Second Chances

If Mercury could speak…

He’d say, "My life was spent mainly as a rather large target for BB guns in eastern Colorado. Getting to my new home has given me a new lease on life. I've heard they've even made a movie about Freddy Mercury…"

I've been friends with Dan and Susie Rieple for a couple of decades and always admired Dan's craftsmanship in his extraordinary wood furniture creations. Eight years ago they rescued and renovated a vintage camper and named her Lucille. I guess it's addictive because they've since rehabilitated Al Jareau, then Freddy, then an Event Trailer ('Cheers m'Dears'), which is designed to serve drinks, espresso and food. It has an amazing wall of wood inside with a condiments shelf trimmed in barbed wire and a live-edge bar.

There's also a 1949 Spartan Royal Mansion used as an Air BnB in Colorado, and a 1946 Spartan Manor, which is now an off-the-grid Air BnB. Each one is detailed in museum-quality woodwork and fun fabrics. Each one has a story.

"Dan really loves to put new life back into things, so the campers are usually pretty crappy," says his wife, Susie. "We give them a second chance." Read on for more of the story.

Summer's coming. One day soon I'm doing a road trip in a Second Chance Camper!

The Story of Second Chance Campers

“The first camper we renovated happened in 2016 when we were in search of a pick-up truck,” says Susie. “We were on the government surplus website and saw a camper. It wasn’t too far away from us in La Junta, Colorado, so we bought it sight unseen for $300. This camper was a Mobile Scout made in Texas. She was built to be a mobile field office for the U.S. Department of Agriculture. We called her Lucille.

Shortly after Lucille, we received a phone call from a gentleman who’d heard we restored campers and wanted to get rid of one from a property he had just acquired. It was a 1970s Al Jo, longer than Lucille, and had a bathroom, shower and a fridge in that tasteful avocado green. AlJo was called Al Jareau, and looked pretty classy by the end of the do-over. We even added a jaunty orange streak to the outside.

After Al Jareau, we went on to a search-and-rescue mission. We drove out to eastern Colorado stopping at every farm or ranch house that had a trailer in the yard. We nearly gave up, but at the very end of the day we found two! One was a 1959 Mercury made in California and the other an unknown called a Rover, made in Florida.

The Mercury became Freddy, and was much more work than we first thought. The flooring was completely rotted and the framing left much to be desired. In the end we kept the outer aluminum skin because it was part of the story. Freddy had been sitting alone in a field since 1963 and had been used as a BB gun target, a hail shelter and home for multiple rodents, who lived mostly in the oven.

The Rover we redid from bottom up; it became Cheers m’Dears, an event trailer.

During the course of these renovations, we discovered a Spartan Royal Mansion for sale in Saratoga, Wyoming. Its ‘sister’ camper, a Spartan Manor, became available a year later. Both were still owned by the same original owner in Lander, Wyoming, and had been used as fishing camps for over seventy years. Incredibly, both trailers were 99% original and in very good condition, even though built in ‘49 and ‘46, after the end of World War II. We took out every panel, re-stained them and fixed any leakages.

Lucille and Freddy have gone to live at the May Insect Museum in Colorado. The Golden Eagle Campground has been there since the ‘50s and the owners wanted a sense of that era in the place. They are now Air BnB ‘unique stays’.”

Cowboys Do Eat Quiche

Once every five years or so I get the urge to make quiche, and making quiche always takes me back to when I worked at Hidden Valley Ranch outside Cody, Wyoming (then a dude ranch, now a private ranch with a new name). My job was with the horses, but on the cook's day off, if I wasn't on a pack trip or hauling supplies 12 miles into an elk hunting camp in the Washakie Wilderness, I would cook.

Quiche is incredibly easy (especially if you buy the crust, which you can pre-bake for 10 minutes, or not). Just pile whatever fillings you want into the crust then mix some eggs and cream (3 or 4 eggs and a cup or so of cream, or cream mixed with milk or half-and-half; you can also replace part of the cream with ricotta), and add salt, pepper, nutmeg. Pour the custard over the fillings and bake at 375 for 45 minutes or so, til it’s not jiggly in the middle.

Quiche is a great way to feed a crowd because it's easy to make multiples in almost no additional time. But because this was in the ‘80s, a few years after the book "Real Men Don't Eat Quiche" became a bestseller, I always wondered if I'd get pushback when I served it. After all, the guys on our ranch staff had snuff in the back pockets of their Wranglers, and on their days off they shot and skinned rattlesnakes to make into belts.

But they ate it and they seemed to enjoy it. We even served salad with it. We just avoided using the word 'quiche' ‘til after they'd eaten it.

#quiche #summerbaking #ranchmemories #splatterware #enamelware #hiddenvalley #cody #cowgirldays #ranchkitchen #ranchcooking #duderanch #feedacrowd #heartymeals #americanrustic #newwest #realmendonteatquiche

Shou Sugi Ban

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Whether you call it Shou Sugi Ban or Yakisugo, fire-treated wood is making an appearance in rustic structures and furniture throughout the country.

Shou Sugi Ban seems to be turning up everywhere lately. Ever since I wrote about a table that appears on the cover of Rustic Modern, in the lakeside home of Montana Architect Larry Pearson, I’ve been noticing it — most recently in a Chairish blog just yesterday.

According to William Beleck, who dug into the research on behalf of Nakamoto Forestry, the practice has been mistakenly called Shou Sugi Ban in Europe and the U.S. — rather than the more correct Yakisugo — due to a linguistic fine point, the mistake resulting from differences between the Chinese and Japanese languages. Yet even Japanese firms are still promoting the wood as Shou Sugi Ban, so the jury seems to be out.

Whatever the correct term, it’s a method of wood preservation whose byproduct is beauty and serenity, as seen in many an ancient Japanese temple. In a recent story I did for Big Sky Journal, I loved everything about the home and guest house on the banks of the Wood River in Idaho. But I especially loved the builder's backstory:

"Years ago, Idaho-based builder Mat Hall read about the ancient Japanese wood-preserving technique called Shou Sugi Ban. The treatment involves charring wood to promote resistance to fire, degradation, and pests, and it results in a beautiful dark tone with unusual texture and depth. At the time, he was intrigued enough to post a photo on Facebook with the caption: “Any takers?” It never occurred to him that years later, he would be asked to construct an entire home and guesthouse using the process."

For this project, Hall created his own fire-charring setup on site, flaming wood by hand in all weathers and temperatures. After building the guest house, though, he decided there had to be a better way. For the main house he sourced the exterior wood from a well regarded purveyor specializing in the technique.

The architecture is by Janet Jarvis of The Jarvis Group, the interiors by the late Toni Breck, a talented designer who was a close friend and neighbor of the homeowners. Photography by Heidi Long. Nomenclature to be determined!

#learnbydoing #shousugiban #woodconstruction #boardformedconcrete #mountainhome #skistyle #woodriver #sunvalley #idaho #greatroom #woodtimbers #twigchandelier #concretefireplace #cabinvibes #retreat #cozy #westerndesign #cabinstyle