how to find a place to sleep

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Let me tell you what sucks: Hearing a knock on the window after midnight and some uniformed stooge telling you to leave. Sometimes they’re nice and tell you where you can find parking a few miles down the road; other times (as in with the sheriff at Cougar Mountain outside Bellevue, Washington), they’ll just tell you, “I dunno.” Like, dude, you just woke me up out of a dead sleep and now you expect me to drive a 7,500-lb. vehicle? Isn’t that more dangerous than whatever threat I posed as an unconscious person in your parking lot?

Ugh. Don’t get me up on my soapbox about wasted parking spots and unwarranted discrimination against travelers. Instead, here’s a concise list of places you can reliably stay for free:

  • iOverlander is essential.

  • Any Bureau of Land Management land, like National Forests, is fair game

  • City parks and churches — but usually only in small towns

  • Kind of uncomfortable but gets the job done: rest areas, casinos, truck stops, big box stores (Wal-Mart in particular), malls

  • Kind of a gamble, but if you find a good one, you’re golden: trailheads, park and rides, and quiet side streets. Google Maps satellite view is a godsend.

And here are a few golden nuggets of wisdom:

  • Pay attention to signs. If they say no overnight parking, they mean it.

  • Look for other vans/RVers.

  • You’re gonna want a flat spot. This tends to be an issue with on-street parking, since roads are usually crowned.

  • Heat can be a problem, even with fans and mosquito netting… hence why we’re posting up in Seattle for the next few weeks.

A note about state and national parks: Sometimes you get lucky, but usually it’s not worth the gamble. State parks have been pretty much a no-go in our experience. With national parks, on the other hand, there’s been some flexibility. We had no problems at all parking overnight in day-use areas in the Great Smoky Mountains, but we were also there during quarantine. At Yellowstone, we stealth-camped in the parking lot for a hotel. The thing about stealth camping is that you gotta get in late and get out early.

I think when we got started, we thought all our spots were gonna be like these:

But in reality, sometimes you just gotta park and sleep. It’s just like anything else — you have to be grateful when it goes well and optimistic when it doesn’t.

keeping it fun

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Brooke asks: We’ve been on the road for almost seven weeks now?

Doug says: Yeah.

Brooke asks: Is it still fun?

Doug says: Absolutely.

Brooke asks: What’s fun about it?

Doug says: Seeing new places and climbing and always having that new aspect in life. Nothing’s ever boring. There’s always stuff to do.

Brooke says: It’s a pain in the ass, but I like the problem-solving aspect too. And having goals, like doing yoga every day, getting better at climbing, and stuff… The thing about fun is, you kinda gotta work to make it happen.

Doug says: The good kinda fun requires work.

Brooke says: Or not even work, per se, but prioritizing it. Putting it in your path.

Here are some of our ways we put fun in our path:

Our babies: We keep a sketchbook on the dashboard so the navigator can draw dumb, funny pictures, usually inspired by wonky logos on billboards or weird stuff (or, in the case of the sex instructor, weird people) we see.

Spanish flashcards — the best way to keep your mind occupied on long stretches of boring highway. (I’m looking at you, western New York.) Mucho gusto!

Making it easy to work out — like keeping my yoga gear and Doug’s Perfect Pushups readily accessible in the garage.

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Art shelf, as I’ve mentioned before, means we have no excuse to not do art.

Atlas Obscura is great for finding weird places.

And Mountain Project is ESSENTIAL for climbing!

Meeting people, to whatever degree seems appropriate. (We are in a pandemic, after all.) We’ve climbed with other van lifers, met up with old friends, and showed countless curious people our sweet setup.

how to be tall in a van

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Hi. I’m Brooke. I can’t fit in my own house. But tall people gotsta adventure too, so here’s some of my hot tips:

get a stool

… which is also a dirty laundry hamper and can be used as a table. We put felt on the bottom to make sure it doesn’t scuff up the floor. Good for kneeling and sitting.

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do yoga all the time

It definitely helps to move with fluidity. Also, chair pose. If you press down and out with your heels like you’re trying to slide them apart, it puts all the work into your booty.

accept that you will hit your head

The good news is, it only takes one good smack to teach you to give that one evil shelf a wide berth.

go outside

You know what’s funny? You put all this work into a van so you can mostly not be in it. Who cares if we sleep in 80 square feet? Our living room is the entire world.

trial period

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So! Before we fully committed to van life, we decided to do a two-week trip just to see how everything works. We took the Stratoship down to Great Smoky Mountains National Park so Doug could do fieldwork for an ongoing research project about breeding bird populations and hemlock death caused by the hemlock woody adelgid. And then we slowly made our way back up the East Coast!

Along the way, we compiled a big-ass to-do list and when we got back to Jersey, we methodically whittled it down.

Iterations of our to-do list.

Iterations of our to-do list.

Brooke says: Was the two-week trial period part of your original plan, or did it just kinda work out that way?

Doug says: Yeah, it was. Definitely wanted to get on the road and test things out a little bit, cause figuring out what you need is something that you can only really gain a sense for by living out of the van.

Brooke says: How do you think it went?

Doug says: Excellent. We’ve only been back for 12 days now, and we’ve gotten everything we wanted to do done. We’ve had a lot of good breakthroughs and adjustments.

Brooke says: Yeah dude, we got it done!

Here are some of the things we fixed:

Huge victories:

  • We are two people who live in a cargo van with everything we need and we have room to spare.

  • Simple solutions, like the drawer and vanity restraints.

  • Finding ways to make items pull double duty, like hanging the headlamp so it can also serve as the garage light, or using our panniers and backpacks as storage.

  • Functional storage — I’m thinking in particular of the detachable desk that fits unobtrusively in the kitchenette area while also protecting against messy spills.

  • Dude, there’s barely any rattling!

Things we just had to accept:

  • Inevitably, things will fall off shelves when you drive. When it’s ramen or a t-shirt, you laugh and keep driving. When it is a bottle of olive oil, you pull over and clean it up. Such is van life.

  • There’s always gonna be one more project you might want to do.

Doug says: We originally wanted to get outta here two months ago. We wouldn’t have had the vanity, the countertop, the bug netting, the garage shelves, the pillars. That’s what those two weeks were for. Not everything that coulda gone wrong went wrong, but like you said, I’m really confident about getting on the road now.

how's it goin?

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Written collaboratively — taking turns typing each other’s responses — at Cosby Campground, Tennessee.

Brooke: What’s been the most surprising thing about van life?

Doug: This has been a big fucking surprise today, [gesturing toward the MaxxFan — we hit a violent rainstorm heading out of Gatlinburg and some of the water had leaked from the fairing around it] and not in a good way.

Brooke: Yeah…

Doug: But no, everything’s going as expected. Those feelings of… sorry, I see some birdies… of oh my god, we’re almost out of water, or we need food. We knew those all were coming.

Brooke: Did we though?

Doug: There’s a difference between knowing and experiencing. Like on your bike tour or the Appalachian Trail. You knew what you had to do —

Brooke: — in theory —

Doug: — but until you’re in it you don’t appreciate the gravity of it. Which you could say about any big undertaking. There’s been a lot of big satisfaction, but as far as surprises go, nothing’s blown me away.

Brooke: For me, it was getting water.

Doug: Yea, once you’re immersed in van life, you’re like, “Oh shit, water goes pretty fast.” I think most people can’t even comprehend not having enough water. Yea, well you know better than anybody.

Brooke: Yeah, in Malawi, I used to have three buckets of water. And lugging that water from the borehole to my house, even though it was like 25 steps away, still made me appreciate that that water wasn’t free. Especially during dry season. It’s such a satisfaction to have all of your jugs full. It makes you feel safe, like, at least you have that.

Getting water in Malawi during dry season.

Getting water in Malawi during dry season.

And then we talked awhile about water:

  • how we need to get an auxiliary water tank

  • how paying $10 for 10 gallons of water at an RV park taught us the importance of filling up our water tanks when it’s free

  • bodies of water that we’ve had strong relationships with.

    • Brooke: This pond in the White Mountains of NH, Lake Malawi, and the pond in the woods in our backyard growing up

    • Doug: The Pacific Ocean, the Puget Sound

Doug (sipping his Rolling Rock and gazing up at the MaxxFan): I love our van. I don’t want it to leak.

Brooke: What’s been the best part of van life?

Doug: Waking up next to you every morning in someplace new.

Brooke: Gross, I can’t put that in the blog, people will barf. For me, it’s seeing new places! Especially after quarantine, and seeing the same places and having the same routine every day.

Doug: It’s all the best parts of camping, but we have all of our stuff with us. I’m not missing a single thing, except a hot shower, and that’s okay.

Brooke: What’s working well?

Doug: The fridge is excellent. The only problem with the MaxxFan is that it’s not built for a convex roof. [Author’s note: Hence the leak] This fan I’m very happy about. You paid $110 for it or something — it was worth every penny.

Brooke: Cause it just works well.

Doug: You can literally point it anywhere, and when we’re cooking, this was blowing it exactly out the exhaust fan, which is why we bought it. It worked fabulously in this area. All I had to do was cut away this.

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Brooke: Yeah, that was a win. And fuckin Cyrix dude?

Doug: Yeah, that’s a great peace of mind. Ultimate win goes to the battery monitor for the peace of mind.

Brooke: Bam! I got something to add. And you have to write it word for word — that’s journalistic integrity. Fart fan [our clever nickname for the exhaust fan for our composting toilet ] is a win. And the shroud vent kicks ass.

Doug: The clamshell, you mean. The shroud is on the inside. [Author’s note: It took a lot of searching to find the right size clamshell vent cover for fart fan; this thing really was a lifesaver.]

Brooke: Oh shit, can you correct that? I’ll pay you money. Make me sound smart and sexy. Tibetan prayer flags, fairy lights, pins, and bumper stickers are all wins.

Doug: We don’t have bumper stickers.

Brooke (flicks the stickers on the visor): Oh, wait, those aren’t on the bumper. Would you say anything sucks yet?

Doug: There’s stuff I’m displeased with, recent leak notwithstanding.

Brooke: Nah, but I mean like, does anything suck?

Doug: Umm… no. The only thing that sucks is not being able to take a shower [Author’s note: We forgot the showerhead back in Jersey], and we do that by bathing in the river, which is actually a really cool experience.

Brooke: Bathing in a river with Dr. Bronhammy, it just makes you feel wild and free. [She takes the computer from Doug to find that he has written “Dr. Bronhammy” and not “Dr. Bronner’s,” as she said.] Bronhammy??

Doug: I know!

Brooke: You can’t do that!

Doug: I’m slighting journalism everywhere with that kinda move.

Brooke (musing): What sucks…

Doug: I don’t think anything sucks, to be honest. … I’m not blown away by anything; it’s nothing I wasn’t expecting. Just being immersed in the situation is just like, okay, we knew we were gonna be sharing a tiny space together, we knew we were gonna be making a bunch of noise in the middle of the night, we knew water was gonna be an issue, we knew, I mean… shitting isn’t really an issue, it’s pretty fun. [Author’s note: He is referring to shitting into our $1100 Airhead composting toilet that lives in our kitchen.]

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Brooke and Doug laugh.

Doug: Your whole life, you shit and then it’s gone. There’s a certain like… attachment of shame to taking a shit, you know? Where it’s just like no, every single living creature has to do it.

Brooke: Can I go off the record? It’s pretty ironic that you got so pissed at your ex two years ago for taking a shit 10 feet away from your campsite, but now you shit IN OUR HOUSE.

Doug (laughs): You should put that in the blog! Life’s funny like that. Comes at ya fast. Brooke, what do you think sucks about van life?

Brooke (laughs): Nothing. Like you said, petty inconveniences. Last night I woke up at 2 a.m. and I had to pee and I had to walk like, what, 200 yards to the bathroom and I was like “mñweeeeeehhhh.”

Doug: And that just speaks to how much everybody’s addicted to convenience in our society. Because what are our problems right now? We have to go outdoors to take a piss, we have to find water, and doesn’t that just make us more grateful? Everything, say at my mom’s house, is really easy, and when it becomes routine you start taking the best things in life for granted. Like that meal we had the other night —

Brooke: Dude it was so tasty! We had a Knorr pasta side and scrambled eggs with peppers.

Doug: And considering everything that had happened up until then — [Author’s note: He’s referencing, of course, us realizing our propane tank didn’t fit our hose. We ended up buying a small canister of Coleman fuel until we can find an adapter for the propane tank or a different hose.]

Brooke: Yah dude, total win.  

we're outta here!

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First stop, the Great Smokey Mountains!

why live in a van?

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Doug Black, ink on paper, 2020

Doug Black, ink on paper, 2020

Cause it beats living in Jersey.

I’ve wanted to live on the road since I was 18, when I toyed with the idea of taking a year off from college, throwing a mattress in the back of my Nissan Pathfinder, and driving around the country talking to people. I still regret chickening out. Since then, I’ve been pushing van life off into “the future.”

Doug first started thinking about it in 2016, when he stumbled across some van life vignettes on YouTube. He floated the idea of living in an RV to his ex, but she dismissed it. Which was for the best; disagreements about van life were kinda the least of their problems. Doug never wanted an RV anyway.

Why not?

The short answer: Because RVs are expensive and corny.

The long answer: When I was a Peace Corps Volunteer in Malawi, I lived in a one-room house with no electricity. I had to get my water from the well, and I pooped in a hole. My friend lived in a house with electricity and indoor plumbing. It was nice by Malawian village standards, but not by American ones. My friend’s home was basically a depressing apartment; mine was an authentic Malawian experience.

I’d rather live in a van that knows it’s a van than a U-Haul that’s pretending to be a house.

Doug’s into how stealthy and clandestine a van can be. You could park in any residential neighborhood if you needed to, and no one would think anything of it. And building it out has been a satisfying personal project.

“I’m really into repurposing things,” he told me. “Like all the wood that I had in the attic, it’s been a pleasure reusing that and giving it new life. I feel like buying an RV would have been more impersonal and therefore less of an adventure.”

I couldn’t agree more. In Malawi, I was inspired by how people would repair and repurpose everything. (The most impressive example was seeing a bike mechanic patch a flat by tying it shut with a scrap from a plastic bag). Not only is it good for the planet, it also saves money — which is pretty important when a bike mechanic and a seasonal worker decide to build a home together. All told, this project will end up costing about $43,500, including the cost of the van. It’s a lot, but it’s not unattainable. If we can do it, so can you.