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I see quite a few to choose from, seems the international travelers are headed home and need to sell the campervans they used to travel USA and Canada. The one I sold was a 1985 with 65k miles. I have no problem with older vans, I don't like plastic cars!, No electronics is even better! my daily driver is 43 yrs old. It has never darkened the door of a fix-it shop.
Ideally I will have an entire fleet of vintage vehicles, with updated drivetrains and
brakes. Diesel, manual transmission, disc brakes will cover my needs. There are some wonderful and intriguing vintage Vans and RVs.
BTW, my mom picked up her pristine Roadtrek at an estate sale. (Sale was over and no-one bought it, so she showed up late and got a steal of a deal. Used it for 10 yrs and 100k miles and sold it for more than she paid for it.
But.... As mentioned.... We look for a few yrs to find the right one.
I don't know where you are finding the great deals. Not much worth buying under 10K
Dave, are you still planning to retire in Maryville? You'll have the smokies campgrounds at your doorstep! You'll get a lifetime pass at age 62 and the sites are half price.
Want hot showers? Head to Indian Boundary in the National Forest outside Tellico plains.
Yeah that's still the plan, thanks for remembering. This is good info, thanks. Another spot we really liked was Norris Lake. I think we'll wait to do this, if we do this at all, until after we move.
We chose a pop up due to low clearance and ability to go off road. I don’t mean the rock scrambling single tracks for ORVs but we have been to a few remote areas where the stars blanket the sky and there is silence.
Sprinter vans and similar are another great choice but often aren’t low clearance. I think one or two have a pop up top so can be lower clearance.
It’s a beautiful country we have; get out and explore!
We had several popups over the decades. It was great when we were young, as I got older I found the bed which consists of a 1" pad over plywood to be very uncomfortable. We are using a tent with Walmart cots and it's much more comfortable, what I miss the most is a door instead of having to unzip the tent.
We had several popups over the decades. It was great when we were young, as I got older I found the bed which consists of a 1" pad over plywood to be very uncomfortable. We are using a tent with Walmart cots and it's much more comfortable, what I miss the most is a door instead of having to unzip the tent.
Um, you can always increase the depth of your mattress. I have two layers of foam on my platform bed.
I also find cots very comfortable. except in the depths of winter. The air circulating underneath the cot makes it more difficult to stay warm.
I'm not a van lifer or whatever they may call themselves but aside from the specifics it seems to me that the author has the whole premise wrong. Every "trip" she talks about the destination, not the journey. I assume that the journey is the attraction to this lifestyle, the destination is simply the icing on the proverbial cake.
When she makes comments that she could fly cheaper, stay in a hotel cheaper - yes these may be valid but you're also missing out on all the stuff in between. Anyone can go to the Grand Canyon, but not everyone can go to [insert podunk town here].
It just rubbed me the wrong way when she's whining about things like this after "researching" the lifestyle. I don't think there was much research at all.
I'm not a van lifer or whatever they may call themselves but aside from the specifics it seems to me that the author has the whole premise wrong. Every "trip" she talks about the destination, not the journey. I assume that the journey is the attraction to this lifestyle, the destination is simply the icing on the proverbial cake.
When she makes comments that she could fly cheaper, stay in a hotel cheaper - yes these may be valid but you're also missing out on all the stuff in between. Anyone can go to the Grand Canyon, but not everyone can go to [insert podunk town here].
It just rubbed me the wrong way when she's whining about things like this after "researching" the lifestyle. I don't think there was much research at all.
You make some very good points here but who is “she”?
I started my trip by heading up to the Pacific NW but I didn’t want to rush and I really found that I fell in love with places like Nebraska. Also, the good thing about places like NE or KS is that they don’t get many tourists except those shooting thru on their way to someplace else, so they’re not jaded and you will get a much friendlier reception. I have a traveling friend who make a hobby of going to such places.
But yeah, I don’t think you learn these things by research so much as experience or talking to people.
I'm not a van lifer or whatever they may call themselves but aside from the specifics it seems to me that the author has the whole premise wrong. Every "trip" she talks about the destination, not the journey. I assume that the journey is the attraction to this lifestyle, the destination is simply the icing on the proverbial cake.
When she makes comments that she could fly cheaper, stay in a hotel cheaper - yes these may be valid but you're also missing out on all the stuff in between. Anyone can go to the Grand Canyon, but not everyone can go to [insert podunk town here].
It just rubbed me the wrong way when she's whining about things like this after "researching" the lifestyle. I don't think there was much research at all.
Nail on the head.
To be fair though, it's hard to focus on the journey when just about everything around you tells you that the important thing is to get where you're going as fast as possible, with as much stuff as you can carry. Ambling for the hell of it in a van with a camp mattress is an acquired skill for most of us, and plenty of people never do acquire it.
You can go camping in a big RV with a fake fireplace. Ponder the absurdity of that for a while.
I still shake my head when I think of how timid I was When I decided to leave Minnesota. Twice I traveled to Arizona and both times I raced here and did not stop to see anything.
Part of it was that everyone I knew told me how scared they were something would happen to me as an older woman driving alone.
I laugh at it now, after viewing videos of women traveling alone but at the time, I was scared. Now, I think I should have been more afraid of bedbugs in a strange motel than sleeping in my car.
But, it wasn't until I started looking into living cheaper that I found cheaprvliving, which led to other videos on van living, that I realized what I was missing. Watching Robin of Creativity RV and her continued talks on RV living has also really opened my eyes.
You can go camping in a big RV with a fake fireplace. Ponder the absurdity of that for a while.
My 35 foot travel trailer has a fake fireplace in it.
Provides non-propane heat for taking the edge off at the campsites. I travel to campsites because I need 110v for my CPAP machine that I require in order to sleep. And my wife operates her business out of it while we are camping (she has a medical billing/practice management/credentialing business)
My travel trailer is a hotel room that I can take places that there are no hotels, or where the hotels won't take my 3 dogs.
You are calling me and mine absurd. I realize the internet is anonymous, but is being insulting such a valuable goal?
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