An old friend of mine invited my roommate and I to go camping with him in West Virginia this past weekend, and needed a van to get there with all the gear. Since my vans old and needs some work, he opted to rent one. The one he rented was the 2006 Dodge Caravan.

My friend is a night shifter, so driving for him would have been difficult since it was a six hour drive from our area to the campsite, and he had been up all night so he had me drive.

The van was loaded with all the options. Power windows and locks, tilt wheel, premium sound the works. The seats weren't power though which in my opinion is a good thing.

The first thing I noticed was that the sound system was very hard to figure out, and when we did figure it out, we discovered that it was very hard to hear. We had it at full volume yet it was still somewhat quiet.

The ride on the vehicle was pretty nice for a minivan. The steering was tight and quite responsive for the size of the car. The seats were comfortable too. One thing I noticed they changed over the years is the dashboard. On my 93 Caravan, there's like a large inset area so things can be placed on the dash without them falling off. The 2006 doesn't have that, so if you put anything up there,, it'll hit the floor shortly after you make any movement with the van.

The 2006 Caravan has a lot of safety features like airbags that you can shut off so you don't squash your kids if you plow into another car or object. Another feature is that if the side doors open, the hazards come on to warn you so you can stop if needed.

The most IRRITATING safety feature though is the impatient repetitive dinging if you forget to put your seatbelt on right away after driving. The belts are kinda hard to fasten at the angle they are and it's even harder to buckle them when you've got the loud annoying intermittent "ding ding ding" over and over again. I found a way around it though,, I fastened the belt behind me so it would shut up! I wear my seatbelt on the highway and while driving even local, but while we were at the campground and just driving 5 MPH to get to the bathhouse, I feel it's useless to buckle up. So for such a short trip at such a low speed,through an empty campground seatbelts aren't needed.

Anyway,, back to the initial drive there. The one thing I noticed was that the motor had decent pickup for a Caravan. TRUST ME,, My Van takes forever to reach cruising speed because it's a 4 cylander. This 2006 one had a 3.3 Litre V6 which gave it average pickup, plus got semi decent mileage. It got a little less mileage than my 82 Buick does, but then again,, they're the same size motor hauling such a big load.

The ride was a comfortable one, and I did notice that no matter how much you try to dress up a Caravan,, it's still a Caravan and drives basically the same as the older ones.

After a long drive, we arrived at our destination. We start to unpack and my roommate and I notice that we left all our blankets back in Ohio. Considering it's cold at night, sleeping in the tent was basically out of the question.

My roommate monkied with the seats and discovered that both the back two seats could recline. Something my 93 doesn't do. There still is the problem with the width of the seats for sleeping curled up so he reclined the backseat, and then folded down the one in front of it basically making the backseat like a recliner with a foot rest. Since the trip was a rainout the whole time we were there,, our friend took the tent since he had a sleeping bag, and my roommate and I used the van as our tent.

Another thing I noticed about the 2006 Dodge Caravan is that the transmission shifts the same way as my 93 does. It shifts kind of jerky. After discovering this, it made me feel better about the one in my 93 because now I know that's just the way they're made.

I actually enjoyed driving the thing. I enjoyed it so much I offered to drive all the way back to Cleveland. I actually miss the darn thing. If I can ever get the cash, I'd definatly buy the 2006 Caravan. I just hope they resolved the problems of the older ones so history doesn't repeat itself (IE. Needing a new transmission prematurely, leaking valvecovers etc)

I'd recommend this one to people who need a Minivan but want a nice ride.