Crazy Brave Adventure

We’ve spent the last two years (two years!) cruising around the US and Canada in Stevan, a Ford Econoline camper van that we designed and built ourselves. Thinking back on the process of planning and building our van, we are (mostly) quite proud of how it turned out. Stevan is functional and comfortable, and equal parts quirky and vaguely menacing, which is “our thing,” I guess.

But if we were to do it all over again, what would we do differently? In this post, we’ll share our top five van design regrets… and one decision we are very grateful we made. We hope sharing the not-so-great parts of our build will help you in planning your own adventures.

Regret #1: Convertible Bed

In building our van, we spent a lot of energy and money designing a bed that converts to a comfy booth. We bought a pricey Lagun table arm and built a table top that doubles as the support for our bed.

We imagined spending rainy days reading, working, even playing board games at the table then converting it into a bed as night fell. How many times have we actually done this? Not even one. This snazzy design feature is most definitely our number one regret.

Turns out there is quite enough setting up and taking down in an ordinary day of van living. Also, we started storing bulky things under the bed. Milo’s dog food took up a third of the space under there and the solar panels, laundry bag and rug took up the rest. If we used the booth now, we’d be stepping all over our stuff(!)

If the weather is THAT bad, we just deal…. or head for a coffee shop… or pack up and take off for warmer/dryer climes. At the end of the day, we are done, and messing with the bed is not at all what we feel like doing.

Regret #2: Not Enough Solar Power

We did some research on solar power systems before we headed off, but we really had no clear idea how much power we’d actually need. “A lot” seemed to sum it up. And we weren’t wrong. Dan works from the road and I use my computer for writing and blogging, also we have a fridge and a few other gadgets.

And so, we started out with a bang: a massive Jackery Power Station that was a super generous birthday gift from my parents. It’s been keeping us in power pretty well. But, recharging it is more challenging than we expected.

We started off with one 100 watt solar panel: Definitely not enough to replenish what we use in a typical day. In two years on the road, we have added FOUR (yes, four) more solar panels of various sizes, PLUS one panel that’s permanently affixed to the roof that charges our “house battery” (used for inside lights, water pump and our cell booster when needed).

And, truth be told, our system isn’t a slam-bang success yet. On sunny days, it’s all good. We squeak by, replenishing what we use. But give us a few cloudy days or deep forest shade and we are toast in a day and a half.

Regret #3: Wires, Wires, Wires!

Alrighty, this next regret is sort of continuation of #2, the result of the mix and match nature of our power system. It is a messy, Frankenstein’s monster of a system. When we’re parked up, Dan tends our solar panels like children, repositioning them again and again as the sun climbs the sky, threading an assortment of wires through windows and doors and across the ground.

There are wires for the Starlink system too– both the satellite and modem– and also for the fridge. When everything’s plugged in, it’s spaghetti time!

If we were to do it all over again, we’d (probably) spend more cash for a sturdier system up front, and thread the wires through the roof and behind the cupboards. Makes sense, right? And many how-to van build sites recommend this very thing. Maybe this winter, we’ll hunker down and rethink this stuff.

Regret #4: Storage Issues

Our initial van build favored open space: long, empty counters and unimpeded window views. We’d lucked out on some damaged cupboards at Lowe’s and installed nice wide storage units… all low to the ground so they didn’t block the windows.

We don’t regret them: These cupboards are terrific! The driver’s side holds all our clothing, our tools, work related equipment, art supplies, Reflectix window panels, wires and solar kit, and my (all important and ever growing) box of rocks. We even have one of our favorite board games down there(!) The smaller, passenger side cupboard holds all our food and kitchen gear, plus the water storage and system and the “sink”.

We also built storage into the “booth” section of our bed. Under the bed, we have our backpacking gear (2 large backpacks, a tent, sleeping pads, etc.) our camp chairs and table, a shovel, 2 hammocks, an emergency tire inflater, a screen tent, our hiking shoes, Dan’s massive toolbox, and a whole lot more. At one point, we had two inflatable kayaks under there. But we didn’t use them much and gave them away.

But when planning our adventure, we did not take into account the lidded plastic bin we used for Milo’s 40lb bags of dog food, our laundry bag, our camp rug and ever increasing collection of solar panels. Also, the box for our Starlink system is kinda huge. Long story short “that empty space under the booth/bed is storage now too. Should have started off with that.

Seems like plenty right? But as we’ve lived in our build, we found we kept the side windows on our van covered 90% of the time. If we left them open during the day, the van heated up super fast. If we left them open at night, we had no privacy.

Sooooo…. we began to add specialized cupboards over the insulated windows.

The first one was a bookshelf for all our hiking guides, rockhounding books, and maps. Dan and our brother in law, Mike, built it during a stop in Michigan. I love this bookshelf and, though it covers one of our windows and makes the van a titch more closed in, I don’t regret it a bit.

Why stop there? In our 2nd year on the road, Dan added a narrow cupboard for our bulky breakfast stuff: cereal boxes, coffee mugs and our (rarely used) blender. And then he built an out-of-the-way cupboard to contain the cpap machine. (Before the cupboard, it slept in bed with us.)

A lot of storage indeed! Sometimes, we miss the wide open feel of our storage-less van, but not enough to regret all the new additions. Living in a small space is hard without designated places to put stuff.

The cupboards are not a regret at all, but we might have started out with them. If we had it to do over again, we should have loaded up the stuff we were bringing to see how it’d fit and THEN built the storage.

I do regret that we neglected to create a permanent space for our Jackery power station. In retrospect, it would have been a great idea to build a solid box for it on or in the counter. As it is, it lives behind the driver’s seat while we’re driving (so that we can charge it with the van engine…. MORE wires!) And it lives on the counter when we are parked up. I think we were taken in by the handle on the thing; it seems mobile (and we do sometimes charge it in libraries and laundromats and coffee shops). But it is massive and mostly just stays in the van. Would be nice to have a permanent spot for it, eh?

Regret #5: Set Up & Take Down Time

Yet another thing we didn’t think through when we started off on our crazy brave adventure! As is probably obvious by now, Stevan is the Swiss army knife of the van world: there’s a lot crammed in here… but to use it, you have to pry it out a bit.

When we park up, we have a set up routine: swivel the passenger seat, move the Jackery to its designated spot on the counter, slide the fridge into its designated spot behind the driver’s seat, set up the solar panels…etc etc. When we leave a spot, the process reverses.

And a process it is

All travel requires a certain amount of this sort of stuff…. house living does too. Regret-wise this is one is small potatoes. The set up/take down is our “daily grind”.

We could have minimized the set up routine… if we had considered it. But ya know, it didn’t cross our minds. Another lesson learned, I guess.

Shaking Down

Many van-life folks recommend a “shake down” trip to get a sense of what’s needed before you fully commit to your van design. And we agree. This is useful.

We did, in fact, take a shakedown loop around The Great Lakes, five weeks of preliminary van living.

And we loved it… so much so that we didn’t think real critically about our design at all.

Also, upon our return, we hit the ground running. Cleaned out our house and moved our kids back into their college apartments all within two weeks.

Then we hit the road for real. If there had been any major problems with our van design, anything unbearable or untenable, we would have fixed it… I guess. But we were so happy to be off; nothing felt like a big deal.

So, in summary, take the shakedown trip, consider what you will need to feel comfortable in your nomadic life… and figure you will know a lot more when you are out there living it.

You can always adjust on the road. So be a little crazy, a little brave. It will work out okay. The van isn’t really what it’s all about, anyway. It’s about this:

Our Best Decision

There’s one decision we don’t regret at all: Stevan!

We made an awesome (and judicious) choice of vehicles. Before we lucked into our (awesome) 2014 Ford Econoline XLT e350, we’d shopped around a bit, checked out some new Transits and Dodge Rams and some shuttle bus type vehicles… so many big ol’ blank slates!

Like every other person who plans to live the van life, we really wanted some headroom. But taller, vehicles came at a price. Either they were very old and mechanically iffy or they were brand new and super pricey.

We did not want to go into debt to live our life of freedom. That didn’t sound all that free to us. So when some friends mentioned that they were selling their farm vehicle… an affordable, well cared for Econoline van, we jumped on it, low top or no. And this is a decision we don’t regret at all.

With Stevan, we can (mostly) afford to travel freely. Our van takes us to so many amazing places. And isn’t that the whole point?

We don’t worry about dings and dirt (the van is dingy and dirty already). AND we don’t have car payments to worry about either. In the end, the vehicle is just that: a vehicle. Design regrets notwithstanding, we are living our dream.