LET THE ERA OF THE CAMPER VAN BEGIN!!
A little back story:
In 2010, my tiny family experienced the Tent/Van Era where we lived out of our tent and van for 2.5 months.
Then in 2011, we started the Trailer Era where we lived full-time in a 2-bedroom, 2-bathroom fifth-wheel trailer for 1.5 years.
Now that we’ve been living in our house (base-camp) for two years, we are setting ourselves up with a self-containing rig that will make life a whole lot easier when it comes to all the back and forth journeys we make from our "base-camp."
There are so many things that attract me to camper vans, mainly the self containment. You can say that this is my third “adventure van.” In high school, my buddies and I bid $300 on an old cargo van at our school’s fundraiser auction and won. We carpeted the floor, threw in some couches, painted our insignia on the side, and drove it around town like we owned the place.
Then in college, I went in with two of my buddies to purchase a party bus/van for a business venture of ours. We shuttled people to and from the regional ski resort and even rented out our services to groups of teenagers for high school dances.
Now I own a 2002 Chevy Express 12-passenger van for the sole purpose of bugging it out with a bed, vanity, and gear storage for our frequent weekend adventures. Now I’ll have a rig where all my camping gear is stored inside, eliminating the task of loading and unloading all the gear every weekend. I personally logged 38 nights of camping during 2014, not to mention that additional nights that my wife camped without me. We proved to ourselves that a camper van would save us in many ways. So now the project begins.
All my research on the internet needs to come into play and I need to start deciding how we will bug this thing out. Because of time and money, we’ll most likely outfit our van in stages. I foresee us starting off with a simple, yet functional set up that at least gives us sleeping space and gear storage. From there, we could go in many different directions. I’ll leave that for another day to explain. Stay tuned.
#vanlife #campervan
Side Note: Just to keep things clear, we have no plans to sell our house and live a life on the road. Our house in Sandy, UT will remain our basecamp and our camper van will be our vacation home on wheels.