Pre-trip post: Hello!

Hi there! You’ve found your way to the highly interesting and informative weblog of the Summer 2008 Voyage of the Cacafuego.

The Cacafuego is a 30some 20 foot Class C caravan (RV): an Itasca. It’s small, with an overcab bed, a dinette that turns into a bed, and a sofa in the back that turns into a bed. Comfortably, it will sleep three, which is why we bought a tent. Yeahhh.

The original Cacafuego was the Spanish navy ship Nuestra Señora de la Concepción, captured by Sir Francis Drake in 1579. According to wikipedia.org, In Spanish, “caca” is a noun meaning “shit”, while “caga” is the third person of the verb “cagar” which means “to shit”. Therefore, the proper nickname for this galleon was “Cagafuego,” which could be translated as “shitfire” or more accurately as “fireshitter”.

We’ve decided to call the silly little caravan the Cacafuego as a reference both to her gas consumption (she’s a 1978, don’t you know), and the noxious fumes she emits as we drive across the country.

The trip is intended to take five weeks. We are leaving Baltimore July 8th, 2008, and intend to be in a campground on the northern rim of the Grand Canyon in Arizona by July 28th, having taken a southernly and then westernly route through, among others, Asheville, Austin, Santa Fe, Durango, Mesa Verde, and Glen Canyon. After about four days at the Grand Canyon, we will head north to Yellowstone National Park, and then east and north to the corn palace and Mount Rushmore. We will drive through the UP of Michigan, possibly hit Quebec, and be home around the 15th of August.

It’s an adventure, that’s for certain.

I’ll be back possibly with a few pictures of the Cacafuego. It would be unfair of me to misrepresent the coziness of the vehicle, and so a small demonstration of the close quarters may be in order.

Cheers!