Quartzsite is just not our scene. Two days would have been more than enough even if the weather had been great.  It was pretty crazy to pull into the BLM area the first night and see rigs lined up awning to awning just like a commercial campground. We had to go about a quarter mile deep into the area before we found a spot where we could get a mere hundred feet from a couple of neighbors. The next morning, we found out why the area was so ’sparsely’ populated as the kids in the converted school bus had breakfast and blasted the MTV version of the Grateful Dead over the world’s crappiest PA system. Ah, well… at least it wasn’t polka.

This morning, we got up ‘early’ to try and make it back to Slab City by dark. Apparently, I was still on California time and not really adhering to Jenn’s schedule. Still, we got out at a reasonable time and then sat in mid-morning traffic at Quartzsite while the rain started splattering. The wind had not stopped in at least 24 hours.

The crosswinds battered us all the way to Blythe, CA, where we stopped to do some shopping and laundry. We got an amazing deal on London broil at Albertson’s and had the butcher chop up a bit and grind a bit until we ended up with twenty-something pound of beef to squeeze into the freezer. By the time we made it the laundromat, the storm was starting to get feisty. Jenn volunteered to do laundry if I would make us some burgers.

You don’t have to ask me to cook a burger twice! Jenn says I made the burger Eddie Murphy’s mom used to make. They were somewhere between 1/2 and 3/4 of a pounds w/ sauteed mushrooms and onions stuffed inside along with barbecue sauce and mozzarella cheese on homemade bread. We finished eating just in time to get seasick!

No chunks were spewed, but I was sitting in the camper in my long johns waiting on clean pants when a nasty front hit Blythe.  We had 70 mph winds and a torrential rainfall that dumped 4 or 5 inches in something like 10 minutes. The camper was rolling back and forth like we were on the road and the rain drops were so big it sounded like hail on the roof. Jenn’s cat jumped up in the bed with me and whined the whole time.

As soon as it slacked off, Jenn brought a load of laundry with my pants in it and said ‘By the way, there’s a tornado 5 miles from here. Might want to put your pants on and come inside.’ Ten minutes later, the front had passed and we were ready to hit the road. Somehow we’d made it well into mid-afternoon and were still only twenty-ish miles from Quartzsite! The crosswinds were nasty for another twenty miles or so and we passed two over turned semis that were in the same area the tornado passed through.

The weather finally settled down a bit, but the wind is still fairly stiff and there are a few more fronts rolling in. We decided to call it a day at the dry camping area behind the General Patton museum in Chiriaco Summit. Jenn, who is an amateur meteorologist amongst her other talents, says the weather should be fairly tame here compared to what we’ve seen so far. Let’s hope she’s right!

Campsites mentioned in this post:
Chiriaco Summit
Quartzsite
Slab City

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Back then, we were in soul sucking, yet somewhat prestigious jobs and running the middle class treadmill. Well, I guess that by then we were only walking on it. We had already purchased the truck and camper. We had gotten rid of most everything we owned. We had had the camper for a couple of days and were moving what little of our stuff that remained into it. We were still working but only because we wanted to earn some additional money. At the very least, I wanted to make sure that I made the difference between what my Xterra sold for and what my truck cost back before we left.

The place we used to work. Our desks and the building.

We also wanted to see if we could actually spend every waking hour together in a confined space. We had already been working together, in the same department, for years. Of course that means that we rode into work together, too. But, there was always that reprise of a big* house. While we would naturally come home and sit a few feet apart from each other in one of the computer rooms, there were lots of rooms and doors, and we could go get some solitude if/when needed. In the camper, there are only two rooms and two doors. One of those doors lead to the 3×3 bathroom, the other exits the camper. Spending those 4 months working our old jobs and living out of our camper was a million times easier than I had expected. The only problem that I think I had was the fact that I couldn’t really spend a lot of time doing my hair anymore as there just wasn’t enough space in the bathroom for all the stuff that is involved. Oh and the fact that black dress suits and two cats in a confined space = spending a lot of time with a roll of tape trying to remove tons of fur.

Our rig in 2007 and now in 2009

So, here we are two years later and happier than two peas in a pod. Seriously. Has it all been marshmallows and rainbows? No. But, its been real close. So far we have been very lucky. Part of that might be that my outlook has really changed. In times of adversity, I find pleasure. And, while we haven’t worked a lot on the road, the jobs that we have had have been pretty strenuous. So far, I have really enjoyed challenge and diversity of the work we have done.

I hope that the year ahead is as enjoyable as the previous two have been. I hope to work more during it. After we leave Amazon we are going to head south and then make our way back east. I will probably try to get a short term gig as we make our way through Quartzsite. It would be great to land one in Carlsbad, New Mexico too, but I don’t think that is going to happen. When we are not working, we will be attending a plethora of caving conventions. We missed almost all of them this year as the majority are on the east coast.

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So, after going through many of the sites on our work camping page, writing countless cover letters, and making numerous phone calls, we have decided what we want to be for Halloween. Amazonians. We are going to follow suit and join the other work campers who work for amazon.com over the holidays.

So, be careful of what you order this year.. we just might see it!

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I guess we’re starting to see the ‘real’ Washington weather. Our first week in the state was pretty dry, but the past week has been rather damp or perhaps moist. In fact, you could say it has been downright soggy.

Last Sunday, we headed towards Mt. Rainier National Park from the north side. The park is still closed, but there is a lot of forestry land around the park which allows dispersed camping. We spotted at least one exceptionally nice boondocking spot on the main road into the park, but as it was a fairly well traveled road, any and all turnouts were occupied. Near the park entrance, we crossed a rather long one lane bridge across the Carbon River.

Immediately, the road turned to gravel and around the first bend, the road was constricted by a fallen tree and a couple of large boulders on the opposite side. This particular section of road was more mud, boulders and tree roots than gravel. We had around 18 inches of clearance between the jacks and the obstacles. Not too bad, but the angle of attack required getting rather close to the edge of the road. Normally, this wouldn’t be a large concern, but we’d already seen the edge of a couple roads washed away that morning.

With Jenn’s help in the form of ambiguous hand signals (does anyone know what two crooked fingers forming a ‘U’ means?), we managed to get through the constriction without any new dings or scratches. Not too far up the road, we found a somewhat obscured pullout that would be our home for the next week.

I think we had one sunny day, on Monday, followed by four rainy ones. We then figured we might as well stick around through the weekend since Washingtonians seem to enjoy camping and grabbed all the good spots on the weekends. Anyway, it seemed like a good idea to let that hairy bit of road dry out some as there was a drainage culvert right above it.

So, how did we amuse ourselves for a week when we were rained in without internet? Better than you might expect two people to do while cooped up in the back of a truck. It turned out we were able to tune in an HD channel that played nothing but older movies and we managed to tolerate the commercials fairly well. There was also a good selection of radio stations, one of which happened to play both kinds of music – jazz and blues.

One thing I made sure to pack when we left was four decks of cards, which we actually used for the first time at Patrick’s party. I don’t think Jenn and I have ever played cards together, but we played a bit of gin rummy and I taught Jenn to play UNO using two decks of cards. We’re going to have to get a real deck some day! At one point, the house rules got downright silly: we were using poker chips, two decks of cards and a made up ’spinner’ for random number generation. The game was alternating between UNO and gin, with the winner of a hand allowed to spin for poker chips which could be spent to make up a temporary rule for the next game. Silly, yes. But, I won!

Jenn spent a lot of time being constructive as well. She’s been knitting me a pair of socks. So far, they cover about half of my foot. I think we’re going to have to get back out in the middle of nowhere before I can expect the other half. She enjoyed bragging about how all of her half-finished projects give her plenty to do during the moments when I was scrambling for something to keep me occupied. I played with my electronics kit a bit for the first time in two years and even managed to shoot a few arrows during a brief lull in the rain. Just enough rounds to ruin another arrow… 15 yards is really a bit too close for practice, but I was bored!

Somewhere in there during a lull, I climbed up on the roof and resealed an area that turned out not to be leaking. Four days of rain along with temperatures in the low forties overnight and low fifties for mid-day highs and we had some pretty awful humidity in the camper. Yep, raining from the skylight in the bathroom! Water forming on cans in the cupboards. As long as I was doing repairs, I fixed the connections on our inverter, which were not exactly up to code. The connections look much nicer now and should hold up much better, even if it is a bit harder to check the exact battery voltage now.

And then, there were video games! Yes, we’ve quite a collection of old games that we’re dragging around. After trying out a few things, Jenn settled in on a real time strategy game of some sort and I went to an old favorite – Slash’em. It’s a Nethack variant, and if you’ve never fought a nethack addiction, well, I suppose you’re like 99.999% of people. Any UNIX gamer will know Nethack, but there aren’t all that many of us! I’ve spent a lot of time playing Nethack off and on over the past 13 years and I’ve ‘won’ exactly twice. I don’t think I’ll ever ‘beat’ it.

For those keeping score on the costs of boondocking, I think we used roughly two gallons of gasoline keeping the batteries charged enough to watch TV, listen to the radio, read books, play video games and run the furnace. I’m guessing we used two gallons of propane keeping the thermostat set at 52, but that’s a bit harder to judge… I don’t actually remember when we last filled the propane.

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1. Part One – The fulltime lifestyle
2. Part Two – Why a truck camper?
3. Part Three – Weights & Dealing with them
4. Part Four – Boondocking resource conservation

Gordon recently posed a question over at the Truck Camper Magazine blog that seemed like a great idea for the next part of our Life in the back of a truck series. He’s curious just how long his readers can boondock and what tricks they use to manage it. I got a bit long winded, but here’s my response.

The resources we have to work with are:

• 46 gallons of fresh water
• ~300 amp hours of battery in 2 Trojan T-1275 12V batteries
• 60 pounds of propane in 2 30# tanks
• A Honda eu2000i generator
• ~4.5 gallons of gasoline plus whatever is in the scooter and generator (up to around 2 gallons if both are full)

Doesn’t sound like much, does it? Still, we manage to do fairly well when we find a place we want to stay for a while. It takes a little effort to conserve resources, but we manage to live quite comfortably for up to a two week stretch without running out of anything or breaking out a military desert survival handbook. Just how do we make these resources last and what sacrifices does it take, you ask? Well, read on to get a taste of the Hitek Homeless lifestyle!

In moderate weather, propane generally lasts us around 6-8 weeks running the fridge and cooking. If we’re in the freezing or below range, two weeks is about tops – gotta keep the kitties warm even if we’re not inside. Warm means around 55. They’ve got fur coats and we’ve got blankets. Unless we’re about to take on water and ready for a ‘luxurious’ shower, we generally don’t even turn on the hot water heater. The stove heats water quicker because you’re only heating enough for an ‘army bath’ rather than the entire hot water tank.

Gasoline is split between the scooter and the generator. That breaks down to something in the middle of  250 miles of exploration or 40 hours of generator time. If we’re in a heavy internet usage mode, we’ll be recharging laptops off the inverter and need to run the generator for about 4 hours every 2-3 days. In cold enough weather to run the furnace, we’ll typically run the generator 1-2 hours every evening.

Electric conservation is really pretty simple. If you’re done with something, turn it off! During the day, there is little need for lights and in the evening, one above the area you’re using is typically enough. Most of the time, there’s only a single light on in the camper unless one of us is cooking or laying in bed reading while the other is on the couch.

Speaking of lighting, we shelled out a small fortune for LED lighting back around Christmas. Except for the ‘vanity colored’ light in the bathroom and a small incandescent over the stove, all of the lighting inside and out of the camper is LED or fluorescent. The LED lights aren’t quite as bright as incandescent, but it’s bright enough for us and uses roughly 10% of the electricity.

And what typically runs us out is… water, or lack thereof. In nice weather, with a secluded spot next to a stream, we can do laundry, dishes and bathe without touching the holding tanks. Of course, you want to boil the water for dishes and at least get it warm for a shower, so a campfire is in order if you’re trying to save propane as well as water! When you’re done, spread the water around a bit instead of create a giant a puddle or toss it back in the stream to contaminate the water supply. The rest of the time, it usually comes down to: how clean do you really need to be?

Military showers and washing hair once a week instead of with every shower will stretch the water budget quite a bit. If we’ve been out a while and are water conscious because we aren’t ready to move, I may go as far as a full blown shower and hair washing in a gallon and a half of water. There’s probably still a bit of shampoo that doesn’t get rinsed out, but the critters don’t seem to mind.

Military showers are simple: get wet, soap up, rinse off. Do all of the above with as little water use as possible. You can either turn off the shower head while soaping up or save more water by using the sink to hold water and a washcloth to get wet and rinse off. I usually prefer to use the sink because if we’ve turned the hot water heater on, I can just let it run into the sink until the water gets hot. You don’t waste any of the cold water that way and end up with a sink full of warm water for bathing.

When it comes to dishes, we usually cook once or twice a day. If we don’t have guests, we usually manage to cook a one pot meal of some sort. Plates get burned in the campfire! Most nights, cleanup consists of one pot, maybe a lid and a couple of forks or spoons. Water glasses and coffee mugs probably aren’t up to restaurant standards. A quick swirl to knock the grinds out of a coffee cup and mostly ignoring water spots on water glasses is pretty typical.

Dish washing still takes water, but we’ve found that you can save a lot of it by picking the largest pot to hold your soapy water. There’s no reason to fill up an entire side of the sink with dishwater. Just put enough soap and water into the pot to clean the dirty dishes. Grab a dishcloth and you’ll get plenty of soap and water on the dishes to get them clean. Pile all of the washed dishes up in the same side of the sink and rinse the entire batch at once. Not all at once… that takes too much water! Just rinse one above all of the others, allowing the runoff to help get soap off of the next dishes as a sort of pre-rinse. It doesn’t take a lot of water pressure to rinse dishes. A thin trickle will do it; it just takes a little longer.

Garbage is also a consideration. Just how much do you want to pack out and how ripe is it going to be? We use basic clay cat litter, so I feel no qualms about digging a hole to bury it in away from the camping area and any trails. Leftovers don’t exist! Unless there’s a fire ban, we’ll typically burn any paper or cardboard packaging materials. After shopping, I’ll usually unpackage things like meat and repackage in freezer bags sized for the two of us. It stacks better, I can do any necessary butchering all at once, we can thaw out just what we’re going to eat that day, and we get rid of those icky styrofoam containers in the store parking lot rather than have them stink up the camper later. Things like banana peels, apple cores and coffee grounds get tossed under a bush where they rapidly degrade or feed something.

Even with all of that, we still end up with metal and plastic garbage that can’t be burned. Well, you could, but come on… who wants to breathe burning plastic or turn cans into balls of slag at the bottom of a fire pit? Normally, we just use our grocery bags for garbage collection, but if we’re out long enough that the bags start overflowing or stinking, they go in an actual garbage bag, get tied up nice and tight and tossed in the cab of the truck where we don’t have to smell it until we’re ready to air the cab out and leave.

Food has never really been an issue. Since we don’t have a microwave or oven, we’ve got lots of extra room for food. The Arctic Fox 1140 has plenty of storage space and we could probably go two months between shopping trips if we really tried. All those nights around the campfire do call for the occasional mixed drink. How do you carry a lot of fruit juice around without taking up too much room? Frozen juice! There are several brands of very tasty frozen juice mix that actually uses 100% juice. The trick is finding some you like at a good price. When you do though, you can easily store enough for five gallons or so without taking up too much freezer or fridge space.

So how long do we actually stay out in the middle of nowhere? Usually after a week or so, we’re ready to find a new spot and start looking for whatever we need – water, dump station, a nice big trashcan and maybe a few gallons of gasoline or propane. If we have a nice spot and plenty to do, two weeks is pretty typical. Longer than that and Jenn starts telling me I stink. With better water conservation and a stream for bathing, I’d say a month is pretty doable before we’d have to start doing things like distilling our own drinking water, worrying about food spoiling or going through Internet withdrawals.

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OK, technically, Quartzsite, AZ isn’t a ghost town, but it was rapidly on it’s way to rolling up the sidewalks for the summer when we finally arrived. I’d hoped to make it in time for some of the swap meets, but one thing and another had us well into March before we hit town.

We spent a couple of days out in the BLM land and wandering around town to see what was still there- not much! We were hoping we’d be able to get together with Ryan and Nicole who’d been working at Quartzsite all winter, but they were both working double shifts. After a couple of days, we took their advice and headed over to Crystal Hill, part of the Kofa wildlife refuge about ten miles south of Quartzsite. We clambered around in the hills a bit and came up with a few moderate sized quartz crystals for our trouble.

On the way back from Crystal Hill, we decided to stay in a campground for the night as the easiest way to refill our water and dump our tanks. I’m not sure we’ve done that since about June of last year, but for some reason it seemed the easiest thing to do. Imagine our surprise when we’d finished backing the rig in and find Ryan and Nicole’s trailer is at our back door! Total weirdness. The campground owner had told us there were ’some kids’ in the spot behind us. Considering the average age of folks at Quartzsite, I guess we should have known it would be those other gypsy kids.

We ended up staying two nights instead of one and not getting many of the ‘internet chores’ done, but I did manage to climb on the roof and reseal the bulk of it before running out of dicor. Ryan and Nicole were a lot of fun and we had a couple of pretty fancy dinners. Ryan claimed to be a chef, so we made him prove it. I’m not entirely convinced yet… it may take a few more fancy meals! hint hint

Ryan and Nicole were planning to head over to Slab City as well, so we made some tentative plans to meet them in a few days and rolled out, hoping to get some serious shopping done in Brawley, CA. Quartzsite prices were, apparently, still marked up for the snowbirds. The next time we hit Quartzsite, we’ll have the cabinets and fridge stuffed to overflowing so we can avoid as much shopping there as possible.

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What do you get when you combine one of Jenn’s favorite games (Railroad Tycoon) and the RV lifestyle? You get a railroad car fitted out for fulltiming! That’s just what we found as we were passing through Jefferson, Texas a couple of weeks ago. The Garden Club has acquired the personal car of Jay Gould, a railroad tycoon, and restored it to something close to it’s original splendor.

The car had four staterooms for passengers, two of which were adjoining with a bathroom, including tub and shower between them. The others all had their own plumbing, even if a bit primitive by modern standards. There was a couch as well as a pullman bed in each of the staterooms. The car would be able to take on water at the same water depots that the train used. We didn’t ask, but I assume the black and gray water would have been simply dumped along the tracks as soon as it was generated.

There were two rooms devoted to cooking with a pass through between them. Based on the layout, I would assume that the car originally had bunks for two servants, but only one of the kitchen cars still had a pullman berth at the ceiling. The icebox had something I think we could all use today, a glass door. How often have you opened the fridge and stared at what was there while deciding what you wanted?

In addition to the above mentioned rooms, the car also had an observation/lounge room and a dining/office room. Many RV’s today have a table that fold out from the wall with a leg that folds down to support the table. The design is more than a hundred years old! Jay Gould’s car had slots along the side where a table with a folding leg could be secured to place a table wherever it was needed at the time. The observation room included a speedometer so that Mr. Gould could see how fast the train was moving and call the conductor if he wanted to go faster. Apparently, Jay Gould was often in a hurry to get somewhere.

The entire car was lavishly appointed with a different decor for each room. How much of this is original is hard to say, but the Garden Club has done an excellent job recreating what must have been a very high class conveyance in it’s day. You can still see the original mother of pearl buttons to summon servants and the glass fixture with Jay Gould’s signature jay bird, which he would draw when signing his first name.

If you’re ever in Jefferson, I recommend taking the tour. It’s cheap and the ladies will tell you all kinds of stories about Jay Gould and how he was connected to the town during the heyday of the railroad. The town also has some interesting ‘antique’ shops full of all kinds of junk and a hotel that dates back to the days of the wild west. Overall, it’s a gorgeous small town with a nice drive along the Texas Trails system if you’re tired of the interstate route.

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1. Part One – The fulltime lifestyle
2. Part Two – Why a truck camper?
3. Part Three – Weights & Dealing with them
4. Part Four – Boondocking resource conservation

Why a truck camper when you could have something much larger?

True, a bus conversion or a 5th wheel would give quite a bit more space than a truck camper, but if you can deal with the smaller size, a truck camper has a lot going for it. For starters, you can take it places that just aren’t practical in most rigs that are suitable for fulltiming. Sure, a popup trailer or an especially small travel trailer might make it down a particular nasty stretch of dirt road, but even those are going to have issues if it turns out backing out is required. A smallish Class C is as manueverable as a truck camper, but they’re awfully hard to find in 4 wheel drive models with the kind of clearance you get from a full size truck.

Another bonus to truck campers is that you don’t really need to tow along a second vehicle for running around. Many Class A owners tow a dinghy vehicle for sightseeing in order to avoid moving their RV once its parked. While, we also haul around a scooter for short trips, we often just move the entire truck and camper if the trip requires it. Better yet, if we’re going to be somewhere more than a few days and know we’ll need to run around in the truck a lot, we can just drop the camper and have a separate vehicle to drive. It takes a bit more effort than dropping or loading a trailer, but the truck can easily be loaded or unloaded in around 30 minutes.

A final reason we really like the truck camper option is that the camper and drivetrain are not married as they are in Class A’s or C’s. If you decide you’d prefer a different floorplan or the truck experiences catastrophic failure, you can always change truck or camper with a minimum of hassle and keep the one you’re still happy with. For that matter, you can dump the camping lifestyle altogether and keep the truck. Not having the RV and truck married is what allows you to have a 4wd, diesel RV with good clearance at a reasonable price. It’s also an excellent choice for anyone that would like to pull a boat. Many states prohibit double towing, and I can’t imagine it being particularly fun even in those that allow it.

But, isn’t a truck camper way too small to live in fulltime?

I guess that depends on your lifestyle and what you want and need out of life. There are probably more people living in vans than truck campers by an order of magnitude. I can stand up fully, stretch out fully and have considerably more room to move around than any van I’ve ever seen except perhaps the shuttle buses, which I imagine would make a nice little rolling house with some work.

Personally, I find there is plenty of living space, but I’ve always liked living in smaller spaces. They prevent me from accumulating too much junk and I can usually find things I’ve mislaid without much trouble. Jenn and I as well as two cats have been living in the camper for 12 of the last 14 months and I feel much more comfortable to be back in our camper than I felt while we had the run of her parent’s place the past couple of months.

The one real constriction I feel about living in something the size of a truck camper is making a concious effort not to accumulate too much junk and finding a place to store the things we need. Anytime you consider picking up a new item, you have to think about just how often you’re going to use it, whether or not you can get along without it and where you’re going to store it. On top of that, you should consider whether it will be able to replace something you already have or if you already have something that can do the same thing. This problem actually helps me to save money by not buying things just because they’re shiny!

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Gorden wrapped up the year with “Best of 2008: A Year In Pictures” and “Best of 2008: The Most Amazing TCM Moments of the Year“. In case you missed the first run of the article about us, not sure how that would be possible but just in case, here it is.

Shortly after TC Magazine made us a household name, Jim and Rene posted an article, featuring us, about choosing this alternative lifestyle.

Fleeting fame… ah, it sure was fun at the top.

Can’t wait to see what 2009 holds.

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1. Part One – The fulltime lifestyle
2. Part Two – Why a truck camper?
3. Part Three – Weights & Dealing with them
4. Part Four – Boondocking resource conservation

So, you want to live in the back of a truck… First off, you should probably face the fact that you’re a bit of an odd duck. Now that we’ve got that out of the way, let’s talk about some of the things that you’ll encounter along the way to making this grandiose fantasy a reality.

Where are you from?
You’re going to hear this question a lot as you travel around. It’s simply a polite thing to ask strangers that “aren’t from around here”. There are a few schools of thought as to how one should answer this question. You can tell people where you left “real life” from if you are in a hurry and don’t want to explain how you come to be living in that truck over yonder. If you’re dealing with a business or government agency, it’s usually simplest to give the address of your mail forwarding service or the address on your driver’s license.

The next two options are a pretty good way to strike up a conversation, so use them carefully as you may end up trying to explain yourself to a posse in the wrong town. You can simply tell the truth and explain that you’re traveling. This can lead to all sorts of interesting questions such as “are ya’ll circus folk/gypsies/carnies/hippies/destitute?”. I wouldn’t recommend telling the cashier at a local business this, but it goes over well at campgrounds. Events that bring a lot diverse folks together are also a good bet. You’ll have to explain yourself a lot more, but as you’re there to meet people anyway, it gives you an interesting topic to talk about. A lot of people are curious about the fulltime RV lifestyle and have lots of questions. The final answer to “where are you from?” is to say “I grew up in…”. This is a polite way of making smalltalk without committing yourself to answering a lot of personal questions from complete strangers.

What do you bring along?
This is a really tough question and will depend mostly on what you enjoy doing and how much room you have. Jenn and I had a lot of different ideas on what is considered “essential” to the fulltime RV lifestyle, but one thing we both agreed on was that tools should come along. The only tool I can recall leaving in storage is a sawzall that simply took up too much room when a circular saw could accomplish much of the same work and be a better all around tool besides. Jenn is carrying around a full size sewing machine and I’m dragging along an acetylene torch with miniature gas bottles.

Why are tools so important? They give you the ability to work on your own rig! It might take years to become an expert craftsman or handyman, but with tools at hand, you can attempt to fix problems or fabricate new solutions. It might be ugly or even fail the first shot, but you can probably do it two or three times for the cost of having it done by a professional. Let’s face it, if you’re not going to work every day, you probably have a lot of free time. Why not spend a couple of days making something that a skilled laborer could knock out in a couple of hours? The satisfaction that comes from making things just the way you picture them is well worth the time involved.

Entertainment is also an important item to think about. If you can use some of the tools you brought along in a hobby such as wood working or sewing, you’ve knocked out two birds with a chunk of iron. But what about books, movies and toys? Yah, I said toys. Unfortunately, books take up a ton of space and are quite heavy. DVDs aren’t quite as bad, but they still take up a considerable amount of space. Our solution to these was two-fold: electronic media and reduce what you carry.

Movies were a pretty easy solution. Most of our movies were ripped to disk and stored on hard drives for backup, so we simply moved them over to the ReadyNAS and keep fifteen or twenty on a Cowon for easy access. The movies we wanted to keep but were not yet ripped got stripped down. You don’t need that plastic box they come in. Grab a CD/DVD travel case and fill it with nothing but disks…. you just cut the size of your movie collection down significantly.

Books are a bit harder. Electronic copies are a good start, but I still haven’t found an E-Book reader that I was happy enough with to shell out the bucks. Reading on the laptop is doable, but it’s a drain on the electricity and not entirely ergonomic. For now, I’m still carrying around a couple of dozen small paperbacks and swapping them out for new books as we find new books from friends, family, lending libraries and public libraries that are giving away old books.

Ok, so I’m just a big kid at heart. Two toys we made sure to bring along were Jenn’s Mindstorm lego kit and my 500 in 1 electronics kit. I’ve got to admit that we’ve spent no time at all playing with either of these toys, but I still like to think that there is enough ‘play time’ there to keep us busy for several years of rainy days. For low cost, small storage entertainment, old video games are great. They take up very little room and you can get them at bargain basement prices. A few days of entertainment from a $1 game is a helluva deal. Simple board games without a lot of pieces are also a nice way to pass an evening.

You can make room for just about any hobby if you are passionate enough about it. You just have to ask yourself if remodeling vintage automobiles is worth hauling around a trailer with your Model T frame and random parts for the next twenty years. Jenn and I are hauling around bows and arrows along with a practice target, fishing poles with minimal tackle, a fair amount of caving gear and enough old radio dramas to play for three or four years straight just to name a few.

This article has gone on longer than I expected when I began writing. If it’s popular, perhaps we’ll turn it into a mini-series about what to expect from and how to prepare for life on the road. Happy trails!

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Recently, we stopped over in a national forest and it was getting too late to be out looking for a campsite in the dark. The fees posted for this campsite were $5/day. You can’t beat that with a stick, right? Wrong! For the first time, I noticed that our America the Beautiful pass would allow us to camp for HALF PRICE somewhere.

Now, I happen to think this interagency pass is an excellent deal for folks that want to check out the national parks as they travel, so we picked one up while visiting the Wright Brothers memorial in Kitty Hawk, NC. At the time, we joked about buying an $80 pass to avoid paying an $8 entrance fee. But, you’ve got to remember that the interagency pass takes an all you can eat approach to entrance fees. It will get you and up to three other people into just about every federal area where they charge an entrance fee for free. This includes national parks, monuments and historic sites, forestry service, bureau of land management, bureau of reclamation and fish and wildlife sites as well as federal recreation lands.

The pass is good for a year, but try to buy it at the beginning of the month rather than the end as we did. I was a bit annoyed to see our pass punched to expire thirty days earlier than it would have if we’d bought it the following day. If you happen to be sixty-two or older, you qualify for a Senior pass which is $10 and does not expire. If you are permanently disabled, you qualify for an Access pass which is free and never expires.

You could buy a pass on the internet, but if you’re going to buy a pass with an expiration date, why bother when you can buy one from so many places where you’ll begin saving money immediately? Actually, if you’re planning to use it primarily as a camping discount card, go ahead and buy it on the internet, as many of the places where you can receive a camping discount do not sell passes.

Oh, yes, I did mention camping discounts, didn’t I? Here’s a treat for those of you that like camping on the water. All Corp of Engineer campgrounds accept the interagency passes and give a 50% discount on their camping rates. I was a bit disappointed to see that the COE had raised their rates significantly since our copy of Camping With the Corps of Engineers: The Complete Guide to Campgrounds Owned and Operated by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers was published. The COE is starting to approach the price of commercial campgrounds in a lot of cases, but 50% off puts it back in the bargain bin.

As long as we’re talking about federal lands, here’s a fun link to maps of the various federal lands. Pity they don’t cover state forests, parks and wildlife management areas as well, but at least the federal lands have more or less similar policies from state to state.

Oh, and lest I be castigated by completeists, I’d better mention the Volunteer pass. If you’re the kind of person that likes doing volunteer work, you can earn a ‘free’ Interagency pass by volunteering 500 hours to the federal agencies in the America the Beautiful program. Now, if you’re like me, 500 hours really seems like a lot of time for a pass with an $80 value. The one bright spot in this otherwise dismal news is that you could potentially volunteer these 500 hours as a campground host and get a free campsite and perhaps a small living stipend while working towards your ‘free’ interagency pass.

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I’ve really got to say I’m still very happy with our choice of camper and options. We’ve looked at quite a few both before and after we made a decision and I still haven’t seen one (yeah, I know Paul will tell me to look at his Snowriver) that I would be happier with for fulltiming.

We had a couple of things customized on the camper that have made life a lot easier. One was getting a wet bath instead of a dry bath. For starters, it’s very easy to clean a wet bath. The only thing you really sacrifice is having a dry place to store towels and toilet paper. It’s also a good idea to buy a squeegie to swamp out the bathroom after your shower. But what we got in return for a dry bath is a wardrobe that’s two and a half feet deep, three full length drawers and a shoe cabinet.

After we quit work, I found I didn’t need hanging clothes anymore and built a cubbyhole system inside the wardrobe. Now, I have four shelves for clothes, a liquor cabinet and a handy place to store our bows which we previously had to squeeze behind the backseat of the truck. Rene has been asking me, for months now, where we hide the booze and I finally have a good answer. With some wiggling, I can get roughly eighteen liters of booze in the liquor cabinet. Just right for a couple of unemployed, homeless folks, right?

Another special order  was getting a couch instead of a dinette. Sure, it’s not optimal for dining, but it just seems much less adversarial to sit on a couch instead of staring at each other over a dinette when relaxing. Here, we actually gave up a little bit of inside storage because there are no drawers under the couch – just the furnace. We do still have a fair bit of outside storage under the couch though. One thing I didn’t realize at the time was that the couch would give us a nice place to store long skinny items such as wrapping paper, fishing poles, the metal detector, our lap desks and my bluetooth keyboard. Overall, I don’t feel like we lost too much storage and the couch really makes the camper feel bigger than a dinette in my opinion.

Above is a pseudo before and after picture of the wardrobe next to our couch. From the factory, there was just a blind in front of this which the cats could easily get into, which led to furrier jackets than was entirely necessary. During our recent visit to the Winchester factory, we were able to pick up a cabinet door and matching hardware that both fit the wardrobe and matched the interior of the camper. Two minutes with a drill and we had a nice cabinet door that looks like it belongs there.

Along with the cabinet door, we also picked up some nice brass colored robe hooks from the factory. They look much nicer than the plastic stick on hooks from Wal-Mart that occasionally fell while driving. They also make fine hat racks and towel hangers (remember, not much dry storage in the wet bath!). Yup, that’s the bathroom door… no need to take a towel in with you, just stick your arm out and grab it from outside.

One of the very first things we did was to stick a small cargo net on the ceiling over the bed. Come on, did you think that homeless people actually washed their clothes every time they wore them? Heck no. If it doesn’t smell yet and we’re in the middle of the woods, it gets stuck in the cargo net to be worn again the next day. It’s also a great place to store things like a jacket I’m going to wear the next day and don’t feel like hanging up or my flannel sleeping pants when it gets cold and we just don’t want to use a lot of propane keeping the place warm overnight.

Finally, there’s this little 475 watt inverter that I’ve wired into the electric jacks. Jenn’s laptop pulls just a bit more juice than you can really push over a 12v car adaptor, so we needed a direct connection to the battery to keep the ‘television’ charged up. It also does a great job of running the NAS when I get a craving to see a movie that I know is on there but hasn’t been moved over to one of the Cowons or a laptop. I had big hopes of using a 1750 watt inverter my dad gave us to power the entire camper, but apparently my soldering job was a bit faulty. I blame the tools… the soldering gun actually caught on fire while I was using it. Anyhow, the remote switch worked fine and my wiring job worked enough to push a load to the inverter, which promptly started smoking and would not turn off. C’est la vie!

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Claire @ http://escapethe9to5.blogspot.com

Hi Jen

How long do you think your trip will last?

Is it a trip or a change of lifestyle? If it is a trip how do you plan to make the transition back to the 9-5 grind if ever? Do you worry about the future? Do you worry about being homless

How do you manage for money? Do you live off savings or do you work along the way?

I am really intersted in your blog and your plans for the future. I am having another life crisis and I need to do something to change my life.

Cheers

Claire

As for how long the trip will last: forever, I hope. It is definitely a change of lifestyle. From the shedding of all of our accumulated baggage and absurd “needs” to opening up to new people and opportunities, we have changed. Even if the trip was tragically cut short, I have learned new values that I will always keep with me.

At this time, I do not foresee myself returning to the 9-5. I find it very stifling. My career, while profitable, was a drain on my physical and mental health. I cannot imagine returning to a cubicle, ever. I cannot imagine sitting in an office working at least 9hrs a day, sometimes 16, for someone else’s dream. Life is way too short to live that way.

Do I worry? Of course I do. It would be silly not to. That said, I am not going to let fear dictate my life and keep me corralled into a “normal life” where money is all that matters. I remember how miserable the people I know who were trying to keep up with the Jones by working at a job they hated were. It was a stark contrast to the people that we have met on this adventure who are happy, generous, and grateful for today.

Some people are lucky enough to find out exactly what makes them happy at a young age. Sometimes it’s a corporate job, a career in medicine, or driving a dump truck. I chose an enjoyable (for 10yrs) path that had high income potential. But, the money wasn’t enough to placate me for the rest of my life.

I am grateful for the opportunity that our careers have given us. Without them, we wouldn’t be able to make this trip. It has allowed us to do it debt free and with cash reserves. Its much easier to search for yourself and your future when you don’t have to worry about money as much.

I don’t really worry about being homeless. While I am still young, I could always return to the 8-5 if I had to. Currently, my previous profession is in demand. That could always change like it did in the dot bomb, but I would have to deal with that either way. I have also learned that I can live in a much smaller space with less stuff, so less costs. If I find somewhere that I never want to leave, I plan on buying property there. Then I wont be homeless when I am older.

Do I have all of the answers? Nope. Do I know exactly what the future holds? Nope. Does anyone? Nope. Will it all work out? I have no idea. Am I making the right decisions? Only time will tell. Will I live to celebrate my 100th b-day like my Grandmother will do next March? Not a clue. All that I know is that I am happy. Very happy. Finally. I also know that all of the retired people we speak with in the campgrounds say that we are smart for enjoying ourselves while we still can.

We live of investments and income. When we moved into the camper and quite our jobs we were debt free. Both of us had savings and investments. We have been trying to stick to a budget which can be hard when you find new hobbies. We don’t eat out. We try to pay very little, if anything, for our campsites. We try to make more than we spend. We have worked a couple of jobs along the way which will help us stay on the road longer. We are going to work more short term jobs in the future. I would like to work at a whitewater rafting place next. We were offered jobs fighting wildfires last week, but we had a previous position lined up and couldn’t do it.

Speaking of which, I just arrived at our current job site (sorry, I wont have time to proof read this for errors). We are carnies at the moment and there’s lots to do before the fair opens. In closing I will say, if you are unhappy in your current situation, do something to change it. It doesn’t have to be as drastic as selling everything you own and moving into a van down by the river. Start with small changes. Remember, you are the only one responsible for yourself and your own well being. Best of luck to you in your decisions and please let us know how you are.

This is in response to a previous comment. Johnny said that 10 paragraphs constitute a blog post, not a comment. He’s right, so I posted it here.

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Day one was pretty rough as I had not yet figured out the delicacies of reaching the bathroom on one leg. Thankfully, the bed is only about ten feet from the bathroom with plenty of things to lean on along the way. The catch is that there are a couple of steps at both the bed and the bathroom to negotiate. After handling these obstacles poorly for a day, I finally got the hang of it and can now handle the gymnastics like an old pro.

We’ve been staying at Jenn’s parent’s place since we left the campground where we spent the Fourth of July week. This is good for a few reasons. Jenn has people to keep her company and is not in need of a playmate that can run and jump. Good for her and good for me as it means I can read in peace and stay deeply entranced in my books without getting antsy and trying to do things because I’m having a hard time reading.

My knee is now down to about 150% of normal size and I’m hoping it will be mostly well by the end of the week as we’re all planning to go to Karst-O-Rama and Mammoth Cave next week. Karst-O-Rama promises to be interesting as we’ll be going on unguided, ‘wild’ cave trips. If we have as much fun as I expect to, Jenn and I may come away from it with a new hobby that should also be a good way to meet interesting people.

Because of the danger of cave exploration as well as the damage that can be done to caves by amateurs, most cave locations are kept secret. If you want to explore caves, it’s best to join up with one of the local Grottos (branches of the National Speleological Society) in order to gain experience and find out about local caves. Most experts recommend going in groups of at least four cavers for safety, which is another good reason to join a Grotto.

Obviously, Jenn and I are going to have some issues when it comes to joining local Grottos in order to meet cavers and find out where the local caves are. Luckily, when I asked just this question, we were pointed to Kart-O-Rama which fit into our schedule and travel plans with only some minor changes. We should be able to get a good solid introduction to caving as well as meet some folks to cave with while we’re in area.

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If I had an oven, I would so make you a cake! I know, I am supposed to be using the solar oven, but babes, it wouldn’t be very effective here in the rainforest anyway. Oh, and the fact that we used up all of the sugar and eggs feeding the local folks pie doesn’t help much either.

That’s our new life hun. I hope you’re loving it as much as I am.

Glad to be spending another birthday with ya. I am sorry that all I have to give you is this stolen birthday card.

xoxox Happy Birthday, Baby! xoxox

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Yup. That’s how the locals know us. ‘Those nutty pirates up on the ridge.’ The day after a camera shy black bear strolled through our campsite, we decided to pull out and refill on water, dump our tanks and go grocery shopping.

We stopped to orient ourselves and ran into a fella that’s full-timing in an even smaller rig than ours. He’s riding a mountain bike and pulling a small trailer behind him. After chatting with him for an hour or so and giving iffy directions to two other people that stopped by, we hit the road.

We found that the rest area in Tennessee where we’d been planning to dump the tanks no longer allowed RVs to dump. Luckily, our fallback plan was a nearby campground, Fox Fire Camp & Canoe. Jenn had already spoken with the owner, and we were going to have to go into Newport to get groceries regardless of where we dumped. I don’t mind paying for a campground after two weeks in the woods. It gave us a chance to take really good showers and wash the truck, which had everything from red clay to tree branches attached.

It turns out that this was probably the best money we’ve ever spent on a campsite. We took a stroll up to the camp store and finally met our friendly neighborhood Hummer tour guides, Wayne and Joe from Off Road Voyages. After it was established that we were, indeed, the Pirate Campers, they gave us directions to a perfect campsite. Of course, it’s on the Hummer tour, so we had to crawl down a pretty rough and steep stretch of road, ford a creek and dodge a few small boulders, but other than scraping the cargo carriers, we got in without any trouble.

Once we got in, we had a bit of a scare as I was walking back the way we’d come and noticed oil splashes on the rocks. I found some more where we hadn’t driven, so we assumed it was one of the Hummers that had bottomed out. An hour or so later, when Joe came by with a full tour group, we flagged him down to let him know about the leak. It turns out, they’d busted an oil line the day before, so nothing to be concerned about today. Before he left, Joe offered us a ride on his next tour group since it would only be half full!

I’ve got to say, taking the Hummer tour and seeing a small fraction of what it is capable of has me thinking all over again about my daydream of refitting a Pinzgauer into a small RV. I’m not sure how practical it would be cross country, but they’ll keep up with a Hummer across rough terrain. And you can buy them cheap! But, very abused by the military, not to mention thirty years old…

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For those of you that haven’t met our local anarchic overlords, the gray tabby is simply ‘The Cat’ as she was here first and hasn’t bothered to tell us what she prefers to be called, although she has no such compunctions against telling us when its time to be fed. The Siamese is Hunter. I was all for calling her ‘The Other Cat’, but Jenn overruled me and now we have a Siamese cat that thinks she is people because she has a name.

What you can’t see in these oh-so -cute pictures of napping cats is the constant turf war that goes on. Sure, it’s peaceful now, but there’s nothing more entertaining than watching these kids both jump in the drawer, get on their hind legs, lay their ears back and bat each other about the head and neck. OK, maybe we’re just lacking for entertainment, but it’s still pretty interesting.

In the bottom right hand corner of the first picture, you can see their food and water bowls. I took one of the faces off of a small cabinet that happened to be just the right size so we wouldn’t be constantly knocking over their bowls.

But what about the people you ask? One of our special requests when we ordered the camper was to have a couch instead of a dinette. This makes lounging more comfortable and makes the inside of the camper seem larger.

The problem with this arrangement is that Northwood still tries to fit a ginormous table in front of the couch. Sure, it’s been engineered a bit so that it slides in and out to make it easier to walk past it, but you almost have to turn sideways to get onto the couch! And forget sitting anywhere but the very ends of the couch, those metal legs will be in your way. The final straw was trying to get past the table while the slide was in: overnighting in parking lots, stopping for a quick snack or bathroom break, etc. Jenn had a bit easier time, but I get awfully tired of trying to ’suck it in’ and having so much of the camper practically unusable.

After thinking about just what to do with the table for over a month, Jenn and I finally came up with this solution:

We built a new table that is roughly 25% of the size of the OEM table. It is considerably narrower as well as being shorter, so there is no trouble walking past it while the slide is in and we can easily hop in and out of the couch. Since it only has one leg, it can be swiveled to use as a work surface such as a sewing table.

To make up for the lack of surface area, we made a couple of lap desks from 1/2″ plywood and an ‘end table’ that mounts onto the divider wall next to the stove.

The final piece of the puzzle is a vinyl center console intended as an add-on for vans apparently. It acts as a clutter catcher for all those things that never seem to have a place but need to be where you can get to them easily. I didn’t take a picture of it as it is doing an excellent job of keeping lots of miscellaneous junk organized at the moment!

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So, earlier this week, we finally did what I would always do before moving in to somewhere new, we sprayed the joint down with Demon Dust WP. My folks say they used to get the stuff from an old family friend who was an exterminator. Thankfully, its available to the public now.

This stuff can’t be beat. I have never had a bug problem after using it. When I was a teenager, I moved into this country home in the middle of nowhere. It had bugs. An infestation. The dreaded German roach. One application of Demon Dust later and I never saw another roach. I am sure that some day I will grow an extra limb because of it. So be it. Until then, I can’t recommend it enough. I have never found anything else that works as well.

So, we emptied out all of the outside storage, pulled all of the drawers out, and vacuumed every nook and cranny that the hose would reach. Then, we went back and sprayed all of those areas. It was a much needed spring cleaning. Not that the living area was bad, but the outside storage and unseen areas were “a bit” dusty. The outside areas were dirty from use, where the unseen areas were dirty because they weren’t used. We were very pressed for time when we got the camper and were unable to do the cleaning and spraying that we had wanted.

Our new 1 gallon shopvac was well worth the $20 ($19.89 to be exact) too. It worked better than expected.

We plan on doing another deep cleaning in 6 months. Probably another spraying in a year.

Hopefully we will be on private property, though. That way, we wont have to get all of the strange looks again for having our home emptied out and stacked up on the picnic table and concrete slab.

I am curious how others handle this kind of situation. Do you spot spray, let the pets handle the pests, dowse the place in poison, or do you just live in harmony and rename your camper to Joe’s Camper?

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We’ve still got a couple of big items we’d like to sell. One of them is Jenn’s Xterra. Unlike my old beater, it’s actually worth a few bucks. We’d probably have to pay someone to haul the hardbody away, so we’ll store it with my folks for a year or two.

Supposedly, the camper should be ready to pick up Tuesday or Wednesday. We’re going to be cutting it pretty close as our lease is up on Friday. If anything goes awry, we may just end up in a hotel room for a week or two. There’s still much to do to even get as far as living in the campground. Who knew going on an extended vacation would be so much work?!

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We have a better idea of when the camper will arrive! It is supposed to leave Oregon on the 15th. It will come via a tractor trailer. It will probably take a couple of days for them to inspect it and do all of the dealer setup stuff. We are really hoping to have it before Thanksgiving. It would be great to be able to pack it up over the long weekend. Here’s hoping!

We have also picked out a campground to stay in for a couple of months while we get acclimated to the RV lifestyle and continue to make a living in the corporate world. We decided to spend the winter and part of the spring working at our current jobs so that we can put the money that we spent getting ready for this adventure back into our savings and sock away a few pennies more.

We have marked a few more items off of our list, but we still have lots to go. Half the fun of getting there is the journey, right?

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