Half Full report:
I started the process of getting the camper van of my dreams last month, to be completed next month.
Half Empty report:
I drove up to Oregon, wrote a very big check to a guy I’d never met before,
… to buy a delivery van that won’t fit in my garage,
… yakked with people about it for two days,
… drove home without the delivery van and with only a couple of invoice copies to show for it!
We of course will stick with the half full point of view, cuz’ that’s just the kind of forward-thinking people we are! But suffice to say that this whole process has given me a lot of financial anxiety and a little bit of lifestyle anxiety.
How did I get here? read on…
What I have now
I spend a fair amount of time, 4-10 weeks a year, road-trippin around in my good ole Tacoma with its good ole camper shell.
On beautiful days with plenty of daylight it’s still a pretty darned good way to go. Here’s my canonical camper day:
Park.
Unload all the various boxes of food, dishes, other random gear, move the cooler out so I have a place to sleep.
Enjoy the place I’ve gone to some trouble to be in until it’s too dark to do so.
usually eat in the dark, cuz the daylight is too fun to waste.
Move the food boxes to the cab.
Unroll bed roll in the truck.
Read and/or fiddle on the laptop till the battery runs out, inside or out depending on the temperature.
Reverse process, drive to next place, do it all again, with frequent motel nights in between.
Rain ==> it’s all bad, no place to put the boxes, squatting in the shell for hours on end.
Late in the season or god forbid after daylight savings time ==> it’s all bad. When it gets dark at 5pm, I’m basically spending 14 hours or so in that little camper shell space = cabin fever!
If it’s racoon or bear country, gotta schlep the cooler into the front seat.
What I want
The limitations of the above style have been quite apparent ever since I started doing it, so as many of you know, I have been burning the background cycles of my overheated brain for years on the subject of how best to upgrade my travelling act.
The choices fell into these categories:
Trailer
Low end are these cute little T@Bs – $20,000-ish and completely adequate for my needs. Lightweight enough to be hauled by my Tacoma ==> no new vehicle costs.
High end are the Airstreams, which are just so damn fine I can hardly stand it. The smallest could barely be hauled by my Tacoma, but realistically they should be hauled by a Tundra/Ford/GMC class of truck – ugh. Very expensive, but as it turns out I’m spending an effing lot anyway. Airstreams are just the coolest things ever!
Truck Camper
There are very small ones that will fit a Tacoma, but it’s a stretch and they’re pretty shabby.
The Lance campers are very nice – small ones are $25-35,000-ish, but they require a bigger truck, at least quarter ton.
Camper van
Think VW Eurovans or the old Westfalia. The new Eurovans are very expensive and hard to get, and the old ones are usually temperamental, constantly needing work-type vehicles, and that’s just not my thing. They are very rarely four wheel drive, so the off-road capablity, and more importantly for me, the snow-capability are diminished. But you are driving around in your house; everything is accessible and … integrated for lack of a better term….
Tradeoffs
So that’s the possibilities … what do I want?
Trailers are a massive pain in the ass to drive around with – parking, backing up, etc, but once you are someplace, they are great to be in.
Truck campers are easy to drive around in, just your truck with a big, heavy, boxy load. Without too much effort you can detach the camper and have the truck to drive around independently. But once inside, you are pretty removed from the lovely natural area you have driven to be in. Unless of course you’re sleeping in a Walmart parking lot or rest area just to get from here to there, in which case you’re glad to be removed from the area you are in!
Vans are easy to drive, but you don’t get to leave your home behind at the site, for better or worse.
Early on, like three years ago, I had a strong flirtation with trailers, because they are so damn fun and cozy. I’ve visited the T@B dealer in Folsom a coupla times, been to the Airstream dealer. Recently I revisited truck campers, and gave them another close look, but over time I came to decide that the camper van style is the best for me.
What I’m gonna get
A year or so ago I stumbled upon the Sportsmobile site. They customize Dodge, Ford, Chevy, and …. Sprinter vans.
What is a Sprinter you may well ask? It is a Mercedes van resold over here by Freightliner as a delivery van, and Dodge as a passenger van. Dodge of course is bankrupt and run by Barack Obama now, so the gossip is that the Sprinter will henceforth be sold directly by Mercedes. Whatever! That mattered to me two months ago, but I’ve got mine now!
They are very cool vehicles – you can stand up in ‘em (but they won’t fit on parking garages), they drive like a dream, diesel, fancy German engineering at every turn.
So for about a year, the Sportsmobile conversion was the van of my dreams. I even spent a night in Fresno on my spring road trip to San Diego, to spend a day at the Sportsmobile place.
Then things got all jumbled up. Getting the ole heart fixed took Major Mind Share for four months. In fact, until I discovered the overseas option, I thought my camper van dream was done, because Reno Heart Physicians and St Mary’a Hospital would have my life savings. So the van is the next phase of my life after getting the heart issue tucked away (he says optimistically).
Then in the hospital in Istanbul, with their slow but reliable wifi, I nothing better to do that return to obsessing on my camper van, which I did, and I more or less accidentally stumbled on the Outsidevan site. They had a much stronger sense of style than Sportsmobile, so of course I was drawn to them.
I determined that Sprinter prices were all over the lot due to the Dodge uncertainty. Some random Dodge dealer in Seattle or Cleveland might be selling their whole stock for $10,000 off, but then three weeks later the sale would be off.
In August, the Outsidevan site had a really sweet-looking steel-blue van for a really good price, and that was it for me, I was hooked. When I drove up to Lake Oswego, my plan was to get ‘er done unless there was a good reason not to, and I did!
gettin’ the camper van
Half Full report:
I started the process of getting the camper van of my dreams last month, to be completed next month.
Half Empty report:
I drove up to Oregon, wrote a very big check to a guy I’d never met before,
… to buy a delivery van that won’t fit in my garage,
… yakked with people about it for two days,
… drove home without the delivery van and with only a couple of invoice copies to show for it!
We of course will stick with the half full point of view, cuz’ that’s just the kind of forward-thinking people we are! But suffice to say that this whole process has given me a lot of financial anxiety and a little bit of lifestyle anxiety.
How did I get here? read on…
What I have now
I spend a fair amount of time, 4-10 weeks a year, road-trippin around in my good ole Tacoma with its good ole camper shell.
On beautiful days with plenty of daylight it’s still a pretty darned good way to go. Here’s my canonical camper day:
Rain ==> it’s all bad, no place to put the boxes, squatting in the shell for hours on end.
Late in the season or god forbid after daylight savings time ==> it’s all bad. When it gets dark at 5pm, I’m basically spending 14 hours or so in that little camper shell space = cabin fever!
If it’s racoon or bear country, gotta schlep the cooler into the front seat.
What I want
The limitations of the above style have been quite apparent ever since I started doing it, so as many of you know, I have been burning the background cycles of my overheated brain for years on the subject of how best to upgrade my travelling act.
The choices fell into these categories:
Trailer
Truck Camper
Camper van
Think VW Eurovans or the old Westfalia. The new Eurovans are very expensive and hard to get, and the old ones are usually temperamental, constantly needing work-type vehicles, and that’s just not my thing. They are very rarely four wheel drive, so the off-road capablity, and more importantly for me, the snow-capability are diminished. But you are driving around in your house; everything is accessible and … integrated for lack of a better term….
Tradeoffs
So that’s the possibilities … what do I want?
Early on, like three years ago, I had a strong flirtation with trailers, because they are so damn fun and cozy. I’ve visited the T@B dealer in Folsom a coupla times, been to the Airstream dealer. Recently I revisited truck campers, and gave them another close look, but over time I came to decide that the camper van style is the best for me.
What I’m gonna get
A year or so ago I stumbled upon the Sportsmobile site. They customize Dodge, Ford, Chevy, and …. Sprinter vans.
What is a Sprinter you may well ask? It is a Mercedes van resold over here by Freightliner as a delivery van, and Dodge as a passenger van. Dodge of course is bankrupt and run by Barack Obama now, so the gossip is that the Sprinter will henceforth be sold directly by Mercedes. Whatever! That mattered to me two months ago, but I’ve got mine now!
They are very cool vehicles – you can stand up in ‘em (but they won’t fit on parking garages), they drive like a dream, diesel, fancy German engineering at every turn.
So for about a year, the Sportsmobile conversion was the van of my dreams. I even spent a night in Fresno on my spring road trip to San Diego, to spend a day at the Sportsmobile place.
Then things got all jumbled up. Getting the ole heart fixed took Major Mind Share for four months. In fact, until I discovered the overseas option, I thought my camper van dream was done, because Reno Heart Physicians and St Mary’a Hospital would have my life savings. So the van is the next phase of my life after getting the heart issue tucked away (he says optimistically).
Then in the hospital in Istanbul, with their slow but reliable wifi, I nothing better to do that return to obsessing on my camper van, which I did, and I more or less accidentally stumbled on the Outsidevan site. They had a much stronger sense of style than Sportsmobile, so of course I was drawn to them.
I determined that Sprinter prices were all over the lot due to the Dodge uncertainty. Some random Dodge dealer in Seattle or Cleveland might be selling their whole stock for $10,000 off, but then three weeks later the sale would be off.
In August, the Outsidevan site had a really sweet-looking steel-blue van for a really good price, and that was it for me, I was hooked. When I drove up to Lake Oswego, my plan was to get ‘er done unless there was a good reason not to, and I did!