As I’ve been bringing over old posts to the new site, I found one that was talking about my challenges in the beginning, when I had only been living on the road for a few weeks. Some of the insights that I discovered about full time travel still hold water, but in the four months of van life, being a nomad, vagabond, or whatever you want to call it, I have learned so much more. I have found challenges that made these seem like minor inconveniences today. It’s more than a road trip. Camping is only one element of living on the road. It is a continual learning experience of what works, what doesn’t, and just how far you can push yourself.
What I’ve Learned So Far About Life on the Road
I’m not exactly sure how many miles I have traveled in this bus conversion. The American Southwest is so big that miles are arbitrary. You can drive a hundred miles between towns in some places. There’s so much to see along the way. It’s not a race. I’ve watched a never-ending autumn. I’ve seen seven National Parks. Countless sunsets. Animals and plants I’ve never seen before. I’ve found peace in my solitude. I’ve improved my writing and understand my goals and how to reach them better too. I’ve also met some incredible people along the way.
The Art of Pacing Yourself as a Nomad
When you are on a roadtrip with the family or a group of friends, you travel at a much different pace. Generally you are on your way to some kind of attraction. Think more of the gradual pace of exploration of a nomadic lifestyle, like Oregon Trail, and less National Lampoons Vacation. My home, office, and daily driver are all the same thing. If I’m heading towards something I want to see, or need to write about, I take my time to get there.
My visit to Chaco Canyon was an exception to this rule. I had plans to watch the annular eclipse from one of the most well known pre-Columbian observatories in the Americas. It was a wonderful experience, with a slim window of opportunity. To get there, I needed to get up at 4am and drive for a couple hours to Chaco Culture NHP, one of the more remote National Parks in the United States. There was no getting around having to make that run in one shot, especially since campsites at the park had been booked for months.
With the rising cost of fuel and my rig only hitting 12mpg at the best–usually downhill with a tailwind–going slow, taking a few days to get to a location, and timing your drive beats racing across the country. Not only are you saving money on fuel, but you are also limiting your chances of an accident. The happy result of pacing yourself is getting a better experience and taking time to see so much more from place to place.
Cost of Fuel and Vehicle Wear and Tear
I try to keep my biggest days of travel down to around 200 miles. Otherwise the cost of fuel will kill you. The lowest I’ve seen was in Artesia, NM at $2.71 per gallon for gasoline. The highest was in Needles, CA at $6.29 for Unleaded. If you drove 200 miles a day every day, you would go broke quickly. I tend to limit my driving to fewer than 100 miles per week on average.
After 4,000 miles (give or take a couple hundred), I got an oil change in Lake Havasu City. I cannot recommend Take 5 more. It was in and out in under ten minutes, the price for synthetic oil was competitive ($89 for my rig), and they handed me a bottle of water as soon as I pulled into the bay. They also topped off all my other fluids and filled up my tires.
Oil changes are crucial when you live on the road. It doesn’t take too long to recognize vehicles that have been neglected. They are the ones that are broken down on the side of the highway or falling apart in a junk yard. Oil changes keep your vehicle running, especially with long hours and miles on the road. Tire pressure is vital when putting lots of miles on your rig, and checking it often can reveal problems like slow leaks. All those shreds of rubber on the side of the road came from somewhere. You can fend off the road gators if you keep an eye on the condition of your tires.
Keeping it Clean and Organized
In my previous post, I talked about the importance of keeping things clean and organized. I still stand by that, but there’s a lot more to it. For one thing, the dust from the road, especially for boondocking, get everywhere. Over time, that dust will either etch or scratch your interior, or it might have alkalines that start eating your wood furniture.
Dust gets into your sheets, your clothes, and anything stored. It’s a big reason why it is important to break everything down, sweep out your vehicle, wipe things down, and repack everything about once a week. At least. You’ll have a good idea of where everything is kept, and what items have broken or need restocking. Cleaning things also makes sure they last longer.
Pest Control when Living on the Road
Living in your vehicle means crumbs and pieces of food that attract pests. Gnats, flies, and especially rodents are a big concern. Early on in my travels I was invaded by chipmunks, but later on, I picked up some stowaway mice. I could hear them rustling around in the bus as soon as it got dark. Mice are destructive. They chew through wires, and pull insulation out of places to build nests. In the desert sometimes they carry hantavirus. I tried spin traps, but only the old fashioned spring traps worked. Regular cleanings and reorganizations also help you discover if you have mice, how much damage they have done, and getting rid of the diseases they might carry.
Solar Problems in Van Life
Solar is a big deal when you use it on your skoolie build. I currently use a 250watt system with two 100ah LiFePO4 batteries for my house power. My vehicle electrical system is separate, since overtaxing your vehicle system can burn out alternators quickly, and going the other way can burn out lithium batteries quickly. During the winter, the amount of sunlight you get is affected by the amount of sun you can get. My 250watt panels top out at around 110 watts during the sunniest days in Winter. A rainy or overcast day drops it even further.
Refrigeration on the Road
Even with a better solar controller, I have to monitor how much electricity I am using and sometimes I have to shut of appliances to make sure it doesn’t run the battery down too much at night. My fridge uses the most energy. I’m learning the importance of having backups. Besides my electric refrigerator, I also use a 30 liter Canyon Cooler. A block of ice keeps everything cold without electricity for upwards of five days or even a week. The drawback is melting ice will get into any bags or containers that aren’t sealed well. I’ve had a pound of hamburger ruin a whole cooler of food before, when it fell into the melted ice and turned everything into a soup.
Heating the Bus
In the beginning, I planned on using an electric space heater or just bundling up if it got cold. Even though I’ve only had a few nights that dropped into the 30s outside, most of us are used to the thermostat at home being in the upper 60s or low 70s. In a skoolie, it can get down to 40s or 50s. Electric heaters will run down your battery faster than anything. Low temperatures can also affect your batteries and damage them if they freeze.
I added a propane portable heater to my equipment. My Buddy Heater by Mr. Heater uses 1lb propane bottles. On low, a bottle lasts around 4 hours, which can be expensive, considering every bottle is around $5 each. There’s also the concern of humidity they create and the danger of carbon monoxide poisoning. For now, the heater makes cold nights tolerable and I usually only run it for short periods before I crawl into bed. In the next year I plan on adding a Chinese diesel heater to keep the bus nice and toasty without the expense or dangers of the space heater.
Cooking and Cleaning When Living on the Road
My first setup was a microwave oven which came with the bus and an electric induction burner. I also had an electric tea kettle. I have since upgraded my food prep to a single burner butane stove that doesn’t tax my electrical system. Recently I upgraded the butane stove to a dual fuel system that uses both butane and propane. Depending on where you are, you might not be able to find one fuel or the other. Or it’s cost prohibitive to restock. An ACE Hardware in Lake Havasu City was charging $7 per canister of butane, when you could buy a 4 pack in Tucson at a Korean grocer for $7.50.
Food Storage When Living on the Road
Living on the road means having to adjust your diet to using foods that can travel well. Meats can spoil or leak and ruin other food. Fresh produce may go bad quickly because of temp inconsistencies or bruising. This might mean using more canned foods and refrigerating leftovers. Solo travel usually means your leftovers will go bad or you’ll get sick of eating them before you use them up. It’s easy to get stuck in a cycle of eating out or eating ultra-processed foods. Both of which will kill you faster than cigarettes.
I try to be aware of a balance of different foods. Processed foods have a lot of salt, as do canned foods, just because of preservation. I like veggies that travel well, such as cabbage, green beans, and brussel sprouts. I’ve given up on mushrooms entirely. I’ve discovered that shallots travel well and for their price, they are a great alternative to onions, which usually need to be used or refrigerated once you cut them. Shallots are a one shot aromatic that fits the price point of cooking for one person on the road really well.
Easy to Clean Foods
Living on the road, I tend to avoid cooking Italian or Asian dishes. Tomato sauce and the sauces used in stir fry have a tendency to stick on cookware, requiring you to heat water, use more water, and harsher soaps to clean them well. I keep wondering why biscuits and gravy are big sellers in the South West. I think it might be because it’s a great comfort food but a total pain in the ass to make and clean in an RV.
Doing the Dishes on the Road
I was using my sink to wash dishes, but that creates a lot of grey water and doesn’t get hot enough to do a good job of removing grease, much less soap. Now I use the solar shower, which doesn’t do that great of a job showering your body. I would rather just hose off in the cold water in my outside shower than stand under that thing. But the solar shower does a great job of making water hot enough to wash dishes, so that’s what I use.
The Van Life Use and Replacement Cycle
Just like living in a house, there is a constant cycle of using resources, replacing them, and disposing of the waste this creates. On the road it is a lot more obvious. You don’t have a big bin in the garage that holds all of your household waste to be hauled off once a week. Your food, trash, and water are all contained. You are also constantly using and replacing fuel as you go. Replacing water reserves requires fuel to drive somewhere to get water. Sometimes you have to pay for the water.
Even making a run to dispose of your trash, grey water, or black water requires fuel and money a lot of the time. You have have plan your errand days to optimize your time, resources, and budget. A luxury of living in a town or city is being able to just drive to the store. If I’m boondocking, it could be as much as a half hour drive to the nearest stores one way for something as simple as dish soap. Plan your trips and make every mile count.
Treat Yourself When Living on the Road
You aren’t a monk, though sometimes it might feel like you are. Every once in a while I treat myself to a coffee or hot meal at a restaurant when I don’t feel like doing dishes or creating more garbage I have to drive somewhere to dump later on. Sometimes it’s nice to not have to do the work and enjoy a meal without fuss. The biggest drawback to eating on the road is how expensive it can get. Also, anybody who eats out a lot will tell you that you will gain weight eating at restaurants, especially if you are constantly driving or working in a more or less sedentary lifestyle.
You really need to focus on a certain amount of self-care when you live on the road. Sometimes it gets lonely, unpredictable, expensive, and frustrating. Treating yourself can go a long way to making the experience enjoyable. Especially if you are working on the road. Give yourself a day off once in a while. After all, everyone else gets one. Why shouldn’t you?
Don’t Get Too Attached
Like the weather in the Rocky Mountains, if you don’t like it, wait ten minutes. It will change. If it’s improvements or getting rid of what doesn’t work, the one constant of skoolie life is everything changes.
Configuration and Build of a Skoolie
One of the best things about skoolies is you aren’t committed to a build layout. You can change things up and reorganize as you need to as you go. Especially if you carry a good supply of tools with you. Your build should adapt to your needs, not the other way around. Don’t feel bad about making changes to your setup if it improves the convenience of your already non-traditional life.
Personal Property
The laws of entropy are accelerated when living on the road. The vibrations and shifting you will experience will eventually wear your things down and break them. Over time, you’ll probably wind up replacing all of your possessions. It’s only a matter of when and why. Keeping things stowed properly, clean, and making note of where they are will extend their life, but never indefinitely.
Living on the Road and Attachments
Van life teaches you early on to let things go and not be bothered by nothing lasting forever. Over time you’ll figure out better places to keep things stored. Not only for ease of access, but also to keep them from getting turned into dust sooner. Even the people you meet on the road will probably drive off in another direction. You might not have enough years in your life to make it back to all the places you’ve enjoyed. After all, there’s a whole world out there waiting to be discovered.
Benefits of Living on the Road and Why It’s Worth Doing
A lot of these things might put you off from the idea of setting out to live on the road in a converted school bus, conversion van, or RV. And they should. Life on the road isn’t easy. It’s not romantic like influencers on YouTube and Instagram make it out to be. It’s dirty, sometimes stressful, and a something that keeps you on your toes constantly.
It’s not all bad. In fact some aspects of living on the road are amazing. I appreciate the level of personal growth, contemplation, and sharpening my skills in being self-sufficient, if not just creative, in how to get things done on a daily basis. Here are some other benefits of a nomadic lifestyle:
- Problem solving: You’ll figure out what works and what doesn’t. The learning curve is steep, but not insurmountable. The challenges you faced early on will be second nature within a few weeks. In a couple months you won’t even worry about them.
- Control of your own life: Unlike living in a cul-de-sac, you aren’t stuck with your neighbors. If they are noisy, annoying, or destructive, just move. Go somewhere else. The same is true if you get bored of one place or don’t like the weather. Plan where you want to go next, budget accordingly, and just go!
- Freedom of the open road: Living on the road brings with it a feeling of liberty that is quickly vanishing. You are in control of your own decisions, yet you are also responsible for the consequences of your actions. It’s freedom and responsibility. And for whatever reason that scares the hell out of a lot of people.
Thanks for Reading!
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