We Bought a Van!

There was one last big thing that happened during our time in Pennsylvania to wrap up this spring’s travels: We bought a van, with the intention of converting it into a tiny home on wheels! This has been something we’ve always thought would be an exciting way to live, but didn’t think it would be attainable until retirement or later in life. But now with Curtis’ new job keeping us on the road for months at a time, it actually makes a bit of sense, and after everything that happened with Charlotte this spring, we decided it was time! In this post, I’ll share about the decision to buy the van and how we found ours, and in the next post Curtis will share about the building process.

Let’s jump back to the beginning of April: We had just found out that Charlotte was blind, and we were questioning whether we should continue with this new lifestyle of living on the road and going wherever the jobs take us. At the time, we didn’t have any choice but to stick out the rest of the spring outage season, so we focused on making Charlotte feel as safe and comfortable as possible and made adjustments in our travels to make things easier for her. Through this, we learned that with extra effort on our part, Charlotte still enjoyed things she’s always done, like hiking, camping, and spending time outside. Because she was already used to our pattern of traveling and staying in places for short periods of time, it wasn’t as big an adjustment than if we were still living in, say, our apartment in Nebraska. And since Curtis was doing well and enjoying his job, we started to think about how we could continue to travel while giving Charlotte some consistency and routine.

When we were staying in Rutland, VT the week of Charlotte’s surgery, we started to have the discussion of how to proceed. I suggested we take the leap and buy a van, and honestly I think the conversation ended there. It was something we’ve wanted for a while, we were already more or less living out of our car. The AirBnB thing, while fun, was probably not sustainable long term, and with our new circumstances it just made sense.

Last October when we were starting out on our nomadic lifestyle, we saw lots of vans while driving around out West. While we acknowledged that a van would make our lives easier, we thought it would be wise to see how long we could keep living out of our Subaru and not make that big decision and purchase when we didn’t even know if Curtis would like his new job. We just thought we’d table that for about a year and see how things were going then. As it turned out, we only made it 7 months, but just as we saw God’s hand in the details of how Charlotte’s health problems occurred, we also see now that His timing for this was perfect, and how He led us to be in the right place at the right time to find our van.

Once we started researching, it became clear that our two options were to either buy a used pre-built van, or to buy a new or used empty van and build it ourselves. We were open to both options and were mostly just looking at vans in our budget that were in good condition with relatively low miles. (RVs were never a consideration because of price, size, how they run on generators, and just generally not liking them or associating ourselves with that culture.) We browsed through Craigslist and all the different sites people use to list converted vans, and found a couple that met our criteria that were both in Pennsylvania. This was one of the big reasons we saw God’s hand in the timing: when looking at converted vans, there are lots for sale out West of the Rockies and in the Northeast, but there wasn’t a single listing in the Midwest, where we would be going after PA. If one of the vans in Pennsylvania didn’t work out, honestly our best option would have been to buy a brand new one, because even empty used vans had high mileage and were more expensive than what we had found in PA. 

During the rest of our month in Vermont, we researched all things van related: Curtis studied how to build a van, I combed through all sorts of blogs, Youtube channels, and social media accounts of people who live in vans, absorbing all the advice and experiences they shared to consider how we might go about this lifestyle. Honestly it didn’t seem like it would be that much of an adjustment for us — since we were already living out of our Subaru, we were used to some aspects of van life, but having a van would make a lot of things much easier for us. 

Back when I first heard of van life in 2016, I associated it with either quitting your job and going off the grid, or with being an online influencer. While the lifestyle sounded fun, it just felt too risky to be comfortable: how could we be financially smart, have healthcare, or be prepared for when unexpected things happen, like Charlotte’s health problems this spring? What happens when the van breaks down and you’re left without a car AND a home? But Curtis’ job makes it seem safer — we have health insurance, a steady income, and occasional paid travel to go to his assignments. Staying in hotels when he’s working will help make van life sustainable long term. And should the van ever break down or something happen, we have fall back options that we can turn to. 

On the day we arrived in King of Prussia, we met with one of the sellers in our hotel parking lot and toured their van. After looking at it, there were two things that were clear: we would need to put a lot of work into it, but also, we didn’t need to see the other van. We still spent a few days thinking it over, but we finally put in an offer, it was accepted, and a week later on a rainy Sunday morning, we signed the papers and it was ours!

Now, about our van: It’s a 2018 Ford Transit, 18 foot wheel base, medium height roof. The seller had bought it used and started to convert it into a camper van, but changed their mind and decided to sell. They had completed the floor, insulation, installed a fan and solar panels on the roof, and set up the electrical system. They included all this, plus tools and other equipment they had purchased for it, all for a great price that was under the market value of the van itself. The van has some cosmetic flaws, some of which will be harder to fix should we decide to, but nothing is urgent, the engine runs great and it was only at 43k miles, so we hope that with regular maintenance and care, it will last us many more miles!

I think back to last Fall, when we thought that it would be a good idea to buy a condo or townhouse in our hometown in Iowa just to have a place to “plant” for when we weren’t traveling. We looked at many places with a realtor, but nothing just felt right. Our realtor thought it was hilarious when Curtis dramatically exclaimed at one of the showings, “I don’t know what I want!” I think when she heard that, she probably thought that she was going to be the one to show us what we want, but really, she wasn’t reading between the lines. We were just doing this because we thought it was the right idea, but we didn’t really know if we wanted that lifestyle – living and “settling” in Iowa – so nothing was going to feel right. In comparison, the van we bought and van life was a much easier decision, because it was what we wanted, because it instantly felt right — despite it not being perfect and needing work.

Of course, with every beginning comes an ending, and for us it was the end of our time with our beloved Subaru Outback. It was such a great car for us over the past 2.5 years — it was how we got to know Omaha and the entire state of Nebraska, it took us all around the country on work trips and trips for fun, it carried all our stuff when we became nomads, and it was a warm shelter for us on cold, rainy, snowy, or windy nights when tent camping wasn’t as comfortable, it was the vehicle in which we both crossed into our 50th states. In the time that we owned it, we took it from 84k to 155k miles! But now, we didn’t need two cars, so it was time to say goodbye. Again, God’s hand was evident in this aspect, because it was at this time that Curtis’ brother needed a new car, so we were able to pass ours along to him. We met him in Trenton, New Jersey the evening that we bought our van and signed it over to him.

We drove the van around Valley Forge every day during our second week in PA, getting to know how it ran and dreaming of the day when it was finished and we could really call it our tiny home. When it came time to leave PA, we packed up all our things and set off heading West. We took two days to drive to Curtis’ family’s home in Michigan. On our first day, we drove through beautiful scenic PA, stopping in State College to walk around the Penn State campus so that Curtis could say he’s visited the school where he earned his master’s. That night, we camped in Allegheny National Forest along a river (Yes, that’s right… in our van, down by a river). Since it was packed with all our stuff and it was too much of a hassle to shift all of it around, we slept in our tent. The next day, we finished the drive to Michigan, where we spent some time with family and began the first steps to converting the van: emptying and deep cleaning, along with some more projects — all of that and more to come in the next post! We know we have a new exciting adventure ahead of us, filled with many highs and lows, and because of how we’ve seen God’s hand in this so far, and because of nearly 10 years of experience traveling together, we are ready for it all!