only two rooms, and then a second floor. No problem getting in with the wheelchair, but there is no elevator to the upstairs so what they do is show you a photo album of the items there. This tiny place really couldn't raise the money for an elevator, I think, plus the woman who showed me the pictures told some pretty good stories that the folks going upstairs weren't hearing. The earthquake exhibits are all on the ground floor. Otherwise everything is flat and no surprises for the chair.

Upstairs

Half of the museum is about the earthquake, and the rest is mostly Civil War and Indian artifacts, plus some 19th-century household and heirloom items that were contributed by the oldest families in
town. It was all interesting, and we spent an hour and half.

If you're interested about the earthquake, it hit during a winter night and turned everyone out shivering in the cold as they endured the aftershocks. There were three quakes stronger than 8.0 on that first night (scientists now lump all three into one rolling terror) and there was a 8.0 earthquake the next day and another in the days following. Each one of them was a monster quake, and then there were hundreds of smaller ones for months afterwards. It changed the course of the river, split open the earth and left features in the landscape still visible today. (At least one of them is doing duty as the friendly neighborhood sand trap at a nearby golf course.) The cool thing is that there is a New Madrid fault to this day, although you can't see it because it's under several feet of caved in earth and sand. But I see a movie coming on here... Paging Tom Cruise and Ben Affleck.

The museum is $5 and definitely worth a visit if you like history. Be sure to check out the Trail of Tears river outlook right up the street.

The mystery of the locked RV wheels

What? We just got this thing!

We started on our latest trip - we've been keeping to one every month since we shelled out for the RV - and man, it was rough going. When we reached the stop sign at the end of our block, I wondered whether or not we had lined up our emergency numbers before we shoved off. (Because they certainly came in handy couple of months ago.) The rig was shuddering as we continued along.

A couple of blocks later we could no longer ignore it and pulled into a warehouse parking lot. We smelled burning as we came to a stop at an empty corner of the lot.

We tried to drive around. We tried to. We found out that the front tires of the trailer were locked. It has four wheels, and the front axle was completely locked. We were literally leaving rubber on the pavement. So we had been dragging our wheels for three whole blocks!

It was a Friday afternoon and we frantically googled and dialed phone numbers before 5 o'clock weekend closing times. We did so for three hours, puzzling over what was wrong and how to get out of this jam. Not only was the trailer screwed, but we had no way of getting it anywhere. That we were ironically so close to home didn't matter, because can you even tow an RV trailer? Thank god it was at least beautiful weather. But time was running out.

Meet the Breakaway Switch

A few of our frantic calls hit pay dirt. AAA came out and could not help us. Time to cancel their extra RV service that we pay for. But we did learn was that it was the breakaway switch on the hitch, where the lanyard had come unplugged. This was courtesy of Winnebago Chicago (over the phone he was gruff but helpful) and Frank from Illinois Tractor and RV Repair who came out to do a field call. Frank said our lanyard wire was too short and so the lanyard probably pulled loose during a tight turn. He pulled out some slack and provided a few other pointers about hooking up the trailer better.

Long shot: Breakaway switch and lanyard with white tag, underneath hitch. 

Close-up: Here you can see the wire lanyard

From below: The lanyard loop is attached to the plug, all fixed now. 

The lanyard runs back from the van, and if it pulls loose it stops the trailer - a safety feature.

Three hours later these newbies were back on the road. This lifestyle's going to be a learning game. Despite the late start we covered the length of Illinois that night and crossed the Mississippi by moonlight, bedding down in the bootheel of Missouri. Old man river won't you keep on rolling.