Willys America 7/19/03

The 3rd annual Willys Caravan to the Willys America Open House took place on 7/19/03. It was another well orchestrated caravan led by Jim Russell.  The weather was HOT and the Willys were plentiful. In fact, there were more Willys on the caravan this year than either of the two previous years and I suspect the turnout well get bigger each year.  We used the hand held "family" type radios again this year.  They are absolutely essential with a crowd this size.

The caravan begins in the South Bay Area (Millbrae) and makes its first stop at a vista point just North of the Golden Gate Bridge.  I joined the caravan, along with several other participants, at the official Willys Caravan rest stop #2 (Mc Donalds in Petaluma, CA).  The Petaluma stop is at the McDonalds on Lakeville Road near Hwy 101.

This year was particularly embarrassing for me because I had to make the trip as a passenger in Jim Vanderway's '62 PU.  I know that Jim will never let me forget that.  My troubles started when I decided to perform a fuel injection swap on my truck.  The details of the swap will be included in a future page but, for now, all that needs to be said is that I didn't get the swap finished in time to drive the truck in the caravan this year.  Yes, I am ashamed so don't rub it in.  No more snickering JR!  ;~)

I began my shameful journey bright and early on Saturday morning.  I made my pilgrimage from Sacramento to Fairfield behind the wheel of a Toyota.  Yes, the shame just keeps getting worse.  The pics below were taken when I arrived in Fairfield.  The green PU on the right belongs to Jim and the blue 3A belongs to Jim's neighbor Bernie.

 

 

The first group of pics you see below were taken in Petaluma just before we hit the road.

The next few pics were taken as we pulled out the McDonalds parking lot and proceeded to head in the wrong direction.  I'm not going to name the person responsible for the wrong turn but I will say that his initials are JR and that he had real good chuckle when I told him why I couldn't drive my truck to Willys America this year.  ;~)

Here we are pulling out of the MD parking lot.

And here we are making the wrong turn.

 Hey!  Don't follow us, we're going the wrong way!

 Ok, we found a safe place to turn around.  Now we're getting somewhere.

This big group of pics was taken at Willys America.  I'll let the pictures speak for themselves.

This last pic was taken on the drive home going southbound on Hwy 101.