Tripping in Annie #2 - Okanogan

This is the second of what will eventually become an occasional, yet interminably long series of "Tripping in Annie".

We've just returned from a visit to the east side of the North Cascade crest, from up the Chewuch/Chewich/Chewack River (wars have been fought over how road and motel signs should be spelled, and to how to pronounce the name), to the Tiffany highlands, and down to the Twisp River.

Be warned: We have cameras, and are not afraid to overuse them.

We chose the Chewuch  as our first stopover on our way to the higher country.
The mighty Chewuch/Chewich/Chewack:

The Okanogan N.F. is very open to dispersed camping. They just ask that you don't blaze new roads, and don't trash the vegetation.

Our first spot, above the mighty Chewuch/Chewich/Chewack. Between a few blocks and Annie's airbags, we were able to remain very level headed:

Lots of springtime flowering happening above the river bank.
What's up Tiger Lily?

Lupine and paintbrush sharing the land in peace.

Falls Creek feeds the mighty Chewuch/Chewich/Chewack.

Kya heard about something feeding something, and wants to join the action.

We then headed up to the Tiffany Highlands, up at about 6-7000 feet altitude. It's a steep climb on a narrow, rough road. Forest service says "trailers not recommended", and they are right.
The whole Tiffany area, was heavily burned in 2006, and is still just recovering. So the land is very open.
We had hoped to camp at the Tiffany Springs campground, but there was only one decent spot, and that was taken up by one of these things:

Nothing says "don't blaze new roads, and don't trash the vegetation"...not to mention "don't squash the occasional Ford Transit", like that vehicle.
There was absolutely no way we could camp there and avoid looking at that large white thing.
So we decided to camp elsewhere.

We found a nice hunter's campsite in Tiffany Meadows, by Boulder Creek.
Annie sniffed out the site:

And found it acceptable, so we set up camp.

Prepared a well deserved meal. Thanks, Renee!

And settled in to supervise the meal prep:

Exploring the surroundings:

 

and failed to heed the "no selfies, ever" rule:

Woke up the next morning to nice views:

and breakfast

And so it went, exploring the recovering countryside, and visiting the springtime wildlife.

For our last stop, we went up to the very end of the Twisp River road, and set up camp at the  strangely named "Road's End Campground". No idea why they named it thus. It was the only official campground we stayed at.

This is truly in the real Cascades, with the Twisp River cascading right by our campsite

High country surrounding us, and lush plant life in the camp.

Finished off with some hiking on official trails, making an official end to the trip.

Bedroom FixtureUppers...I still watch too much HGTV

We've added a few things since our last update: Window shades for privacy, and 3 more upper cabinets on Annie's passenger side.
The shades are nothing special, just reasonable quality Lowes standard 4' length units.

The uppers are constructed and mounted like the ones over the kitchen, so I won't go much into the construction details.
Here you can see a window shade, cabinets being fitted, and a few implements of vegetative and property destruction.

The kitchen overheads and ceiling lights are pretty bright. We wanted to add some lower intensity lighting for when we don't want to cook our eyeballs...like at night. So I added 2 dimmable, indirect lighting strips under the new cabinets.
First, paint a length of 1/2" aluminum u-channel.

Cut the bottom panel to size, and countersink the mounting holes.

Mount the u-channel to the board with VHB, and wire in the LED ribbon strips and dimmer modules.

 

Wire it into Annie, mount it up and test:

 

Edge band the cabinetry, mount up the shaker doors, the magnetic latches and hold-open struts.
The struts and magnets are the same models we used for the kitchen cabinets.

And call it done. Well almost...I ran out of the rubber weatherstripping I'm using as a cushy molding.

The old bag gets new bags

Fortunately for me, Annie has a good sense of humor about post titles like that. Besides, at 2 years old, she knows she is hardly an old bag. But she is a mobile bag, holding us and our traveling needs safe and comfy.

But her rear end was getting a bit saggy with the batteries and water stored back there.
An unladen extended Transit has a 12deg departure angle (at least based on the euro drawing I found. That works out to about 16" ground clearance at the rear bumper.

When Annie gets fully loaded, not only does she slur her words, but her rear is down to about 12" or less clearance. We don't want her dragging her butt on dirty rough logging roads. Really tears up her pants.
So we decided she needed a butt lift. But, her butt should have a variable butt boost. No ifs and, or buts.
We want to normally travel with her rear just a bit down from unladen stock, but for steep transitions, ditches, etc. we want to temporarily raise her butt enough to get her clear.
So, we decided on airbags rather than helper springs.
Additionally, we want to use the bags as a leveling device, which means we want to inflate or deflate each one individually.
Airlift makes a version of their LoadLifter 5000 specifically for the Transit. That seems to be the only one out there specifically designed for our van.
The bags replace the stock jounce bumpers, so we ordered the Ultimate version, which has integral bumpers as a backup if the bags ever spring a leak.
We also got their dual manifold and compressor with wireless remote. That's the way  we'll get individual bag control.

There's not much to say about the installation, the instruction manuals are very good.
But, I should note that there is a potential for drilling the wrong hole size if you just follow the compressor' mounting template. It calls for 1/4"  holes, but that's really if you are not mounting to a closed frame member. DAMHIKT.

We have a trailer hitch with B+ power only when ignition is on, so we are using that as the power source for the airbag system.

Since the manual is very good and Transit specific, I'll only post some picks of the final assemblies.

The compressor and manifold are mounted to the rear of the driver side spring, tucked well out of the way of debris and mud. There was hardly any dirt up there before I started the install.

Here's a mounted airbag

Each bag has a manual fill Shrader valve. Also useful for manually checking pressure, although the remote has a pressure readout. I mounted the valves through the rear bumper plastic shroud, and routed the passenger side lines along and above the hitch.

Right now, fully loaded and with 30# pressure in each bag, Annie's rear is at 15" clearance. At about #60 pounds, I'd guess that about 90% of the rear body weight is on the bags, not the OEM springs. Clearance is about 18" at that point.
We are allowed to inflate to 100#, so it looks good that we'll have a 9-10 " improvement in clearance at the temporary extreme. I haven't had the nerve to drive at that pressure yet. At 50#, the ride gets kind of harsh.

And finally, for something completely different, I got the OBDII Torque Pro app up and running on an old phone.

Kitchen FixtureUppers (I watch too much HGTV)

In order to process food into our bodies, it is useful to have a temporary storage unit. We call that unit a mouth. A mouth contains food storage/processing assistants, such as teeth and lips. Without those assistants, food would fall out of your mouth whenever you moved.

Similarly, when preparing said food, it is useful to have temporary food associated storage for tools such as pans, dishes, glassware, etc. So, we're building those into Annie.
People would look at us funny if we said we were building Annie's mouths, so let's just say we're building her kitchen cabinetry. We've already built the  counter and lower cabinet.

In this entry, we build and install Annie's upper mouth kitchen cabinets.
There are two cabinets over the counter. they are 13" deep at their base, and 13"high at the front. Since the wall and ceiling are sloped, things narrow down toward the rear...to approximately 12" deep and 11 3/8" high.

 The frames are made from box-jointed 1.5"x.75" maple.
Test fitting the frame:

Both frames are built, and floor is test-fitted:

Test fitting the rear box.

Rear box, its bottom and rear panels ready for poly finish.

The rear box is mounted. The box is supported by screwing upper frame members into the wood rafters running the length of Annie (described in a much earlier blog entry). Those rafters are also the attachment points for the ceiling bead-board.
The front facing upper frame also holds the door piano hinge.
The rear box also screws into the side wall. Can't do that with the front box, because the wall is made of no-drill-zone boron steel around the sliding door. Turns out that the rear's wall screws aren't really necessary anyways. Neither box is going anywhere.

Base panels and light are installed.

Repeating the process with the front box. The boxes are identical, except that I added an aluminum sheet to the bottom of the front. It sits over the hob, and the aluminum should make splatter cleanup easier.

Building the mouth lips cabinet doors. These are shaker style. The rails and stiles are the same 1.5"x .75" as the box frames. The panel is 1/4" maple ply.

The doors are mounted. We're using a 100N gas strut to hold it open, and a pair of neodymium magnets to hold it closed. 

The finished product: