Purchased for $1500.00 from a truck sales lot in Dallas, Texas. The dealer was asking $2450.00 out the door when I saw it advertised on the Internet. The one thing that caught my attention from the very first time I saw the add was that the van was listed as having only 64,000 miles.

This Aerostar has a 3.0 liter V-6 vulcan engine with automatic transmission, rear wheel drive, 21.0 gallon tank, and 17 - 23 mpg, but is the short version without the two battery boxes on either side in the very rear.

When looking at the engine, I found out that this engine does not have a distributor but instead has a six wire ignition coil. The whole in the back of the engine where the distributor was previously located now holds a timing sensor.

Still, with the pandemic raging in the nearby black zones, (large cities like Los Angeles, New York, Houston, New Orleans, etc.), I must needs leave out of this city, even this state and head towards what I have always called the Mountain, a respite for a wayƒarer. I travel through Arizona, New Mexico and into Colorado.

I have only been here for three very cold days and thought that it can not get any colder. This morning, I awoke to just above freezing with a half inch of wet snow covering everything.

I decide to stay in the jammer all day and rebuilt my desk

With my work on the Island complete, I leave for the mountain once again.

As the sun continues to drop to the horizon and the sunglow fades forthwith, I continue upward onto the mountain, and soon come to a road that is marked NF-103 on my GPS, so, I turn left onto the road and just past the NF entrance sign stating 16 days camping limit, I pull over into the first place to camp. I get out, walk up to the forest edge and find a fire pit with a large stack of logs that I could use for a fire if I wanted one. Because it is hastily turning dark, I grab my camera and take photos of the jammer in the fading light, the quickly fading sunglow and then the bright blueglow at the end of this day.