Buena Vista, Co

So an overview of my summer in Buena Vista, CO. Starting from the parking lot view when I first arrived, I loved everything about BV. It’s a small valley town between the Sawtooth Range to the west and the Mosquito Range to the east. Recreation areas and National Forests are all around you:

Four Mile Recreation Area

Also Four Mile Recreation Area

Sunset at the south end of the valley, looks fake! (Taken with my cellphone on the side of the road because I didn’t have my camera with me…drat!)

Antero Reservoir

West side of the Sawtooths, from the Continental Divide

Since I mostly worked four days on, three days off, I took advantage of the chance to do a fair amount of remote camping. The camping was AMAZING. While there are a number of campgrounds in the area I never paid for a camp spot but found plenty of free boon docking. All of these were within 45 minutes of where I lived/worked.

Boon docking spot

Another boon docking site

Boon docking on the Middle Cottonwood

Morning tea at creekside

When I didn’t go camping somewhere I went hiking, there are dozens of peaks to bag and trails to enjoy. I didn’t get to all of the ones I wanted to do, but I made a worthy effort!

Living and working in BV means you are always near the river. The headwaters of the Arkansas River are about an hour north, but the Arkansas River and it’s tributaries are all around:

Arkansas River from River Park in downtown Buena Vista

Some of the renowned white-water of the Arkansas River

Arkansas River just below Hecla Junction

BV is a great home base for all manner of outdoor activities from fishing, rafting, hiking, camping and peak bagging. I am seriously considering working one more summer there in order to see more, hike more and camp more there! For people living van life or RVing there are plenty of campsites and boon docking areas. I highly recommend it!

Sunset on the Continental Divide

Van-life Odds and Ends

This post will cover a bunch of different odds and ends that don’t justify a whole post but that people are curious about.

Spare Tire

When I bought Bombadil the spare tire was mounted underneath the van, this mounting arrangement is quite common in vehicles of all kinds from the 2000’s on. It was obviously designed by someone who has never actually HAD a flat tire, which rarely happens on dry perfectly level areas, which is the only way that arrangement is even vaguely practical. I understand it is to increase the interior space somewhat, but I HATE it. I purchased this spare tire mount instead. With some modification (drilling) this worked fine on my 2002 Ford Econoline E350. I would recommend it if you have the tools to do some drilling into the mount.

Passenger Seat

Because Bombadil was a cargo van, he only came with 2 seats, driver and front passenger. I did consider taking out the passenger seat, especially since I travel alone and don’t expect that to change. It takes up valuable floor space. After a great deal of thought I decided to keep it but put it on a swivel mount so it can be turned to face the back. Swivels for my make/model/year proved to be VERY pricey…upwards of $250.00 plus shipping. I chose to get a “generic” one and drill two new holes in the floor. This is the one I bought. I used two original holes and drilled two new holes and sealed the two original holes that didn’t line up with this base. These seats are not made to swivel and so you actually have to open the passenger door to get the seat 180 degrees. This hasn’t proven to be a problem since it has remained facing the back since I installed it. I have the seat slid all the way forward (since it is now facing the back of the van) so that I can still see my passenger side mirror. I still have the option of removing the passenger seat at some point if I need/want to.

Window Coverings

Window coverings for privacy (and to help with temperature moderations as well) are a must for me. I made mine from Reflectix and scrap felt from a fabric store, Super 90’d together (any word may be verbed). Since the first 5 months I lived in Bombadil in Asheville, NC this came in and out of the windows literally every day, sometimes more than once. These are holding up nicely to heavy use! I put the Reflectix out in the summer to help keep the heat out, and in the winter I put them in with the felt out to keep the heat in.

Ladder

I feel that I need to have a ladder available because of the solar and fan on the roof, my middle brother and sister-in-law donated a collapsible ladder which I have mounted to the inside of the back driver door with these mounts. I don’t think they would hold up to daily use, but they are fine for once or twice a month pulling the ladder out and putting it back in.

Toilet

Ok this is a big one for plenty of people. I decided that I did want one in the van. There are cheaper ones, there are more expensive ones. This one works for me with a minimum of fuss and no smell except while you are using it. I have the “Basic” model, in white, installed in the van. I use pine or aspen shavings meant for pet bedding as my “medium” for solid waste. Cheap and easy to find at most Walmarts and any pet store. I am very pleased with it, it is well worth the money for me.

Refrigerator

I did not want to try and deal with keeping a supply of ice for a cooler. I did not want to go without any refrigeration. My solar system was sized so that I can run a 12v refrigerator 24/7 (among other things). So I decided on this Dometic fridge (technically I could use it as a freezer, it does allow me to set the temperature that low/cold). When I bought it it was cheaper than they are now, I paid $746.54. It has performed flawlessly and while I can hear it, it has become background noise and doesn’t bother me at all. I did order an extra 12v cord so that I could cut off the cheap 12v connector (meant to plug in to cigarette lighter type ports) and hard wire the fridge (with an appropriate fuse) directly into the solar system. It would void the warranty if I did it to the original cord.

So that’s how I have managed some of the daily life things that people have a hard time imagining while living in a van. I have been living in Bombadil for 9 months now, no regrets!

Kitchen and Plumbing

That’s the kitchen cabinet, plumbing, water storage, stove and all!

When I was in the planning stages I determined that I needed a real sink, big enough to brush my teeth and do dishes. And I wanted running water but I did not want to have to have electricity for it. I have seen plenty of people use a hand pump, they are inexpensive and simple to install. But if you have ever used one (they are often on sailboats) they are annoying in practice. Having to have one hand on the pump 2/3 of the time you use it makes things like washing your hands or dishes more complicated than you might think. Ultimately I decided to install a foot pump instead (also common on sailboats) so that I could have running water without electricity and I can use both hands!

The cabinet is not large, so finding a sink that was deep enough to wash my 3 pans but not to big to fit in the cabinet was a challenge. Bar/prep sinks were the ticket, although an expensive ticket! This is the one I used after several months of searching. It was pricey but it has performed very well.

The cabinet top is cherry butcher block, it was a gift from a dear friend who had just remodeled her kitchen. She had some leftover pieces which she offered me for free!

This is how I did it:

I decided for space reasons (there isn’t much) that this cabinet would block one of the two side doors of the van. For those who wonder this has not ended up bothering me in the slightest. I go in and out of the one side door multiple times a day without feeling cramped in the slightest. When I give the “Five Step Tour” of the van (two steps up, three steps to the back) no one has trouble getting in and out. The blocked door does still open, I use it when I am emptying the grey water tank as well as when I want a view while I cook in nice weather. The tricky thing was that the cabinet needed just one foot since it overhangs the step well.

The second tricky thing was mounting the foot pump. It’s a marine foot pump, meant to be bolted through a hull. While I did bolt the cabinet itself through the floor of the van, I tried to avoid any unnecessary holes through the floor since it’s a prime spot for rust to start. But the foot pump, because it’s generating your water pressure, has to be very firmly mounted (you are stepping on it over and over again as well) but still be accessible for maintenance. Several schematic drawings were involved before I came up with something workable and sturdy enough:

The pump is actually bolted to a piece of 2x4 which can be slid in and out of the restraining structure for maintenance.

I am using 4 of the white containers shown for fresh water for a total of 10 gallons of fresh water. The blue container is for grey water, it holds a little over 3 gallons. The smaller containers are easier to fill than 5+ gallon ones are. I did have to make sure they weren’t to tall to allow for the shelf for my stove.

In case of leaks I did not want the water system directly on the van floor so this cabinet has a raised floor lined with plastic to protect everything from moisture. You can also see where I bolted the cabinet thru the floor here:

I used the leftover half a sheet of paneling for the sides of the cabinet. It matches (naturally) and there’s no real stress on them that would require something sturdier.

The countertop piece that was gifted to me was to wide and not long enough. One of the guys at work has a wood shop out back of his house and used his band saw to cut the countertop for me. I planned to use part of the off cut and glue it to the end to make it long enough. The problem was it turns out I didn’t have a clamp long enough (almost…but not quite). So I cut out the hole for the sink (using the supplied template) and clamped from the hole instead. I then used 4 coats of wipe-on poly to seal the whole thing. Even with the band saw cuts and super tight clamping there were still some very small gaps, I filled these with kitchen silicone to keep crumbs etc. from getting in there. I thought the difference in texture might bother me, but it doesn’t. The clips that came with the sink for attaching it to the counter would not work in the very tight confines of the cabinet so I ended up using the corner shaped pieces you see in the picture instead as they are so much smaller.

I attached the countertop with multiple corner braces and hung one door on each side for easy access to fill fresh water, empty grey water and get my stove out when I am going to cook (it sits on the shelf over the fresh water containers).

Next step was installing the faucet. Here I encountered an unexpected problem. When I ordered the faucet I had looked at the directions for installation, noted the size hole I would need to drill so that I was sure there was enough room for said hole when I cut the big hole for the sink. That part was all fine. The threaded section that is used to clamp the faucet to a countertop wasn’t long enough to clamp to my butcher block counter…

There was no longer room to use a hole saw to remove some material underneath because the sink and stove shelf had already been installed. I didn’t want to do it from the top and essentially countersink the faucet cause all kinds of crap would get down in the hole and there’s no good way to clean it out. There was un-ladylike language! There were pictures and text messages exchanged with my youngest brother to come up with possible solutions. What I ended up doing was drilling the hole where originally marked. Then I took a piece of wood, chiseled out a countersink hole in the bottom to allow room for the nut to be tightened (I couldn’t find a hole saw small enough and a forester bit of the correct size was $40 which was more than I was willing to spend for something I needed to use once). Then I essentially clamped the faucet to the piece of wood, painted the wood and then fed it down the hole and screwed the piece of wood to the countertop (I didn’t want to glue/epoxy incase I need to tighten/fix/replace the faucet). Not what I had in mind in the beginning, but it was the best solution I could come up with and it works fine.

I saved the chunk I cut out for the sink and glued some pieces of old pack strap to the back, giving me a sink cover I can use when I want the counter space. The butcher block is an inch and a half thick so just finger cut outs weren’t enough to lift something that heavy out, the straps work great and aren’t in the way.

Then I just needed to plumb from the sink to the grey water container. I used this RV part to do that. I had to cut and modify it a bit, but it ended up working perfectly for super cheap!

That’s it! I have been brushing my teeth, washing my hands and dishes for months and months now. No problems, no leaks!

I put up some pegboard on the side door in front of this cabinet. I put spices (and my toothbrush) here so that when I am cooking inside Bombadil they are right there over the sink. But if I am cooking outside on my collapsible table I can open that door and have the spices right there as well!

Walls

Can you see the curve of the walls?

Sprinters and ProMasters have nearly vertical walls, but Ford Econolines and Chevy vans, they have the curved walls. It doesn’t seem like that much of a curve when the van is empty, but oh it is! That curve is why I ended up settling on paneling for the walls. Paneling has quite a bit of flex and is inexpensive.

Even with all the flex though I ended up having to shim the top of the paneling in order to make it conform. I glued shims along the top and then screwed through them into the 1x2’s and 2x4. I used 1.5 sheets of paneling for the walls, the other half sheet I used later for cabinets. I measured and cut paneling in one piece for the long wall, this meant taking that sheet in and out of the van 6-8 times to make minor adjustments until it fit correctly.

The short passenger side was much easier:

I put some pegboard in at the rear of the van where the paneling ends to hang some things. Overall I am pleased with how it turned out.

Insulation

All that bare metal! There are plenty of opinions about insulation out there. Should you or shouldn’t you bother with insulation? If you do insulate, what parts of the van? What do you use to insulate?

This is what I chose to do: I insulated very nearly everything and I used mostly Polyiso to do it. I used the Lowes brand because Lowes was closest to me at the time! In total I used 4.5 sheets in the van.

Notice in the picture above, the ridges in the floor, pickup trucks (and some SUV’s) have these as well. I wanted to even out the floor with insulation so that when I put down flooring later I wouldn’t have flexing or other issues with installing the floor, level is better!

I cut strips of foam (not Polyiso which was to thick to fill the grooves) and used spray mount (I used a lot of 3M Super 90 in my build, I highly recommend it!) to put it down in the grooves.

The grooves weren’t all the same size (of course) so I cut them individually first, numbered them and then spray mounted them all in one go in-between rainstorms. You can see in the above photo a few places where there had been the beginnings of rust which I sanded and treated with a rust converter) Next came the sheets of Polyiso:

You can see that I used whatever heavy items were available to me to give the Polyiso sheets good contact with the floor ridges while adhesive was drying.

I covered the wheel-wells and the gas tank inlet with FatMat Rattle-Trap:

In some of these pictures you can see some spray foam particularly around the wheel-wells and doors. That spray foam came with the van, I didn’t put any in myself. It’s messy, can deform even metal panels and isn’t enough R-value to be worth the trouble for me. In some places I had to cut out that spray foam in order to get to other things or to smooth a surface I needed to mount something to and that stuff is a pain to get rid of/clean up, I am not a fan!

Next came insulating the walls, you can see they have places where the factory would cut out for windows if this had been a passenger van instead of a cargo van, I filled these “valley’s” with Polyiso cut to size/shape first before putting the larger pieces in over the top. At this juncture I also attached 2x4’s and 1x2’s directly to the metal van walls with self tapping sheet metal screws in places where I wanted to be able to screw things directly to the walls. Because I was building out the van by myself, some creative bracing was necessary so that I wouldn’t have to stand there and hold each piece for 10-15 minutes

The rear doors had no panels on them. I made plywood panels to cover them since you could see light thru them in the corners. I insulated with Reflectix. This also gave me a place to screw things in the back.

The side barn doors did have metal panels on the bottom halves, I removed these and insulated inside with a combination of Polyiso (more creative bracing) and Reflectix and then remounted the panels, when I was finished you couldn’t tell I’d spent hours on them!

As for the roof, the fiberglass topper has an outer shell and an inner shell, when it was installed, the installers put regular pink house insulation between the pieces so I chose not to do any further insulating of the roof for now.

The insulation has made a big difference inside the van, the dashboard heater/AC is never going to be strong enough to moderate the entire van. But it holds its temperature (hot or cold) for much longer now, and I no longer have drafts (almost breezes) from the doors. Now that I live in it, I will say that when it gets cold enough (below 20 Fahrenheit) I cannot keep the floor warm. The air gets warm, and if I am sitting on the bed or in the front seats it’s plenty warm, but the actual floor stays cold, I wear heavy wool socks and call it good enough!

Where To Find "The One"

Finding Bombadil was a little bit like dating. I went into it knowing that no van (I could afford) was going to have everything I wanted. So I made a list of the things that were important to me:

• 2005 or newer

• less than 130,000 miles

• cruise control

• high top

• tow-hitch

• 8 cylinder engine

Sprinters were out of my price range and Transits had just come out and there wasn’t any info about their long-term reliability so those were the only 2 models I eliminated right off the bat. I did not want to take on the debt for a brand new van, so I was looking only at used vans.

I would look at any van that had at least half of the “important things” on it, and allowed for the fact that some of those things can be added later if the van was otherwise excellent.

I tried Ebay, Craigslist, Facebook, local papers, local dealerships (particularly ones that dealt with fleets). I looked for more than a year. I didn’t find anything that I was willing to pay the asking price for. I was beginning to think I might have to get a new one.

What finally found me my van was that I had told my family and friends that I was looking for one. My parents drove by a used car dealership that had Bombadil sitting there. They talked to the dealership, test drove it, took it to their trusted local mechanic and had him look it over. Even though they are over 2000 miles away from me, they found “the one”! I bought the van without ever seeing it in person (there were many texted photos however). My parents picked it up and kept it in their driveway for a couple of months until I could fly out and pick it up and drive it back here.

Bombadil came with 4 of my 6 important things, which is pretty good!

So if you are interesting in doing something like this, my advice is don’t give up! And tell people! You never know who knows someone who knows someone, or who sees something you never would.

The Why(s)

I have spent almost two years converting Bombadil into a camper van, evenings and weekends and vacations. There are two “why” questions I get asked the most. The first is “why don’t you just live in a house/apartment, like a normal person?”

I have of course done just that for many years, I am middle aged and until last month that’s exactly how I have lived. But here’s the thing, I have backpacked and hiked much of my life. I have lived all across the country doing a wide variety of jobs. All those years, all of the places I have lived, I have always wished for more time. More time to spend in the beautiful, interesting, different places in this country, more time to explore the places I find, more time to find new places. What I want is time and experiences. I am not getting any younger, in order to have as much time and as many experiences as possible, things need to change.

Coastal Maine in the fall.

Rocky Mountain National Park

This is the way that I have chosen to get what I want. Living in a minimalist fashion with only what I need means I can work less and have more time and energy. Living nomadically means I can travel more easily, cheaply and more often. Living this way isn’t as easy and convenient as living conventionally, but it gets me much closer to what I want out of life. For me that is a trade worth making.

Yellowstone National Park

The second question is “Why a van?” Generally followed by two or three other “better” options. When I decided that I want to try living nomadically I did a great deal of research. Research into RV of all sizes and ages, into 5th wheels, pop-ups, tear-drop trailers, cargo trailers, buses, vans and at least half a dozen more options. All of these options have positives and negatives. Any of them could work. The trick is to find the option that will work the best for you personally, and to remember that no option is going to have EVERYTHING you want. For ME, for the kind of travel that I want to do, the van is the option I decided to try. Even after I made that decision there was even more research, what van? How old? How long/tall? Etc. There are companies that will convert a van into a camper for you, there are companies that will do just some of the work. I read blogs, I watched Youtube videos, I haunted fora of various kinds. I attended “Vanlife Gatherings”

The van I have ended up with is the product of research and an honest appraisal of what I need and what I use the most. I may change it around, I may try something else entirely. But for now it is working for me!

And It Was Good

I finished the van!

From the back.

From the side barn doors.

Well ok not really, it still needs an awning (but it’s wintertime so I don’t need that yet) and a swing away cargo carrier for the back (waiting on my tax refund) and some odds and ends like that. However I moved into it on the third of December! Just in time for snowpocalypse here in the south. Asheville’s average snowfall per year is 11 inches, we got 18-22 inches… in one weekend. So that wouldn’t have been my first choice of beginnings, but we don’t always get what we want.

I have been van living for almost a month now. I like it. I am comfortable. I have everything I need. There are things to get used to, some things take longer and some things are quicker vs traditional living. I wondered in the back of mind as I worked on the van…”what if I do all this work, spend all this time and money, and then I don’t like living that way?” The deal I made with myself is that I will live in the van for a year. The van will pay for itself in one year, with what I am saving in rent. After the first year, if I still like it, great I continue on. If I don’t like it, if I am uncomfortable or unhappy because of my living arrangements then I can go back to traditional living and I won’t have lost anything.

So this is where I am. I live in my van full time. I am exploring other ways of making money that would allow me to travel. But for now I am saving money while working full-time. I am using this blog to document both how I built out my van, and how I make this lifestyle work going forward.