**** Road trip *****
Just completed a 2-week, 3000 mile swath through the Northwest, aerostar camping nearly all the way.
- Shasta, CA
- Crater Lake, OR
- Bend, OR
- Mt Rainer, WA
- Vancouver, BC
- Kelowna, BC
- Banff, BC
- Glacier national park, MT
- Idaho Falls, ID
- Boise, ID
- Lake Tahoe, CA
- others in between

The Aerostar hold an amazing amount of cargo...so much cargo that the US border inspectors, while de-contenting my van in search of stow-away chickens and citrus fruit contraband, asked/joked that I was moving.


(Castle Crags background, explorer rims foreground)


**** Taking the office to the Aerostar ******
The Aerostar is an obvious choice for long term car camping, but my lofty & naive goal was to expand the utility beyond the norm.
I wanted to tail gate PLUS work on my laptop computer PLUS watch movies.
- The 2nd and 3rd rows were de-contented.
- A table was fabricated from smooth 1/2 inch plywood and bolted to the base of the left 2nd row captain chair.
- In addition to (boat/RV) curtains that I have on all the windows, a curtain was added to partition the front seats from the rear cabin.
- An auxillary (Optima yellowtop dual-purpose) battery was bolted to the floor of the cabin. Turning the ignition switch to "accessory" rather than "run" commands an isolation relay to take the starter battery offline. The battery was wrapped in "fat-ammo" box from an army surplus outlet.
- Portable LED lighting was added.
- Planned but not procured/installed. 22" LCD screen flips down from roof. DVD player installed in dash, audio wired into existing amp. Additional hardwired lighting.
How did it work? The setup worked very well for tailgating, not so well as an office or cinema. The three big impediments were headroom, over crowding and schedule.

*** Tailgating ****
When it was breezy cold or rainy, my tabletop Coleman stove was set up on the back floor and food was serve directly up and onto the 3rd row table. The liftgate provided an effective umbrella for drizzle but others have added a tarp, forming temporary walls during severe weather.




*** The Office Party ****
The table was basically a prototype to gauge utility and ergnomics. There were several fundamental problems.
- My road blitz schedule left me with no time to do anything beyond camp setup, breakdown and cooking. Camping involves a great amount of overhead in setup, breakdown and cooking. I never got beyond this overhead.
- Mini-vans have little headroom. A 16" seat height left me (5' 10") with a 4" deficit in headroom. This killed any enthusiasm for using the workspace. A design iteration is called for. The table needs to come down 2" and I'm considering fabricating a lower profile deck chair.
- The environs intrude. Compared to a house there is lots of glass, little insulation and therefore lots of heat gain. Don't expect to be comfortable unless it is shaded and in a narrow ambient temperature range, say 45 to 65 fahrenheit.
- The Tetris problem. I was carrying the equivalent of ten 18-gallon bins. Setting up for office work required offloading most of the cargo. Not a problem during a dry summer day.




*** Popcorn cinema ****
Big screen cinema was envisioned but never constructed. The closest I got was gathering two folding chairs around the laptop sitting on the table. Utopia would be 3rd row bench, 2nd row table, flip down wide-screen LCD panel, and a clicker commanding a dash mounted DVD player feeding into the dash audio amp. Here are some troubles...
- Bringing along a 3rd row bench in a shorty would require more thoughtful choice of camping cargo. The cargo needs offloading to use the cinema, perhaps retaining four 18-gal bins behind the bench.
- Noise. I arrived in a thunderstorm at Three Island Crossing (ID) and rather than immediately pitch a tent in the rain, bought a cheap ticket for "A River Runs Through It". The thunder and rain pounding the roof reminded me to retrofit for headphones, also a good idea after lights-out in most campgrounds.


*** Got enough engine??? ****
After returning I weighed the cargo and adjusted for consumption. 800 lbs of crap and people on top of probably 3700 lbs curb weight for a total of 4500lbs. Take that up an 8% grade at 6500 feet elevation and my 1989 3-liter could only manage 60mph WOT (95kph). Highway gas mileage ranged from 23mpg @55mph/no-AC down to 17mpg @75mph/with-AC.

 

That's a great report on what must have been an adventurous trip.

Once you've taken care of the seating arrangements (hacksaw the legs on the folding chairs?), you might consider double-duties on your lap top computer. I think they can all play DVDs now, plus other forms of video. They won't be able to provide 5.1 surround sound, but I think the audio systems in Aerostars are only 2 channels anyway, so the lap top should be able to drive that.

Make me think about similar modifications on my extended van.

 

Awesome Report and pics!

Where and how did you do the curtains? and it looks like you were caught up in some nasty traffic in that last pic!

 

great story of a fantastic camping trip in the Aerostar, rojo. what the aero was made for, hauling people in comfort to far off places.


nothing like throwing the switch for blowing the queen size air mattress in the back, leaning the driver seat back with the laptop setting on the huge dash and watching a great suspense movie with the wife while enjoying the night air and a glass of c******nay with a crackling fire outside parked in a campground on the North Cascade. the movie comes to a low spot in the dialogue and we hear the lonesome howl of the N. Cascades wolf pack in the distance.

or the time camped high up in the C. Oregon Cascades, a bear decides he has a hunger pain for our only loaf of bread stored up under the van in heavy plastic bins. not a fun feeling camped in the back of a cramped van trapped in a zipped up sleeping bag and the rear of the van raises a foot about the same time this horrible roar permeates the van.
we ate toastless breakfast the next morning after a sleepless night.

camping in the king of minivans, the Aerostar.

 

Sounds like you need to add this to your Aero before the next trip.

 

Great report...and in a shorty as well! I feel spoilt for using our LWB van to tow a tent trailer! Aerostars no doubt about it are great camping vehicles.

I'd like to know about the curtains as well...

I like the mag wheels, BTW.

 

John,

I think all Aerostars have the same wheelbase. The extended versions had about 15" of body added to the rear.

 

They sure do, maybe that is why I run them on my Aero too.