Seattle to Boston 2013: Pics from my trip

Waking up in Montana at PCT trailhead

Camper Interior Tour

Despite its apparent resemblance  (to the untrained eye) to the VW vans, the Toyota Van is not a roomy vehicle.  Last year I stepped into my neighbor's VW Vanagon and the first words out of my mouth were "This is as big as my living room!"  To their credit, the Toyota Vans do have a high roof.  However, it takes some creativity to make a living and camping space in this van. The toy van is no Chevy Express Campervan. The previous owner of my van did a bang-up job building a camper interior.  

The interior is designed to maximize storage space, almost at the expense of head room. The design preserves full access to the battery and engine compartments.  In bench mode, most passengers would be comfortable sitting in the back. Anybody over 6ft might end up with cramps on a long trip, but given that there are no seat belts back there, I don't anticipate this ever being a problem.

Rear view of the bed platform. The bed consists of four cushions, each about four inches thick. Each cushion lifts up easily and the panel under each cushion lifts to provide access to storage space.  In practice, I only have to use the front and rear access panels.

The height of the bed platform was made to accommodate a standard (14 inch) Coleman cooler.  On the sides of the cooler are compartments that fit two four gallon water containers.  You can see the spigot of one container in the right hand compartment.  Note the 1-x-2 inch ridge glued to the bottom of the hatch.  This ridge helps to keep the cooler in place.  there is also a thin ridge on the floor in front of the cooler.

Great Goodwill  find is this basket for fruits and veggies. It is the perfect width so that it sets into the inner lip of the cooler.  Interestingly, the cooler lid does not rest on this ridge, so the cooler still closes tightly. The basket prevents items keeps those items from getting crushed or soaked with melted ice. I love visiting Goodwill stores on trips, never know what you'll find to complement your van life.

Tailgate view of the storage area. Note that the wheel wells have been blocked off. This provides a degree of compartmentalization, which is nice.  I like to store items that don't get used often in the wheel wells.

Looking down into the rear hatch (driver side). Hinged supports were installed to prop up the front and rear hatches. The insulation below the carpet extends throughout the walls and floor. There is a false floor throughout the van.  The growler (right) is a great thing to carry (almost essential) in case one comes across a brewery along the road.

Four foam bed pads are easy to lift and move when I want access to the storage compartment.

The 1-x-2s that you can see on the underside of the front hatch insure that the bed platform does not slide around and that everything closes up tightly. I layered card board over the false floor of the storage compartment for cushion when there's a pushin', and noise reduction.

View via the sliding door opening. The storage box under the bed is made from thin wood (1/8 in?), and the whole thing is framed up with 1-x-2s.   The bed platform looks to be 3/8 in plywood. Forward of the fire extinguisher there is an angled cut - this allows for a downward tilt to the seat when the front half of the bed is transformed into a bench.

Bed mode with lights on, reflectix up, and some of the curtains drawn.

Bench mode with micro-LED lights affixed to the curtain rails.

Bench mode.

I added this hitch mounted cargo basket for additional storage.  It doubles as a cooking platform and table.  When making my decision about this rack versus others, I was concerned that 60-x-24 inches would appear (and be) too big for this little van. Most racks are 20 inches deep and many are only 48 inches wide.  The 60-x-24 inch size is perfect. I would not recommend a smaller rack.  This rack is fairly heavy duty for the price.  It does not seem to reduce my gas mileage, so whenever possible I will use this instead of my roof rack.

Van, serving its purpose!

Another New Van

The SWC clan posing in front of "Grey Van".

Well, I've done it again. I bought a new van (1988) and sold my old van (1987). I saw it on CL-Sacramento and decided it would be my LAST van purchase. if this one didn't satisfy me then none could.  It's an '88 Toyota Van with 4WD AND a 5-speed manual transmission, AND the works, AND awesome camper interior (which I'll feature in a future post). I am in the northeast, so I arranged to have it taken to my buddy's (SWC's) place in Sacramento. There it sat safely in his garage from January to May of 2013, when I made the trip out there to retrieve it. This trip was justified as part of our annual "work together at home" week, where we simply go to one or the other person's house, and work from home. In the evenings we like to drink PBR and talk about vans.  SWC has a 2006 Chevy Express AWD with sliding door, for which we spent a lot of time building an interior bed and table.

Soon after arriving at SWC's place, he took me to his garage for my maiden view of the new van.  The van has a cool camper interior (which I'll show off later), that fits a 14" coleman cooler perfectly.  I opened to find it packed with PBR and Sierra Nevada Torpedo IPA.  What a treat!

First solo XC ski trip

This weekend I took my van to the Green Mountains.  I wanted to celebrate the recent 12+in snowfall and have been excited to get out on my cross country skis.  I am no longer kicking myself for trading my mint-ish '84 2WD for this [previously (knock on wood)] problematic '87 4WD. Four wheel drive rocks! Good thing for the snowtires I just put on (not doing much good in Boston).  I could not have gone half the places I went this weekend without traction on all wheels.  Just as I laid out in my initial motivation for vanhood, I took off on Friday, slept in my -10 deg sleeping bag, woke up and started skiing.  After some skiing I went back to the van and traveled to a more remote trail head slept.  The following morning I skied some more!!  Wonderful wonderful fun.  And here are a few pics to prove it. Can't wait to get out and do this again.

This trip did make me realize a couple things about van camping.  While I have kept things simple by not building in a stove or sink, a backpacking camp stove doesn't really cut it.  Where do

you put it (note its placement on dirty salty snow next to my coffee mug)? Once you find a spot you have to put the whole thing together... and it's only 15 degrees out. All of this is normally fine and dandy, and I enjoy it in a normal winter-camping situation.  But, a standard 2-burner Coleman would save tons of time in the morning, when all I want to do is eat oats, drink coffee and get on the trail.  With each trip I'm sure I'll think of improvements to make to the van.  I'll make improvements for camping, traveling, music festing, and I'll share all my dorky van ideas right here.

In the beginning...

For years I dreamt of buying a van and of camperizing it.  I'd always wanted a van to drive to a trailhead on Friday after work, arriving late I would crawl into the back of the van for a good night's rest, and early the next morning I would hit the trail.  Beyond this, there were many, many other adventures I could only imagine having in a van.  Pulling over at beautiful scenic overlooks and spending the night. Not paying for hotels. Roaming for a weekend, a week, or a month, following my gut and desire.

For years, I wondered what kind of van I should get... someday, when I might have sufficient means to acquire a van.

Being a student most of my life, my first constraint was money. The van would have to be inexpensive.  It would have to be reliable.  Ideally it would be a 4x4, but that was never a dealbreaker for me.  It would be good in the city and not too hard on gas.  It would be old enough that I, a very amateur mechanic, could work on it.

Like many people, I have been enamored of the Volkswagen Westfalia and Vanagon.  In the winter of 2010 I was finally done with grad school and had found work in Seattle.  In Seattle, as in Portland and throughout the PNW, you can find VW van after VW van on block after block.  I was constantly drooling, good thing for the constant precip to rinse my chin.  I started shopping. Craigslist, craigslist, craigslist.  But I didn't know what I was looking for.  A colleague at work drove a 1991 syncro and I talked with him about it.  He asked me if I was ready to spend 5K/year in repairs.  That was all I need to hear.  The expected, unexpected, repair schedule aside, I could not get over the price of the VWs.  They are SOOO cool, but SOOOOOO overpriced.  I went back to life with my 1994 civic hatchback, determined to make that car into a micro-camper.  I could have done it, too...

but I couldn't get vans out of my brain.  I just couldn't.  There are so many awesome, oldie but goodie vans in the Seattle area.  I turned my attention to the Toyota Van Wagon.  Produced from 1984 - 1989. Considerably cheaper than a VW, more maneuverable, available in 4WD, and reputed to be *very* reliable.  One major downside is that they are considerably smaller inside.  However, they are also lighter and get much better gas mileage.

My first van was a 1984 Toyota Vanwagon LE, 2WD.  She was a beautiful specimen.  97,000 miles, garaged her whole life. Nearly mint, albiet dirty, interior. Dealer serviced. This van even had the red Toyota coolant in her - she had never been changed over to green aftermarket fluid.  I paid bought her from the original owner for $2,500.

1984 Toyota Van LE. My first Toy Van.

I started planning my camper conversions, but couldn't stop searching craigslist for a 4x4 version. Didn't I have enough??  After a month or two I saw a 4x4 Toyota Van near Vancouver, BC.  In the Seattle area these vans sell VERY quickly once they are posted.  So I hopped in my civic and drove 2hrs north to check it out. I ended up buying the Canadian van, but before committing to buy I did a lot of research on importing vehicles into the USA.  Because the van was 25 years old, importation turned out to be very easy.  I paid an import duty of ~3% on the purchase price.  Across the border, in Bellingham, WA I registered the van and got WA license plates without a hitch.  This is where the real adventure began, in February of 2012.

1987 Toyota Van LE, 4WD. My second Toy Van. This is the picture I took the first time I went to view the van.