Metris Getaway Adventures

For our family vacation this year (2025), we spent 16 days in Ireland, where we rented a VW T6 California Beach “weekender style” camper van, and drove around the island with minimal itinerary.  This model of the VW bus has never been sold in America, but they were everywhere in Ireland!  Comparing it to our Metris, and before that - our 2000 Eurovan; there were quite a few features on this van that we really LOVED!  If this post is too technical, I apologize - but I imagine some other van campers out there might appreciate the details.  First, in the cabin, there were built in, pull down roller shades instead of awkward curtains. The passenger and driver windows had magnetic cloth covers that worked well.  We found it funny that they were made of the same grey material as the snap on curtains for our 2000 Eurovan.  VW must have a warehouse full of that fabric and they have been using it for the past 25 years! LOL!  There was a cover for the insid...

Lately, storage space (or a complete lack thereof) in the Metris has been driving me crazy - pun intended.   It could be because I’ve been watching all those “Van Life” reels on Facebook that show beautiful functional full camper van interiors, but I honestly feel like there could have been a little bit more practical storage functionality built into the MB Getaway conversion.  With this in mind, I went on an Amazon binge and ordered a bunch of stuff I thought might provide more storage options.  This is my summary of what worked, and what didn’t. Probably my #1 complaint is that when we are set up, with the top popped, there is no real way to hang anything inside.  No surfaces work with magnets, and most are “soft” which means Command Strips or Velcro really aren’t options either. My husband expressed concerns about hanging anything from the pop top roof directly because of the stress it could cause to the struts that hold it up.   Plus, he is pretty tall, so a...

  Because our Metris Getaway is a bit of a hybrid vehicle, we have found getting warranty work done to be a bit of a challenge. Our local Mercedes-Benz dealership will do the very basic stuff like oil change, maintenance, etc. For vehicle or body work, we have to go to Springfield to the Mercedes dealership there because our local dealership does not do vans. Then for the up-fit components we have to drive to a Chicago suburb. We just had some warranty work done on the pop-top of our 2020 Driverge Getaway.  Had to road trip 2.5 hours to a Chicago suburb to a Driverge “sister shop” called Mobility Works.  Normally they do wheelchair vans, and had never seen a Metris Getaway.  It’s kinda fun to see people’s reactions when they realize what a cool vehicle it is!   They replaced the seal around the bottom edge of the pop-top because it had split and was hanging down when the top was popped. They also fixed the issue we were having with the pop-top buckles not stayin...

  This summer we decided to stay local, and visited a bunch of Illinois State and County Parks.  We've both lived in Illinois all our lives, so some we had been to in the past, but a few were new to us. My last blog post was about Fyrne Clyffe in Southern Illinois, which had some surprising waterfalls, and a lake for fishing but not big enough for much else.  It was a new park to us, and we would go back to Southern Illinois again, but maybe not to this campground.  The Shawnee National Forest has a lot of options, but for us it means a long weekend trip, ideally with at least four days, because of the long drive there and back.  A few weekends later, because it was hot, we went north to White Pines in Mt. Morris.  Again, a fun experience, but not one we would return to with regularity.  For us, the highlight was driving the Metris across the fords.  (Not fjords, as I kept wanting to call them.)  The creek that runs through the park has trout...