As we come up to 24 May 2024, marking the first anniversary of collecting our van and living in it full-time, it’s a good opportunity to reflect on how things have gone over that period; what we’ve learned [Spoiler: lots], things that we really love about the van (and truck) and things that we’re maybe not quite so keen about.
First an overall pic of the combo at (about) this time.
Read on…
Lessons we’ve learned
We should start this bit by noting that neither of us had **ever** owned or lived in a caravan previously1. This means that we came into the whole deal with lots of background reading and a reasonable amount of discussion with some seasoned travellers, but no practical experience whatsoever. As such, everything that we may know now has pretty much come home over this 12 months!
So, in no particular order, here’s some of the key things we’ve learned…
- Driving in our truck is just like, well, riding in a truck. OK, sounds obvious I guess, but I don’t think we actually appreciated the (lack of) ride quality and size of the vehicle, etc.—despite having had the truck for nearly six months before picking up the van. Which brings us to…
- This combo is big, really BIG! I can just see all you semi drivers out there rolling your eyes at this, but take a deep breath and stay with me 🙂 For us—me in particular as Reen hasn’t driven the combined rig yet—punting around 14 – 15 metres is reasonably challenging. I can’t say that I’ve ever yet been in an uncomfortable situation with it, but it certainly has been a “learning experience”. Planning ahead and walking around/through any slightly restricted areas such as caravan parks and other parking spots seems to be the key to success. Reen has also become highly competent in giving directions and is rapidly learning the clearance needed for swing/arc of the van, etc.
- Plan, plan, plan and plan some more; but don’t be upset if everything around those plans changes before you get there, or even anywhere near there. Two examples come to mind: the first was that when we were waiting on the final completion of the van, we were expecting to collect it and head out into the wild brown yonder. A couple of months before pickup, our daughter was diagnosed with breast cancer, which immediately refocussed us on supporting her and husband and four kids for the foreseeable future. As such, we spend a large part of 2023 in the van in their driveway (in beautifully scenic downtown Granville 🙂 ). Now coming up onto 12 months Nyssa has been declared “cancer free”—Hallelujah!!!—and we are getting back to thinking more about travelling. Which brings us to our second example of plans changing; in early March we had just settled in on our friends property at Tea Gardens, intending to spend about a month unwinding. The day after we arrived (a Wednesday), Reen received a call from Blacktown Hospital asking if she could be ready for her second knee replacement the coming Friday (i.e. the day after tomorrow)? An immediate rush to pack-up and return to Granville ensued, with Thursday then spent chasing around x-rays and the surgeon, etc.
- Any cupboard door that can open will open—and the corollary, anything that can jump out of a cupboard will jump out of the cupboard—mostly we guess relating to the wonderful condition of the goat-tracks laughably referred to as “highways”, to say nothing of other, lesser-class roads. This also comes with a critical secondary lesson as well: on arrival if any cupboards appear to have opened, check and double- and triple-check around the slide-rooms *before* you put them out. (Not that we would know what might happen if something like a jar of Vegemite became wedged under a slide-room or anything…) Anyhow, mitigation of this matter becomes a combination of careful checking that all cupboard catches have clipped properly before leaving, extensive use of non-slip matting on the shelves and fitting some inexpensive child-proof drawer latches to any non-locking cupboards [AND driving more in line with the road conditions AND not storing certain things in especially vulnerable cupboards 🙂 ]
- Live small and live tidy. Everything we own is now in the van and truck, and to be honest, we still have too much stuff. It’s really hard to get out of the old “hang onto it ‘cos you might need it later” mind-set, but I think we’re getting there. And if everything has a place and you make the effort to keep it in that place, packing up to move along is much, much easier. We’re probably still not quite as good at this as we could be, but it generally only takes us about an hour to “break camp” after a reasonable length of stay (several days/weeks) if we push along; although we usually pace ourselves and take a little longer.
- Live a little slower. This may be something that comes along with being retired, but we find that not trying to rush things along makes us much happier. This means that we don’t try to drive at freeway/highway speeds, but a few km/hr slower (saves fuel too 🙂 ); and we try not to stay only a single night in any given location unless there’s good reason to, as it doesn’t give us time to look around and enjoy our fabulous country. In fact, in general we’re now tending towards weeks in any one spot, rather than days.
Things we love about our new home
As noted above, we’ve never ever “caravanned” before, so we came into this with some degree of trepidation; what if we hated the whole thing after 3 months? what if we couldn’t deal with the constant change (of location, etc.)? what if everything was too crowded?, what if…??
Suffice to say, we’ve made it to 12 months and—in general—we absolutely love it!
Some of the things we especially like…
- How it looks. As per the picture above and a couple more below, we reckon it’s a pretty darn good-looking rig. It’s taken a while, getting toward the whole 12 months, but we’re really happy with how it’s all now looking, especially my inside door Christmas present.
- The size and how comfortable it all is. OK, as noted above, it’s a big rig; the up-side of that is that we have lot’s of room inside. At about 25 m2, it’s getting on towards what one might get in an inner-city bed-sit, and certainly more than the average caravan. This expansive size allows us the degree of otherwise unexpected comfort, such as two leather electric reclining lounges, a proper reverse-cycle air conditioner, a 50″ TV, a normal household-sized shower cubicle and a full queen-sized bed—without feeling in any way crowded or confined. All of this has meant that our transition from house to van has been remarkably easy overall and living is very, very comfortable.
- The overall design. One of the things that impressed us both when we first looked at Summer Life RV (which became Travelhome) was the obvious experience and thought that had been put into the layout and build. The location and size of cupboards made them accessible and useful, without crowding the living space. The benchtop material is beautiful, yet tough and not-too-heavy. Light switches are all wireless and set out logically in line with the light’s locations. There is no wasted space, with every last little bit accessible for storage. And the list goes on…
- Relatedly, how easy to clean/maintain everything is. All of the inside surfaces are very simple to clean and need almost no other maintenance. Vacuuming takes less than 15 minutes with our Dyson stick, and mopping the floor afterwards a similar time.
- The amount of storage space we have available. OK, related to the size and design of the van as noted above, but worth calling out separately because it’s a key issue for us—and lots of other people I suspect. So, as well as all of the cupboards in the van, we have space available under the lift-up bed (although it can be tricky to get to things right up near the head) and even after using a fair bit for our cats, stacks of storage in the underfloor bins (or boot, as we call it!). That space is generally able to hold about 14 x 55 litre storage crates, plus a couple of other odd things such as a spare toilet cassette, etc. We have to keep telling ourselves to NOT fill it up just because we have the space…
- All of the different views we have from our kitchen window. It may be really, really obvious but the whole point of living in a van is to be able to move it around. We’ve not done that as much as we would’ve like this past 12 months, but we’re really looking forward to getting “out there”. Thus far we haven’t had a bad experience at any site (I guess that may well come) and we desperately want to continue the adventure.
Things we don’t love quite so much 🙁
It wouldn’t be quite true to say that we love every aspect of living in our van, but we must say that none of the following points are particularly significant, more like a couple of niggly, whingy little nit-picks. Feel free to skip this bit if you like…
- Dunny duty. I suspect no one actually likes this; but it is really difficult to see any way around it, it’s kinda one of those necessary evils that are a part of life. Still, it isn’t actually all that hard or that disgusting and usually only takes a few minutes (depending on where the dump point is located). Advice from The Guru2 has helped us reduce the frequency of this task a fair bit and having a second cassette facilitates a more flexible approach to emptying. At the end of the day—it is what it is!
- Cost vs capacity of mobile internet access. Having grown into permanent broadband internet connection through all the various technical stages from 9600 bps dial-up all the way through over 35+ years, the reality of the cost vs capacity of available mobile connections came as a bit of a rude shock. We’re currently surviving with a low cost/medium-low capacity SIM in the router, supplemented by tethering to our phones when reasonable (we both have stacks of accumulated data capacity) and “leaching” free wi-fi when we can. Only time will tell if this is long-term sustainable.
Our perfect home
So, have Summer Life/Travelhome managed to create a perfect home for us?
Sounds far fetched, but it’s not too far from the truth. Could they have done some things a little better? Sure, but in general there are very sound sourcing and economic rationales behind all of the decisions. Bear in mind also that our build took place through the COVID years, which meant that, along with the build delay, there had to be an occasional decision around components of the build that was different to their original plan. Mostly this only meant different, occasionally it meant better and they worked really hard to ensure it was never worse.
So is it perfect?
Well, for us at this point, maybe it really is (or as close as we can reasonably expect to get…)