On The (Transit) Trail, Part One

Snow

I got up around 7 a.m. the morning of January 9, 2024 in Omaha, Nebraska and looked out the window of the motel I’d checked into the night before. It had continued snowing through the night and now there were a few inches of snow on and around my new Ford Transit Trail cargo van. I’d driven about four hours from Kansas City, Missouri the day before, thinking I’d return to Seattle after picking up the van at the dealership there. It was the first time I’d taken it on a cross-country trip, and a messy one it was, with light snow and a few semis and cars in the ditch en route. I didn’t know if I’d be required to have chains in order to get over the mountains between Omaha and Seattle, and there were reports that some might be impassable, requiring me to wait it out in the lowlands for an indeterminate number of days. I’d taken a leave of absence from my job at an Amazon warehouse, processing customer returns. It was less than 25 hours a week and paid about $100 a day, so could at least help defray a bit of the $88,000 loan I’d secured for the van. But after five minutes of consternation, my rebel side had had enough:
“Fuck this shit!,” I muttered. “I’m going to Florida.”

Thus began a new phase of my life. I’d been studying the various aspects of #vanlife ever since renting three cargo vans a couple years previous, and I’d just decided to throw caution to the wind and commit. I had no clear vision of how this experiment would turn out, but in that one rash moment I was off in a new direction, literally and figuratively. 

Kansas City and Beyond

So, after breakfast I left the snowy parking lot and retraced the route to Gary Crossley Ford in Liberty, Missouri, the suburb of Kansas City where I’d picked up the van six days before. They had spread salt and sand on the highway which, while making the journey safer, ugly-fied my brand new vehicle. Oh well. The next day I found a truck wash which, for $35, would pressure wash up, down and under while you wait.

Oh Yeah…Plates

In my spontaneity I’d overlooked the fact that the dealership had already sent the necessary documents to my sister’s place in North Seattle, which is where I get mail. Luckily, Kayla (an admin at Crossley),  suggested emailing my sister an overnight mail code so she could send everything back, since there were documents I had to sign and have notarized. We then sent the completed documents back to my sis, who took everything to the Department of Licensing. As soon as I was established somewhere in Florida, she would mail me the plates. Whew!

 

Fleeing Winter

A cold front still swept across the northern half of the country, so that even with the sleeping pad and three-season down bag I’d brought, it would have been dangerous to sleep in the back. So, with the help of Google Maps and the Booking.com app, I found cheap hotels to stay at during the trip south. Including the leg from Seattle to Kansas City, the three-thousand-mile route looked like this:

The Honda Civic Woman

The woman I’d sold my Honda Civic to in Kansas City called the evening I’d finally started eastward, saying that according to the local DMV, I/we had filled out the change of ownership “pink slip” wrong, and that we needed to redo it. So, the next morning I backtracked about 50 miles, met her at a fast food place, and re-signed everything. Then, on January 12, I was finally free to head toward the sun and away from the cold front that was freezing the top half of the country.

Orlando, Florida

I drove a fairly relaxed four hours each day, on average, leaving time to eat and find a hotel—passing through St. Louis, Missouri; Nashville, Tennessee; Macon, Georgia and Gainesville, Florida before arriving in Orlando on January 16th. Unsurprisingly, the app I’ve used the most throughout my journey has been Google Maps. For better prices and easier navigation I find places to stay on the outskirts of major towns. As handy as it is, it still takes considerable time and effort to check prices, ratings and reviews for hotels and restaurants; especially if you’re on the picky side, like me.

The OBT

Two years previously I spent a month in Orlando waiting for an appointment at a consulate there to get a 4-year visa for Mexico (which is a different story). At that time I’d stayed mostly in a cheap hotel on the notorious Orange Blossom Trail. It was a funky place, but as I was the only one staying in the wing at the far end of the property, it was quiet. This time, however, things did not work out well there, so I shifted to the Orlando Palms, a few blocks away, and was lucky to get a decent room close to reception.

Bed

The first thing I decided to install in my new van was a bed. I’d already watched a couple hundred YouTube videos by other vanlifers and discovered one of the easiest ways to make a bed platform is with telescoping aluminum beams from IKEA.

These are called “SKORVA Center support beam” on their site and are only $15 each. There’s a hook on each end that grabs onto the “SEKTION Suspension rail” ($18), that you attach to the sides of the van.

Plus Nuts

There are a lot of pre-existing holes in the walls and ceiling of the van and—as much as possible—I wanted to avoid drilling any new ones. So I had to learn about rivet nuts and a variant called plus nuts (or cross nuts), which allow you to put a threaded metal plug into a hole in sheet metal. This project took way longer than I’d imagined, as I discovered none of the five hardware stores in the area had them, nor the tool to attach them. I ended up getting the plus nuts from a company called McMaster-Carr (which has totally amazing service), and the tool to attach them from Amazon.

(Incidentally, a Canadian named Antoine has a van-related  site called Far Out Ride, and has done a ridiculous amount of study on rivnuts and plus nuts, including on how to keep them from spinning after insertion.)

MakerFX

At this point I have to discuss the modern phenomenon of the makerspace—something I first heard about through an old high school friend on Facebook. She’s quite involved in her local community and had posted about how some of the kids she was helping were building things at a local “makerspace.” Wikipedia says,

“A makerspace (or “hackerspace”), is a community-operated, often ‘not for profit’ workspace where people with common interests, such as computers, machining, technology, science, digital art, or electronic art, can meet, socialize, and collaborate.”

I’d found a few in the Seattle area, so thought there might also be one in Orlando, which turned out to be correct. After attending one of the Saturday orientations, for a mere $50 per month, I had 24/7 access to MakerFX’s big, air-conditioned facility in a quiet business park just fifteen minutes from my hotel. Besides having a complete woodshop, there were restrooms, a refrigerator and a meeting room, which are all incredibly handy for someone soon to be living out of a van.

CNC Routed Vent Boards

One of the other members at MakerFX volunteered to help me with my van. His name was Steve, and he knew how to use many of the machines on-site. In just a few minutes he made a program for the CNC (computer numerical control), router to create vent holes in the birch plywood I’d bought. Then I put a couple coats of polyurethane on and added some adhesive Velcro strips to hold the boards and aluminum beams together.

Steve had the brilliant idea of adding small pine blocks on the edges to lock the platform into the side rails.

Mattress

After the platform was ready, I got a memory foam mattress from Amazon delivered to my hotel. Despite being a standard six foot, three inches in length, I only had to cut the ends at an angle to get it to fit from side to side (what van people call “east-west” orientation). I also notched it to fit around the pillars in back of the van. After putting its zip cover back on, plus sheets and a quilt, it turned out to be comfortable and I’ve been completely happy with it.

Blackout Window Covers 

So, now I could sleep in the van, but I still wasn’t ready to without window covers, which serve two functions:

• keep prying eyes out, and
• keep light inside the van from showing someone is inside at night

I got six midrange (about $100 each) covers from a company called VanEssential that are custom made for my van. (Many try making their own but are usually disappointed and wish they’d just plopped for the professionally made ones.) They have magnets in the perimeter that stick to the metal edges of the windows and fold up when you’re not using them. They work well, and overall I’ve been happy with them. However, being black on the exterior side, they seem to work like a heat magnet in direct sunlight. But maybe if they were white or a reflective material, they wouldn’t be as stealthy?

Stealth

If there’s one subject in van forums that brings out the trolls, it’s stealth. It seems everyone has an opinion about it, and know-it-alls start to come out of the ether.

The site Nomad Life says:

“In the context of nomadic living, stealth is the ability to pass for an unoccupied, non-residential vehicle when needed, so that you can find a place to park and sleep in it with no one knowing.”

For example, few people would suspect someone is living in a van that looks like this:

Conversely, it’s easy to imagine someone living in this:

My van is somewhere in between. The Ford Transit Trail model (new for 2023), was specifically made to be turned into a camper van, comes with a 3.5″ lift to accommodate larger hybrid tires and has windows in back and on the sliding door (among other things). And, I’ve already added an air conditioner and vent fan on the roof. Still, I think it looks pretty unassuming. I may add a couple small solar panels on the roof in the future, but I really want to avoid having stuff hangin off the back or sides like a ladder or bike rack that are dead giveaways. I also went with white; partly to look generic (but also because it fits my preference for the classic, minimalist and simple).

(My van, in Ithaca, New York)

No matter how stealthy your rig, the main point is not to be an eyesore (like unfortunately many vans out there), and to be respectful wherever you decide to park for the night. If you arrive after dark,  leave early in the morning, are quiet and don’t leave trash, then as long as you’re not on private property and not blocking anything, few people would object.

The Knock

Speaking of which, everyone talks about getting the knock. That is, having someone rap on the side of your van at night to tell you you have to move. From what I’ve read online, it happens rarely.

It hasn’t happened to me yet, though I did have one small incident in a hospital parking lot in Portland, Maine, when a security guard came over just as I was about to leave in the morning. At first, he said he’d noticed I was there overnight and, since it was a private hospital, was not allowed unless I was a patient. But after I told him I was headed to New York and he saw my Washington plates, he changed his tone and mentioned he’d spent time in the navy in Seattle. Still, he was unpleasant at first, and it made me think hospital parking lots were not one of the better options; which until then, they had seemed to be. (I probably just need to make sure it’s a big, public hospital….)

Not Too High, Not Too Low

My preferred parking spot at this point is in a middle-class neighborhood. Ritzy residential areas may have no-parking signs and higher security. Poorer areas, on the other hand, are often scary feeling. The Goldilocks Zone is a medium-income area, with some space between houses and a few cars already parked on the street. If you park overnight in a place like this, who’s to say you aren’t the friend of some neighbor visiting from out of town?

Electrical System

Below is the type of Victron-based component system that’s popular with vanlifers. Victron’s motto, unsurprisingly, is Blue Power.

Daunted

I’d noticed many people had built component-based systems using blue boxes from Victron; a Dutch company known for making reliable marine electronics. A guy named Nate Yarbrough has a site called Explorist dot Life, and posts lots of info on how to build van electrical systems like the one pictured above. He sells kits which include things like:

• lithium batteries
• inverter/charger unit
• shunt (voltage monitor)
• solar charge controller
• DC-to-DC charger
• LCD control panel
• bluetooth connection module
• fuse panels
• circuit breakers
• power inlet
• AC and DC outlets
• large copper wire

Then you also need:

• lugs, ferrules, ring terminals
• wire tie-downs
• crimping tool
• wire stripper and cutter
• heat shrink
• heat gun
• volt/amp meter

If you study up on what all these thing do and how they work together, then buy his kit and instructions and install it in the cabinet he shows how to build in another video, then yes, it’s possible to make a capable and reliable electrical system.

But to me, this seemed way more complicated than it needed to be, just to power some lights, a fan, induction burner, and charge my phone.

All-In-One System

Then I learned about all-in-one systems, and that the latest iterations could handle most of what the complex component systems did. The brand that was creating the biggest stir was the new EcoFlow Independence system (one version of which is pictured above). They had the advantage of consisting of two or three mid-size blocks that connect together with proprietary cables. Unlike most van systems, they’re 48 volts, which means the wire sizes are smaller and electrical transmission is more efficient. A few pro van builders had started installing them, but they were rather expensive (I think around $10,000 for a capable kit).

I posted a thread on the Ford Transit USA Forum (where the Transit heads hang out), to elicit a debate on the pros and cons of component versus all-in-one systems. The component proponents made some good points:

1. Having one piece of a component system fail on the road would probably be less of a disruption than having an all-in-one fail, in which case you might have to send the whole thing off for repair. If, say, your solar charge controller failed in a component system, your batteries, inverter and DC-to-DC charger would still carry you over until you either fix or replace the failed part.
2. EcoFlow, founded in 2017, is a relatively young company, while Victron has been producing highly reliable and durable components since 1975.
3. Many other companies besides Victron make components which might be found in remote parts of the country.

While I understood their arguments, I was still intimidated by the idea of dealing with heavy copper wires and crimping tools, and thought it was at least worth experimenting with an all-in-one. After researching all the brands and models, I opted for a refurbished 2400 watt Anker Power Station, which I found on eBay for about $1340 (several hundred less than a new unit at the time).

At almost 70 pounds, it was a challenge to lift in and out of the van. There was a lot I liked about it: it contained a good-size lithium iron phosphate battery (the preferred type), you could charge it from a wall socket, cigarette lighter and solar panel. It already had AC and USB outlets, and there was a handy app. It could easily boil water, charge my devices, and even had a built-in light that you could control with the app.

A Tin Can In The Sun

But alas, in the end I realized I’d have to return it. The reason was, (unlike the EcoFlow), it couldn’t put out enough amps to run an air conditioner; and after a couple 85-degree days in Florida, I knew I needed one. Though 85 degrees in direct sunlight is tolerable when walking in a park, it’s brutal in a van, as the metal on the roof gets well over 100 degrees (even in a white van)!

Hasta La Vista, Orlando

So, in the end I decided to go with the kind of tried-and-true component systems that many others used. But where and how should I do this? As I said above, if you buy and follow the Explorist dot Life kit and plans, it’s doable. But I felt I needed the help of someone who’s done it at least a few times before.

Before I left Seattle, I’d discovered there were a few places that specialized in helping people work on their vans (and school buses, or “skoolies”). One of these was Wanderlust Waypoints, which has a network of locations around the country. Their Facebook About page says they are, “Village-style DIY Skoolie and nomad conversion build stops for a sustainable community of travelers.” One of their affiliates was in northern Florida.

Another place you could work on your van was called Awesome Possum Van Works and Recreation, two hours west of Dallas, Texas. I’d spoken with Phil, the owner, a few times and now contacted him again about helping with a Victron-based system. He said he could help me lay everything out on a board, then show me how to put it all together, which was exactly what I was looking for. And since, at the end of March in Florida, I knew temperatures would soon be intolerable, there was no time to lose toward getting an electrical system installed that could run a decent air conditioner.

So, on Tuesday, March 26 I aimed my van toward Perry, Florida, to stop in on the Wanderlust Waypoints location there. I’d found several decent places to stealth park in Orlando and had a collection of restaurants and stores I frequented there, but it was time to move on. I was sorry to leave the comfort and convenience of MakerFX, but as it turned out, fate would bring me to an even better space in the not-too-distant future. So, as I cruised north on I-75 out of town, it was finally time to reprise Willy Nelson’s classic travelin’ tune: “On the road again…I just can’t wait to get on the road again….”