As I shared in a previous post my husband and I had decided to trade in our T@G teardrop camper for a camper van. We had gotten back into camping a few years before and really enjoyed it. After a particularly cold Spring camping trip to Cape Henlopen in Delaware where we had breakfast in bed not by choice but because it was too cold to eat outside, we started talking about a bigger rig. In preparation for this purchase, we headed out to the Hershey PA RV show and spent 2 days looking at endless options.
We are the type of travelers who like to stop and check out whatever cool roadside attraction piques our curiosity. A trailer makes that harder so a class B or C was on our consideration list. As we looked at the many (endless?) options it quickly became clear that our quickest deal breaker was whether the bed was set up north/south or east/west. A north/south sleep set up is when the bed is situated front to back instead of side to side or east/west. We did not want to have to climb over each other in the other in the middle of the night to get to the bathroom. We wanted a bathroom and weren’t wedded to a wet bath or dry bath.
My husband started looking for vans as we debated the pros and cons of the options. He found a 2021 Ram Promaster 3500 that someone had started converting. It had 4 windows; 2 in the sleeping area with screens and 2 in the back doors, 2 fans, and insulation on the walls and the floor. The price was right and I could drive it so we bought it. We went with a home equity line of credit that we planned to pay off after a year when the introductory interest rate went away. My husband would be 60 years old by then and that meant we could dip into his IRA and pay off our retirement dream.
In the end, we went with East Coast Van Life in Canandaigua (now Stanley) New York. My brother lives 30 minutes from their facility which made the trips out and back much easier than to NJ and Sequoia Salt. We did an initial tour and intro as we were searching for our van. I think this is important. We had our sketch of our full build but from the start Kyle, the owner talked about a preliminary build and build 2 and 3. His encouragement to build it out in stages as we used it made a lot of sense to us. Our first trip in the van (pre-build) was with a mattress on the floor, a cooler, portapotti, and 2 camp chairs. We had a blast and knew we were on the right path and that also maybe we didn’t need everything we had sketched out.
Eventually, our full build included a wet bath with an airhead composting toilet on a slide out (it slides into a cabinet behind the driver seat that doubles as bench and small storage area), queen size bed with a garage underneath, a kitchen with a Bodega fridge, and an Outequip pro air conditioner heater unit. We did a 10,000 mile 3 month road trip across the country and into British Columbia and had a blast. Our fridge is the 110 liter model and that worked perfectly for us. We like to cook and it held enough food for about a week. The freezer kept our meat frozen and the produce drawer held quite a bit of produce as we stopped at farm markets and stands along our journey.
We like to stay at DEC campgrounds in the Adirondacks which have no power or water hookups so we went with a 39 gallon water tank and 2 250W solar panels and 2 lithium batteries with an inverter for our electric usage. The water heater uses a lot of energy as does the induction stove but we have never got below 64% on our batteries. Managing your energy usage takes some getting used to but the freedom of van life is worth the work. We are not full time van livers but love to head out when the mood hits us and go exploring. A van is the perfect fit for us because we like to stop whenever something interesting calls to us and at 21′ feet we fit most everywhere. We also don’t need a lot of creature comforts other than a comfy bed, a bathroom, and a place to make a meal.
In subsequent posts, I will share all the great places to see and stay that we found on our 3 month trip!
