The Many Lessons of Starting Vanlife

We’ve learned quite a few things since embarking into vanlife, both before and after the van was actually constructed. Some things are more useful than others, but everything shapes how we move forward and make better choices in the future. The first and most important lesson. SUNSCREEN! Living in a hot car with sunburn is just not a good plan.

Powering Things Differently

Solar energy, while painful to the skin, is way more effective than we could have hoped for power even on an overcast day. The average wall outlet we’ve noticed consistently gives about 60 watts of power to charge our batteries (Jackery 500 and Jackery 240), but on a bright sunny day with clouds our solar panels can draw in the 70s and that’s before reaching the blazing sun in the southwest were we’ve seen it up to the 80s and 90s. So, on a sunny day, it’s actually better to have our solar panels out than to be paying for hookups or sitting in a building somewhere. If you need to though, fast food places tend not to mind us bringing in the battery and plugging it in along with our phones or laptops, as long as we order something. Panera is also a great choice, but more on that later.

On an overcast day when we are only drawing a few watts, solar panels can still be useful. Our fridge is an extremely efficient 12v chest Whynter fridge that draws between 1–3 watts when it is up to temperature. Therefore, having the solar panel plugged in even when its drawing 5 or less watts allows us to balance out this draw and our battery to last considerably longer. Instead of the slow trickling out of power, it only drops in percent when the compressor kicks on and the draw shoots between 50–70 watts, rarely going above 70. When it comes to power I am very much of the opinion that every little bit counts. Even if it’s a quick 20 min drive, it’s always worth plugging in your devices.

Now, when it comes to power sources and solar panels, rainy days are the worst. Not only is there little to no sun to capture, but the rain droplets stop whatever minuscule amounts you could hope to salvage. There are simple, immediate fixes for this like running the car and/or driving around to help charge things, or paying for a site with hookups if you have a power hookup on your build. However, at the present time both of these are depressingly expensive options. A cheaper, much more fun option is the Panera Sip Pass.

For roughly $11 a month, you can have almost unlimited beverages (1 every 2 hours, every single day) from Panera. This includes hot and iced coffee (black, not specialty), their flavored teas and lemonades, their new charged lemonades and fountain drinks. This is amazing for vanlife for so many reasons beyond extending the life of your water jugs. Not only can you charge your devices and work without drawing on your home batteries, but we have brought in one of our Jackery batteries multiple times to charge in the midst of a string of rainy days in Missouri and Oklahoma and they didn’t seem to care at all! Mind you, if we are using a lot of power or staying for a particularly long time, we try to order something else as well to be courteous. Even this isn’t so bad though, they have delicious fresh food with some amazing value options and every 6th trip you get rewarded through free food and specialty drinks! Twice now I got $16 worth of food and drinks completely free!

There are many times in which we stop before a long drive to grab some coffee or charged lemonade for the road. It is also a really nice change of scenery when you’re tight on funds to be able to get out of the van and work or hang out in a different environment without having to pay anything extra. On top of all that, it is an optimal choice for travel considering Panera has over 2,000 locations in the U.S. spread out through just about every state. So far we’ve never been that far from a Panera if we were doing any kind of urban camping. Though that seems destined to change the further into the Rocky Mountains we get. Utah only has one and it’s in an airport! So sad… Still, this is one of my favorite things we’ve stumbled across since starting vanlife, all thanks to our friend Kevin tipping us off about the free trial through July 4th.

Ah, Nature… vs. AH! NATURE!

Now, as you happily sip your sweet, fruity beverage while reading in your van or cooking some dinner on your camp stove, imagine being rudely interrupted by a spider dropping down from the ceiling above you or a bee landing on the potatoes you’re chopping and refusing to move! Brandi (my spouse) and I generally make the best of things and aren’t too bothered by some of the complaints many have when starting vanlife. Traffic noise, figuring out where to sleep, long driving days, not being able to stand in our van, loss of cell service, etc. These things can suck, but they haven’t gotten to us too much yet. We just sort of exist in the space we have the best we can, which is exactly why we have to try so hard to push ourselves and each other away from being complacent.

However, bugs have honestly been, by far, our least favorite aspect of vanlife. It’s not like we didn’t know it would be a thing we would encounter, but we had no idea how much and how quickly it would start becoming a part of our world, even in urban settings. In normal, cozy, stationary homes it’s easy to forget that we are in the bugs’ world. It becomes very apparent however when you have a tiny home that is not as well sealed off from the outside and has little places for these little neighbors to live without you noticing them. We pretty immediately started figuring out what we could do to keep the bugs at bay and out of our space.

So far we have two main solutions that have been pretty effective. The first is something many people have done and suggested, which is use bug screens on your doors. For us we measured the widest point of our van doors and ordered the closest fitting magnetic closing screen door we could find on Amazon, cut off the bottom to size and followed one of the comments by sealing up the now open end with some gorilla tape. This is one of the last things we did to our van and we almost skipped it. We thought it was one of those fancy extras that would be nice, but not needed. It’s not by any means. In order to live comfortably and for the space to feel cozy and homey, at least for us, there needs to be a barrier between us and the bugs.

The other technique we use against them is scent. This comes in many forms for us. We use Lavender scented gel beads on the floor in the back between our bed and our back doors, we also have lavender scented fabric softener that we mix in a spray bottle with some water to spray on clothes, our bed, the front seats and doorways. I have also seen that Eucalyptus and peppermint work well for bees and spiders. These more natural scents have been far more effective than standard bug spray that we tried, and much less toxic in such a small space. Between these two techniques we have been able to sufficiently fortify our home and had a much more pleasant time. Still though, there was one time I was peeing in a vault toilet at a campsite, looked up, and saw a spider half the size of my head…

Needless to say that bathroom was in desperate need of a clean by the time I made it back to the driver seat and booked it to the next campsite.

Where to Go

When approaching a new state, we immediately start looking up some of the best things around and charting our path through it. We know we won’t hit nearly everything, especially in the beginning when we are traveling relatively fast through the states in an attempt to get to the west coast before the heat is unbearable. However, it sucks finding out after the fact that there was that one really cool thing that you drove right past or was only one exit further from where you were staying. When you’re looking so broadly, it can be hard not to get the same handful of results on google of the top ten or so tourist attractions to do. We found 2 ways around this, and sure, we are probably missing a lot and failing to do all the big stuff everyone goes around the states to do, but we enjoy it.

The first, is to research specific places, not things. We start by researching places that balance being the safest and the most fun areas in a state. We look up the sort of statistics you would when you’re looking to buy a house there, because for as long as we are there it is our home. The sort of everyday stuff you want in your neighborhood rather than the sort of stuff a traditional traveler would seek out. Then we research specific places around that area, doing a more thorough sweep of one small place off the beaten path, rather than try to hit every major landmark and photo op. If those interest us too, we try to make a route that hits both.

Genuinely one of the best ways to stumble into a cool new area for us has been to read billboards. Old school, but effective and almost always on the way. This happened a couple times now, the biggest time being Springfield, Missouri. We planned on just stopping for a night or two then heading on to the Ozarks, but then we saw a sign for America’s best aquarium! Now, it should be noted, aquariums are our jam and if it was possible to live in one, we probably would. So naturally this turned into a longer stop because tickets were much cheaper on Monday and it was only Saturday I believe when we got there. Which gave us time to check out the area and get some work in. Also, the planet fitness there had amazing showers. I was down to stay just for that.

We always heard about the coasts, whether it be east or west, and never that much about anything in between. We thought our choices were California beach vibes, New York coffee shop vibes or some rendition of the life we had in Ohio. In some ways this is true, but in many ways we have been pleasantly surprised by the booming pockets of life and culture along the way. For us our van journey, at least right now, is to find the place we can call our forever home. The place we will buy land and lay down roots as a home base for our work and travel. So looking for the hidden gems, pockets of life, love and beauty, has been our biggest goal and this method fits the bill.

Ourselves and Each Other

At first it was simple things like Brandi doesn’t like flying bugs, I don’t like fast and/or jumping bugs. But there comes a size when we are both squealing and running regardless of the type of bug. Or that she worries about driving in new places, while I worry about parking in them. From there it slowly progressed.

We realized we want pets, specifically a cat and a dog, perhaps named Cilantro and Hagrid. We also want to live near an aquarium and we want enough land for our projects to grow while still being close to the booming life and diversity that inspires our work. Not an easy feat, but we also love dreaming together. We both find water to be meditative and peaceful. We enjoy being quiet next to each other. We both like to drive without music a good chunk of the time so we can think, reflect, imagine or talk. We love each other’s presence even when we are doing our own thing. We also love changing it up and hanging out in different places. I’m a bit more of a homebody, so sometimes on a nice day I’ll opt to hangout in the van and work there while Brandi goes to sit inside somewhere and be around people. This gives us just enough time to dive into our different passions and then excitedly share what we discovered or worked on in the other’s absence.

We’ve had a chance to explore the good and the bad, what motivates us, what drags us down. All the many little differences in our anxiety and how best to soothe the other one when this side of our mind begins to act up. More than just the normal everyday that we would encounter back home. For example, being whisked away in a tornado terrified me when we were in Oklahoma while Brandi slept perfectly fine through the harsh winds that shook the van. On the flip side I slept fine in some populated parking lots outside Walmarts and Cracker Barrels while she was up all night peeking out the windows and snuggling me. All a difference in mindset and where we grew up, which led to some more mundane childhood stories that had never come up before. Truly I thought we had caught each other up on everything before we met, but some of the less exciting or traumatic childhood stories laid forgotten in the depths of our minds until something oddly specific helped it surface.

The best part currently, is knowing that even though I can’t possibly imagine it, there is still so much more to discover about each other. Even if we know everything there is to know at this moment, with every mile we drive we are growing in some way or another. How we grow, the way we experience things, it is all different, all things to share with each other as we go, forever giving us more to learn about ourselves and one another. This also helps when appreciating things. When we were in Oklahoma Brandi felt like she was somewhere completely new, whereas it felt remarkably like home to me. A lot of the same chains, comfortable roads to drive on. For her though she saw the difference in the trees and the plants. The small differences in the buildings and the people. She helped me appreciate our surroundings and just how far we’d come. On the other hand, when we got to Colorado, after about a dozen mountain views she was pretty desensitized to it. I was wowing and oo-ing around every single bend without fail like I had never seen a mountain before. I still point out to her every time we see the snowy mountain peaks in the distance and will spend hours staring at the same rock. Which, in turn, allows her to vicariously appreciate them more than she might have on her own.

We have been on the road for 38 days, and are only at the very beginning of our Journey. There is so much to learn and experience. Everyday I see something new and everyday that thing, no matter how small, makes me think differently about my life and others. Sure there are hard days, but our only goal was to learn and grow, therefore we cannot fail.

This was originally posted on my Medium page: https://medium.com/@selena.shandi.thomas/the-many-lessons-of-starting-vanlife-2beb75d21cab