The JaMvan

Definition: John and Mandi van A.K.A. Wonder Wagon

Purpose: Our home and vehicle for the Pan-American highway, and beyond

What: Heavily modified 2001 Ford E-350 with 7.3L diesel engine and Ujoint Offroad 4x4 suspension

She bad, so keep steppin fool

Choosing an overland vehicle is like deciding which child, or dog, is your favorite. We've been through our fair share of campers and ultimately realized we are van people. It should have been obvious after we fell in love with the first picture of a Sportsmobile we laid eyes on. I'm surprised we didn't print it out and hang it over our bed. Should have been even more obvious after we purchased and thoroughly enjoyed our Pleasure-Way Lexor TD camper van. Nope. Needless to say we're a bit dense and went a different route before getting back into a van. Truth be told, we weren't planning a Pan-American adventure at that time so the Bigfoot 25RQ and Ram 3500 were solid choices and ones we will always hold in high esteem.

Alas, as in everything John and Mandi, our world changed while we were trying to figure out what life break we were wanting to take, another story indeed, our household became only two within 9 months. New age empty nesters with grand plans of adventure. Our conscious minds started to catch up while flying to San Franciso and reality sunk in during our three day cross country drive back to Florida in our new to us van. Holy heaping cheese con queso balls Batman, we're going to build our own version of a Sportsmobile, a Fauxmobile if you will.

Crazy good

Not wanting to succumb to all the fancy marketing hype, and being short on firing synapses, we needed to name said van so John and Mandi van, JaMvan, was born. We've toyed with other ideas but we're, well, John and Mandi. Aunt John and Uncle Mandi to some young-ens in our life. We're sure we'll have several other pet names for our van, we tend to do that with almost everything we endear.

Upgrades and changes: