Bill let me know that the 2023 Holy Toledo Calendar is available for purchase! This year’s calendar includes a wide range of jeeps, from early prototype jeeps into the 1970s with a Brazilian pickup.

https://www.dispatchermagazine.com/calendars/2023-holy-toledo-wall-calendar

UPDATES: 1) Moving the propane tank got delayed until today, so no updates until Wednesday.

2) We are back in the 21st century with running water. Woo hoo! The ‘death’ announcement of the pump was premature on my part, as a toasted electrical part was causing it to appear frozen. Repaired for only $48, the mechanic noted that the rest of the pump was still in excellent shape (despite being 20 years old), so no need to replace it! That’s a win! … 

We are dry camping this weekend … at home!

Yep, our booster water pump seemingly died on Saturday morning (cue the sound of Taps), leaving us with irrigation water (via the well pump), but no house water. Thankfully, we can turn the irrigation well water on and fill up buckets. So, it isn’t the worst situation. But, it is annoying. So, Monday morning we’ll be calling a local pump company.

Meanwhile, on Monday morning we are also supposed to get our propane tank moved (1000 gallon tank), so we will be without propane for at least part of Monday. That will be great, because we have been limiting heat so that we can don’t run out of propane (we are at about 7% which should make moving the tank much easier).

Ann did get some shrubs planted around the bunkhouse, so the work there is almost done for winter.

Got to give credit to WWII Russians who had a bold dream of flying a tank. I can’t believe that didn’t work out, lol! Thanks to Bill for sharing this interesting bit of history.

https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20221020-the-tank-that-could-fly-into-battle

This scale model of the A-40 shows the enormous size of the wings and tail in comparison to the small tank (Credit: The Tank Museum, Bovington)

See Part III | Start at Part I

This is the final summary from Randy and Carson’s coast-to-coast drive. Thanks to both of them for the inspirational journey and for sharing your photos along the way.

Here’s Randy’s summary of the trip:

“We made it😁 18 days and 7055 miles coast to coast and back in two 1951 open Willys jeeps. Average speed 48 mph Why? I don’t know, but it was fun! Sometime I’ll make a slideshow and post it. Thanks Melvin Petiet and Molly from Happy Trails 4×4 in Jacksonville for storing our tow rig while we were gone. They were also overlanding but we didn’t manage to cross paths. We did hook up with Cartotracks, warn, and Factor 55 for a run in Sand Hollow, and Boston Bob put us up for a night in Delta Colorado. Also thanks David Eilers for a great site ewillys.com.”

Back home on the beaches of Florida

Maury shared this pretty rare Willys-Overland watch. Base don the design, I’d guess this is from the late 1940s. The seller describes this as a “dash clock”. He does listed other models of watches that look to be “dash clocks”, but to me this looks more like a pocket watch. Anyone know more about this item?

View all the information on eBay

“Up for auction is this vintage Willys automobile dash mounting clock. It is in great working condition! Wind up mechanism. I do not have the mounting bracket.
Measures 2 1/4″. Selling as shown”

As part of the continuing updates to our property, we’ve added some additional walkways. These serve three purposes. 1) We found that lots of dirt was being tracked into the bunkhouse, so that needed to be addressed; 2) the bunkhouse felt separate from the rest of the buildings and 3) we expect to replace the lean-to ‘barn’ to be replaced with an actual barn, so these walkways will help link everything together. So, we hoped extending the walkway would help incorporate the buildings.

This is one of the few tasks that we decided to hire a contractor to complete. Unfortunately, our calls to local contractors proved frustrating. We couldn’t get local folks to respond. Finally, Ann reached out to Wine Country Landscaping in Milton-Freewater, about an hour away. They gave us a free estimate and had great reviews. It’s a young company, but they are eager to grow, easy to work with, and did a great job. In fact, the guys repaired some concrete for free just to make everything look better, something they were not required to do.

At this rate, I see no reason we can’t hold some kind of jeep event next year. I’ll announce something  by January.

Here are some pre-concrete photos. This first one shows the gravel in front of the shop, an annoyance when moving something with smaller wheels from the concrete to the asphalt. To the right of the shop is a form for the new propane tank pad.

After: The concrete now runs the northern side of the shop. The white building in back is a series of lean-tos that are super inefficient space wise. We will repurpose the lean-to materials in to a hay barn and shelter for the cows and a barn will replace the existing structure. To the right is the guesthouse.

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A reader shared a rare look at a Willys Electric Light Plant, including the sleeves during cranking. In the pic below, the Willys Electric Light Plant is on the left and a rare Alamo (electric light plant?) is on the right.

Here is a video of the sleeve functioning:

Some more pics:

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