A Day in the (Van) Life…(what it’s REALLY like)

Journal Entry #28

May 1, 2022

Van-life usually includes the following three classic stereotypes:

1. The semi-homeless wanderer working seasonal jobs in a bare bones Chevy Econo-line (much as was portrayed by Frances McDormand in Nomadland) or

2. The 20-something fitness/yoga instructor life coach with carefully staged over-the-top Instagram photos in stunning locations promoting their personal brand. Most of them are posing in their pictures— wearing floppy hats and well fitting swimsuits… or hugging their boyfriend (who does programming from the road)… or their best pal Fido. or

3. Since vanlife has become a “thing”, an vacationer who wants to give it a try (having seen pictures of the 20-somethings) to see if the reality can match the expectations, like in the recent and very funny NYT Magazine article (totally recommended for a good laugh) by Caity Weaver: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/04/20/magazine/van-life-dwelling.html?referringSource=articleShare

Enough people have asked us what it’s “really like” to live on the road from our perspective. Now that we are eight months in we thought we’d share the routine we have developed. We are neither in Frances McDormand’s situation, nor are we “lifestyle brand” van-lifers, or “newbie van-vacationers.” It is a life of constant change and surprises, for certain. We have figured out what works for us and have also learned a lot about each other in the process.

So to try to give you a feel for it, here is a “day in the life” for a moving/travel day— meaning we are leaving one area of camping and moving to the next one. We aim for our travel days to be between 2.5-3.5 hours of driving, though we have done both shorter and longer legs.

We typically wake up around 8 am. That’s when light through our bathroom skylight tends to be bright enough to wake us. That, or one of us (usually me) has to pee. It is literally one step to the toilet so, it’s super convenient, but the morning shuffle is typically the start of the day. Happily, only once during our trip have we had a “pee incident” when the bottle which is the front part of our composting Nature’s Head toilet, mostly full from the night before, overflowed with my morning constitutional. Lesson? Check to make sure pee bottle is less than halfway full before bed.  Empty it when in doubt. (The bottle fills up every 2 days or so.)

Tom is the master coffee maker. He gets out his favorite, ordered on the road, fancy Baratza burr coffee grinder (which takes up at least a quarter of our precious and limited under sink storage), grinds the coffee and makes us pour over brew. I “poo-pooed” the grinder when Tom bought it but I must I admit that evenly ground beans do make a difference. Yes, it’s totally bougie and, for two old Gen-Xers, we feel very “millennial”  when we make coffee this way, but the morning coffee ritual is one of the luxuries we really enjoy. No matter what happens during the rest of the day, it always starts with good coffee. As we run out of beans we have taken to seeking out good local coffee roasters to add to the pantry. Favorites to date have been Picacho Roasters in Las Cruces, NM, Land and Water in Santa Rosa, CA, and River Roasters in Florence, OR.

Bougie coffee grinder and pour over

Then there is the bed. I have hung on to the habit of enjoying a neatly made bed complete with decorative pillows. Something about starting with a clean, just made bed each day says “home” to me.  And it stays this way… for a total of THREE WHOLE minutes because, we then put a whole host of other stuff on top of the bed once it is made (jackets, hats, notebooks, maps, bags of crocheting yarn, etc.) that we ritually move off the bed each night and stack on the various flat surfaces of the van (chairs, benches, ledges). The point is this; the bed is a temporary storage area, as is EVERY SINGLE SPACE in the van. If you see pictures of vans with their back doors flung open to stunning views over a neatly made bed, please understand there is a looming pile behind the photographer; it has been cleaned and staged before it was taken! Van life is a CONSTANT shuffling of stuff from place to place in order to make the limited space user friendly.

Ideal and real!

Bench becomes storage at bedtime

Our approach to moving is generally fairly leisurely. With most reserved camping (whether park, Hipcamp or Harvest Host) arrival times are in the later afternoon so there is little point in racing to get there. (It’s different if we are looking for free BLM camping. In those cases we look to get to the location as others are leaving, between 10am and 12am).

In the transformer movies, a shiny truck turns into a giant robot. In our version, the living space turns into a mobile ready van. After early days fits and starts we have become adept at executing this transformation.

Our driver and passenger seats which serve as our living room loungers are rotated forward again and window covers that give us evening privacy are pulled off and stowed. We “lock down” the refrigerator, our drawers and the food storage cupboards. We have occasionally learned the hard way if we forget this step. One particularly memorable instance was turning a corner and hearing the crash of containers careening out of our pantry- an explosion of grains and lentils all over the place. Suffice it to say that we still find grains of rice now and again on the floor. We have also had the occasional refrigerator “near emergency”- if the lock isn’t fully tight the door can come ajar. I have had to run back to reshelve rolling cans of beer and errant containers of food. We put bread, apples, onions, avocados, crackers - things that don’t need refrigeration in our deep sink (like I said EVERY space is storage space.)

Living room before drive mode

Even the yoga blocks that I use as bed side steps are placed in the bathroom - and even they transform— from steps they become a wedge that holds a very small covered receptacle in place so it doesn’t slide around as we move. This receptacle holds a bag for my “girl” used toilet paper — eg the “pee only TP” which we don’t put into the composting area of the toilet. (Perhaps this is TMI, I know, but this is what it’s really like!)

We sweep the outside making sure we haven’t left anything, putting our outside step stool and doormat and any and all electrical cords (if we have used electric hook ups) away. We also learned to do a last reconnoiter the hard way early on in our travels after leaving a step stool behind. It seems like a simple thing, but it took us several tries and ultimately required an extra stop and a few hour wait at an Amazon locker for the replacement to arrive.

Once we are transformed it’s time to hit the road. If we have reasonable cell signal or internet we can call up our next stop on the phone GPS. If not, we rely on paper atlases to help us navigate. Tom does all of the driving and I am all things navigation/route finding, providing information on local history/flora/fauna, scanning for interesting stops along the way, deciding on food options if are going to eat out (sometimes), or roadside stops to make lunch (more often) and making our provisions lists. We shop every 3-4 days as we can’t carry large quantities of fresh food. Essentially, it is my job to try thread the needle to keep us both content, balancing total driving time with relative hunger, interest in exploring/making stops and general fatigue on our moving days. Some of this is based on the distance of the drive; more often it is based on the challenge of the drive.

A challenging drive for Tom typically includes narrow winding roads and windy conditions or, conversely, City/urban sprawl with lots of traffic and stop and go. But perhaps the most challenging drive for Tom also includes when I “passenger seat” drive. Now, this doesn’t happen ALL the time. Part of the object of my research and route finding and reading aloud about where we are going, etc. is to generally keep me distracted from the mechanics of the actual drive. However, if the road is particularly winding with steep climbs and descents and also windy (like, say, ALL of the coastal road we have been on up the CA/OR coast recently) this is when my instinct to direct kicks in. It stems in large part from fear. Let’s just say riding in a ten-thousand pound vehicle (the weight of a fairly large truck) sitting high, with the tall sides of our van acting as a “sail” is an entirely different experience than taking the same journey in car that hugs the turns and grips the road. So, instead, in these particular conditions I have a habit of abandoning my other distractions, gripping my seat with both hands and if a curve is quite tight, leaning into the center of the vehicle (as the height and centrifugal force feels like I am being thrown outward) and pointing out the road signs to Tom like this:

Sign: 25 mph with wiggly arrow

Me: “Tom, it says curves ahead, 25 mph -maybe slow down?”

Sign: 6% and picture of truck pointing downhill

Me: “Tom, there’s a 6% downhill grade, I think you might want to slow a little? Brake more?”

Sign: Rock Slide Area

Me: “Tom, there might be rocks here…could you SLOW down?”

Well, not exactly, but pretty darn close!

In all of these cases Tom can see and is completely aware of the signs. And he is a very good, conscientious and safe driver. My nervous commentary is mostly related to NOT having direct control of the vehicle, which can at times feel to me like a runaway train. Especially when our engine brakes kick in, which is a good thing but nonetheless a reminder of the significant weight we carry. One might suggest that I drive the van. I could do it in an emergency but, honestly, I am outclassed by Tom when it comes to driving a 22 foot long, 12 foot tall, nearly 5 ton house on wheels. He has better skills and instincts on the road for certain.

This not to say I am the only contributor to our collective road stress. When it comes to the concept of making stops, say to see a place that sounds interesting or taking a short hike that might be a bit off our target route, Tom can, on occasion, be quite grumbly. After assessing his “hangry” meter (sometimes a snack is the solution- happily, having sandwich fixings in the van is super convenient.) I sometimes have to remind him that:

1. Taking stops means breaks from driving

2. This was the ENTIRE POINT OF THE TRIP in the first place— to carry our entire home with us so we CAN stop when we like and see things off the beaten path.

Tom thinks like an engineer; efficiency and expediency is part of his nature. I would generally tend to be more joyfully spontaneous about detours and extra stops but I have learned that this approach is tougher for Tom. Therefore I have to carefully pitch and sell the idea of a detour least 30 minutes in advance. This helps Tom “digest” the change and add it to the drive itinerary. Even so, when I offer up options and suggestions he often starts with a series of logistical questions which are what I would call “thinly veiled mini objections”. I respect that he is the driver— which admittedly is the heavy lifting. So, then goal is to convince him on his terms; that the ratio of reward vs. extra road time is a good one. Even then I still might get a bit of a grumble under his breath.

However, a little planning and gentle persuasion usually win the day. Tom typically relaxes into the experience. He often comments to me after one of these exchanges that I bring the “magic” of what would just be a trip from A to B and that he is glad I held fast. He says that I have the best instincts and ability to suss out things we will both enjoy.

Mostly, we humor each others quirks; my passenger seat driving, his mini grumbling, with grace. Apologies come easily. I think we’re both earnestly trying to work on this stuff.

But if ever there was a test of our marriage it would be navigating parking and leveling the van at a campsite at the end of a long moving day.

We arrive at our camping spot (which may have taken additional time to scope out and find if we are boondocking) and though both of us just want to kick back and relax there is an iterative and frustrating chore that has to be completed— the dreaded dance of positioning and leveling of the van. Why do we have to level, you say? Well, in order for water to drain properly down our sink or shower leveling is necessary. In addition, a level bed means happy people, especially me of the sensitive inner ear. I can literally feel if we are just a bit out of level and my inner ear complains loudly. I have on occasion awoken at night with a start, feeling claustrophobia and edginess when we have been “out of level.” The worst is if our headboard side is even a hair lower than our foot side. I feel like I am being wedged into the corner of our bed area. And if the front or back of the van is not level, either I will roll into Tom and push him towards the back doors, or he will roll towards me and I will be pushed towards the hallway and walls.  We sleep in a 52 inch wide, 73 inch long space, east west in the van. This is a hair smaller than a typical full size mattress. It’s TIGHT. However, I will say that our 8 inch memory foam mattress is a beautiful thing and I have had some of the best sleep of my life in our little box on wheels.

That’s me (squished) in the corner…

So, back to the dreaded parking and leveling. There is a precarious balance between achieving the best view, the right amount of privacy and a level location and it is often hard (but never impossible) to achieve all three. This dance takes work. Typically we orient the van based on view and privacy, regardless of how level the site is. This leads to the frought trial and error process. It starts with pulling in and picking our orientation. I am tasked with manning the carpenter’s spirit level, checking east-west and north-south level while Tom pulls out our various wood blocks and plastic ramps from our garage.

He would prefer that I describe the current “out of level” by which tire needs what amount of lift. I prefer to call out comparatives like “front to back is good, and the side-to-side driver’s side is a little high.” I believe this is pretty reasonable and also accurate. Tom calls my commentary qualitative and difficult to action on. Tom puts blocks or ramps under van tires or removes them and then jumps into and out of van, driving on or off of the various blocks and ramps while asking how we are. I answer honestly:

“Well, the drivers side was high but now it’s low. We were good front to back…but it looks like the back is a little low now.”

Tom replies incredulously, “How can the drivers side now be low AND the BACK is ALSO low?!”

I retort, “Hey, man, I’m just reading the f-ing level.”

In the end though, Tom is persistent enough and I am descriptive enough to achieve level (and often a great view to boot). And truth be told, it is because we stick with this dance long enough, even when we both are really tired and want to call it quits that we have rarely had nights “out of level.” I can count a handful in our eight months on the road. (There must be a relationship lesson here, right?)

To be fair, we typically travel only every third day or so if we possibly can. This gives us time to relax and enjoy our surroundings on non move days. We explore the area by foot or bike and spend most of our time outside.  Back at “home” we cook, talk, write and read; we might watch a show or listen to music. We regularly FaceTime or chat with family and friends. Dinner and dishes are much like you would imagine. We might take a shower before bed. Then we tuck in when we are tired. It’s “regular life” in many respects but we are especially lucky to be able to pick new and different outdoor living rooms every few days. Is it worth the frustrations and challenges of the travel days? YES. The juice is absolutely worth the squeeze.

Epilogue: The real deal from Tom on the art and science of leveling (an engineer’s perspective!)

Leveling using “naturally occurring” resources!

At first glance, leveling a camper van seems straightforward if not trivial. Simply figure out which corner is low then lift it until level. Easy, no? 

Big rig RV land yachts often have complex automatic leveling systems. Push a button and 4 computer controlled jacks automatically lift and stabilize. Must be nice. 

We camper van owners frequently use a more basic Flintstones approach. Our 6” carpenter’s spirit level suggests which tire to drive up onto a plastic ramp, interlocking blocks (think giant flattened legos), wood planks or even a handy rock laying nearby. 

Advantages include low tech = low cost & highly reliable (2x8’s don’t need firmware updates) and tires/wheels/suspension components are sturdy lifting points, well connected to vehicle body. 

Unfortunately, there are a few complications. Driving one tire 4 inches up a ramp doesn’t lift that corner the same amount. First, the suspension compresses as the springs see the additional weight. Second, unless parking on a paved pad, the ground gives a little - or sometimes a lot. The rear tires on our camper van each carry 3500lb, more than the entire weight of a Toyota Camry. Anyone who has tried balancing such a sedan on 75 square inches of wood will recognize this is easily enough weight to push a 10” 2x8 deep into gravel or sand.

Another complication. Leveling the van on unimproved locations often requires adjusting both left vs right and forward vs rearward. The same block, ramp or stone adds more side-to-side lift versus front-to-back. For example, the front tires on our 2020 Ford Transit are 148” from the rear tires, while the driver side tires are only 68” apart. This means 4” ramps under the driver side front and rear tires will tilt the van sideways TWICE as they would front to back if both ramps were under the front tires. 

Yet another complication. Leveling usually isn’t simply compensating a single tire for a one low spot. Often the whole site isn’t very even so driving one or two tires up onto ramps or blocks often moves the other remaining ground contact tires on an undesirably higher or lower spot.  

I sometimes wish we had 4 high-travel hydraulic leveling jacks with a central controller… but the other underside frame mounted components such as our gray tank and the marine water heater coolant conduit lines made space tight. In the end, we didn’t want to sacrifice ground clearance or reliability for convenience alone. For now, we will travel on with a few 2x8 wood blocks, two (cracked) plastic ramps and an occasional big rock. 

Leveling it takes patience, perseverance and ingenuity!