Hi, I'm Emily and I'm Joe and we're Permanent Road Trip.
Prior to moving into this van Joe spent 20 plus years pretty much in corporate
finance and I spent about the same amount of time in nonprofit. After
20-some years we were each at pretty senior positions at our organizations so
when we made the decision to make this huge change it was not just like kind of
winding down jobs, but you know we sold a house.
We sold a large majority of our stuff. Every chance we got we were getting out
of town to go do something. Go ski or go mountain biking, go paddling.
We were probably camping in a town about 100 nights a year.
It just makes since. We just thought, "why not do it full-time?"
You know we thought well we don't want to take that tent up and down every night so
finally we decided we would do it. We looked for a couple years. We had a
couple of them that we just missed. We finally found one. We spent about six
months rehabbing it and turning it into a really cool little house and we've been
living in it for about seven months now. We made a concerted effort for probably seven or eight years
and it seemed like you know if there's a time to do something with kind of an
open-ended plan. We saved, we put everything in place to be able to do that.
It's just time to pull the trigger.
So we finally found this van. It was in South Bend, Indiana. It had been used by
an audio-visual company to run speakers and sound equipment back and forth from
South Bend to Chicago. It had 25,000 miles on it when we got it. One of the first
things we did was we put these all-terrain tires on. They have been
incredibly helpful. We skied all winter no issues whatsoever. We did buy some
Thule chains. We put them on once but really just to figure out whether or not
we could do it, really didn't need it. These tires and the weight of the
vehicle was plenty for all winter. One of the things we did was taking that bench
seat out. That was a little bit more complicated than you might imagine. When you
take a bench seat out you have to buy the pedestal. You don't have to but
you're going to want to swivel for sure. And then the seat and we got a sprint
ride seat which is awesome. It's got about three inches of travel. There's an
air compressor built right into it. Continuing down this is our sink and
we've got a lot of stuff jammed in the sink. We've got our propane tank which is a
six pound cylinder. It's about eight inches in diameter. That lasts us about
two months and we cook almost every meal on this camp stove. It's so fantastic.
We never have to have the green bottles. We don't have to pay for them. We don't have
to put them in the landfill. Definitely do one of these. People scare you about
propane. Propane is super safe especially if you're only powering things that
you're turning on and off. Maybe a different story if you're powering a
refrigerator or something 24/7 but the propane tank has a hand valve as well as
a check valve. Secure it properly, you're going to be fine. And we do take showers
here using this Eccotemp shower. This is a very nice solution. If you're willing
to put in the propane. It's really nice to be able to come out take a shower
anytime you want as long as you can find a private place.
Super easy solution for hot water If it's raining or if it's wintertime and
we're in the mountains we have another surface up here we can put it on. We have
our gray water discharge so if you look down here we have a little hatch. All we
do is open this hatch pull the gray water
out and discharge it into an appropriate place. Here we have our furnace put in
underneath the passenger seat. That is an auxiliary valve straight from the diesel
tank that powers the furnace. It takes about a half a gallon of diesel for 24
hours to keep the van nice and toasty all winter long. We have incredible
insulation. We insulated the floor, the ceiling, the walls. We insulated the cab.
We noticed on one of our first trip some of the places had an amber light and we
realized that was because it doesn't draw bugs so we wanted to put an amber light
out here in front of the van for when we're sitting outside. Doesn't seem to draw
bugs, which is awesome. That's what we were going for, but it doesn't really
give enough light to cook on so sometimes you have to pull the headlamp
out. The guys that helped me with the carpentry here did just a phenomenal job
building this stuff out. We cut this big hole in the ceiling and put the
fantastic fan vent in. That's awesome because it pulls air in or out which is
great because you can control how you're ventilating which is really really
important in the winter when it's cold. When it's freezing cold you want that
thing to just pull in enough air to offset the hot air rising out and that
will keep your condensation down. It'll keep your van from molding. That works
really really well in tandem with this CR Laurence vented window. That is super
helpful in terms of keeping the dog comfortable whether it's hot or cold.
So we are standing in our kitchen which we've spent a lot of time thinking
about where we wanted everything arranged and what we've ended up with
works really well for our needs. And we have our sink here. This is just a
regular bar sink. It's maybe a little bit bigger than what you might see in some
other vans so that is nice to have. And then we have our little medicine cabinet.
And then our bed is a full-size bed and you might notice we have a little, we call it a bolster,
it's actually like the last eight to nine inches of the bed.
We cut the end off of the bed and then just made a little like pillow out of it basically
so it doubles as sitting up against something soft when you might be sitting
in bed reading, but then also at night we can extend it across here and it makes
the full-size bed. Our bed is set and Joe will go into probably more details lower
than most vans meaning from the ground and ours is just 31. We may be, if doing it
over, would have raised it another couple of inches maybe set it at 33 or
34. These cabinets right here we have four cabinets. All seasons, everything is
in these cabinets. I negotiated two and a half and Joe has one and a half and
still has room to share there. This mountain scene is actually cut by a
friend of ours in Cincinnati who has her own shop. Cut by laser, has a good
smoky smell still to it seven months in.
Here we have two kind of doors. You do have access to these cabinets from both inside and
outside. When we have Ushi's little perch down as a bed then it's nice that we have the
second door because we can easily get everything we need to cook out of the
bottom cabinets there. But what's great about the her perch is it doubles as her
bed, a stepping stool for us to get in, it's a storage bin as well and when we
drive this thing goes on its end and it slides right in between the driver and the passenger seat.
Here we have two appliances that we thought at the time
we're essential. We thought for sure we would be going to a campground and
catching up on laundry and maybe a pool and showers and all that good stuff, that
we'd plug in once a week. It turns out that's not what we've done at all. I
think we've plugged in three times and we've been on the road seven months so
these are nice to haves, but certainly not necessary. Both of these we cannot
power with the solar that we have. We have dedicated circuits so only when we plug in can we use these.
Just below here is our fridge. This is super nice. It's four and a half cubic feet.
That is not bad at all. It feels roomy all the time.
And then above the cabin seats we had this overhead compartment. We use that
to stuff our window shades and blinds. This is the spot where all of our
recreation gear is. We didn't really want to have a whole bunch of stuff hanging
off the van. We do have a few solar panels up top and we have the fan vent
but they're pretty discreet and that was important to us. We wanted to make sure
that we didn't look like a camper. We have 300 watts of solar on the roof. We
have two six volt 250 amp hour batteries. They're AGMs. Have a 2200 amp alternator
so if we're driving we definitely have a lot more energy than we need. All of our
stuff can easily fit right underneath the bed.
Even though, as Emily mentioned, we went 31 inches from the bottom of the floor
up to our bed platform which is much lower than most people go and the reason
why that is a constraint is that we're on 26 inch rims and you can see we are
just about maxed out. So if we ever decide to go to 27.5 it might
be a little tight trying to get them in there, but we were able to get both of
our bikes, our helmets, our shoes, our water bottles, everything that you can need
for biking on that one drawer. That's a big part of what we do so that's why we
dedicated so much space. Getting into our water we have a 25 gallon freshwater
tank that is pretty easy to fill. Just pull this off, open the valve, open the
vent and fill from this side. That goes straight to our sink. We've got a sure
flow water pump that will pump five and a half gallons per minute. Got a seven
gallon gray water tank. Ventilation is one of the most important things in vans
and if you don't vent that gray water tank you're going to pop your seal. We
were smart enough, or at least the guys that helped me build this we're smart
enough, to tell me that I needed at least one drawer that opened this way. So
probably my favorite thing about this van is the double doors. We have access
to our food pantry from both sides of the van which makes it so much easier at
a grocery store. We can vent our refrigerator. We have storage for shoes. It's just awesome.
Oh I used to go out to eat four or five
nights a week and just by making like a minor change there you know maybe it's
once a week just those little minor things that you can do is unbelievable
how quickly things can just allow you to save. So seven or eight years that we
really knew we were saving for something. We were very intentional about it. Would I
rather spend 40 or 50 bucks or would I rather have 40 or 50 bucks next year
when I'm on the road so that I can extend this experience longer? And we did
that for a really long time and we got so good at it we started making a game
out of it. Buying the Amazon gift cards at the
grocery store that would give me points for fuel and I would use my credit cards
so I could get extra you know percent off and you start pulling all those things
out next thing you know you start to save a lot of money and it's going to
make your experience a whole lot more fun. Focus on what it is that's important
to you. You know I see a lot of guys just kind of going with the flow doing
whatever and I think if you live more deliberately and say, "this is what's
important to me, this is where I'm gonna spend my time, my resources, my money, and
if I want to get to this place and do something like this the best way to do
it is just to take all that other stuff out." Don't spend your time on it and
spend your time getting to that place you want to get to. That's what I'd recommend.