Van Dwelling Q & A

"Going to the mountains is going home.” ― John Muir

For those who have been following my blog, know that I spend a good deal of time on the road in my converted van, following the sun and exploring this great country. There are a couple of reasons I chose a plain, non-descript cargo van for my "lifestyle" instead of a larger RV is because 1) I choose to live primarily off-grid where larger RV's cannot go and I can park anywhere a car can. 2) My van is very stealthy; I can park and sleep basically anywhere. I've spent many a night in residential neighborhoods, Wal-Mart parking lots, other business parking lots and the list goes on. In fact, I can't recall the last time I spent money to overnight in an RV park. There are just too many free places to overnight and that's part of the adventure for me.

When my family and friends learn of my travels and living in a van, I get a lot of strange looks as you might imagine. When I see those looks, I know what's coming next - the questions. The questions I'm asked most often are: 1) Where and how do you shower? 2) Where do you park? 3) You don't have a bathroom in your van, where do you go? 4) How do you keep cool in the summer and 5) don't you get cold in the winter months?

So, let me address these questions for those of you who might also be questioning my sanity about living off-grid in a van.

Showering is by far the easiest to answer. I have a gym membership to Anytime Fitness and I've found that these gyms are almost everywhere and not just the larger cities, but small, out the way towns as well. As their name "Anytime" implies, they are open 24/7 and I have access anytime of the day or night. If I want to work out a bit while there, I do that as well, but I love their facilities. If I happen to be in an area without an Anytime Fitness, I can stop at a truck stop as the truckers do and for 8 to 10 bucks, I can get a hot shower. Most also have laundry facilities. And then someone will ask, but if you don't have access to those, then what? Well, I have a portable shower that I carry with me. It's a great little shower that I found on Amazon for about $30 and is battery operated and quite surprisingly, it generates good pressure. If I'm in the desert or mountains and there's no one around, I simply put water into a 5 gallon bucket I carry and hang my shower on the door of my van, strip down and get a nice shower. If it happens to be cold, I can heat the water on my cook stove. Works great.

So, that brings us to the subject of a bathroom. No, I don't have a bathroom in my van. Obviously there are numerous places where one can go to the bathroom while on the road, but not so when off-grid in the desert or mountains. Most people that choose to live off-grid carry a small foldable shovel for digging a "cat hole." There's also my 5 gallon bucket that I carry for emergencies. Simply place a couple of heavy duty plastic bags inside and you've got all you need, then dispose of properly. As far as urinating, no issue at all. I've heard it said that, "every tree is a urinal." During the night, I use a bottle, a trick that I learned many years ago when I was active in my Private Investigations business. When on a stake out or surveillance for hours at a time, I had to come up with a way to relieve myself without leaving my surveillance position and chance losing my target.

Sleeping when it's hot can be an issue if you're not prepared. I've only run across a couple of van dwellers that had an air conditioner installed. That is usually accomplished by having a small A/C and a portable generator. You can't run your van's A/C all night. I have an AGM, sealed, deep cycle battery that I use as my house battery. It's charged by my van battery while driving. When parked off-grid, I can keep my house battery charged with my solar panels. I have a DC fan that works great to circulate air. I also have insect screens that I fashioned for the front windows that is held in place by small magnets. That cross ventilation and my fan does the trick for me. I also carry a 10 X 10 screen room that I can use to sleep in outdoors on the ground if I so desire.

Sleeping when it's cold is another matter. I have a good cold weather sleeping bag that I sleep in on my bed inside my van and carry additional bedding for really cold weather. When I get up in the mornings, I can turn my camp stove on to make coffee and breakfast and that little stove will have my van toasty warm in 5-6 minutes. Let me also add that I am not a fan of cold weather, so I do very little cold weather camping. When it's cold, I'm usually camping in the desert of southern Arizona along with thousands of other snow birds.

I hope this gives you a little insight into the van dwelling lifestyle.

Source: Most of the photos in this blog are provided courtesy of pixabay.com.

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