About - Hobbes
It's a magial world, Hobbes, ol' buddy...
In Bill Waterson's brilliant strip Hobbes was a stuffed tiger that came alive with Calvin's imagination. The duo was adventurous, mischievous and lived a simple life of wagon rides and building snowmen. In the final strip of Calvin and Hobbes, a fresh white blanket of snow created an endless canvas on which to paint a masterpiece.
When we embarked on this journey of adventure ourselves, we had to decide the vehicle that would take us to new exploration. We found our "first house" in a 2005 Ford E-350 XLT. It was a beast of a 6.0L, turbo diesel that had a Sportsmobile Penthouse roof installed and a 4WD conversion completed by Quigley's.
Part of this adventure involved us stripping the then unnamed vehicle to bear metal and building out our home on wheels. Months of notes, beers, drawings and general tinkering led to the build. The result was an adventure mobile we are truly proud of.
The final work by Bill Waterson (from the actual newspaper) has been framed in our living room for years. We both knew that such the adventurous spirit of such a van could only have a similarly intrepid name. Hobbes was purchased, built and born to lead us on this and many adventures of our lives.
[link to come re: the van build. in the meantime, below are some pictures of the build. please feel free to reach out to us with any and all van build questions. we utilized countless van builds and the least we can do is repay that through fielding questions of other vanlifers or anyone curious.]
