The road to the summit is long, winding and riddled with washboard roads. Rarely do we encounter washboards bad enough to make us want to jump out of the vehicle. It felt like all of our cabinetry would just shake loose and fall apart spreading itself on our floor like the mess kids make when they dump their legos. Having had enough of shaking our brains loose from our skulls, we pulled over, aired our tires down to 22psi and adjusted our shocks to the softest setting. What a huge difference that made to our ride comfort...except the washboards got worse. After a slow, dusty, meandering 2.5hr drive up to the summit our van made the all too familiar sound of yet another turbo wastegate controller valve gone bad. It kinda sounds like Oscar the Grouch letting out a long, sighing fart. It was amusing the first 3 or 4 times that valve went bad but not so much this time as we were 200 miles into our journey towards California and didn't want to continue until we could figure out how badly damaged the valve was. We ended up turning back towards the town of John Day where we hung out with @iwanderwild and @veedubdayspa for another week before risking the journey south. Eventually we figured out why we'd been blowing through so many valves (hint: it was due, yet again, to the Seattle installer's shoddy work) and finally got the issue fixed once and for all. Moral of the story: shit happens, the road to the Steens is washboardy, and the Steens are quite beautiful.⠀ •⠀ •⠀ •⠀ ______________________⠀ ⠀ #liveworkwander #vanlife #westylife #gowesty #vanagonlife #adventuremobile #westfalia #projectvanlife #vanlifers #vanlifediaries #neverstopexploring #homeiswhereyouparkit #vanlifeexplorers #getoutstayout #ourcamplife #reformlife #vanlifemovement #nomadlife #letscamp #adventureworthy #hippielife #freedomthinkers #roadtrippin #discovertheroad #WeAreAllJARRAL