So the van life movement. Cliché, overdone, hipster, trust fund baby… You hear all of these things when you hear people talking about the van life movement, unless they have actually lived it or had some small taste in some way that is. Well a few months ago Sara and I bought a van in Portland and started turning it into something we could van life in. It is not big and it is not new but it fits all of our things… Just! Trying to cram winter and summer activities into one trip is not easy. Jackets and clothing for temps as low as minus 30 take a lot of space. Wetsuits and surfboards and other surfing gear takes a lot of space. Camera gear.. Well maybe I just have too much camera gear but it also takes a lot of space and this is before you even factor sinks and taps and gas cookers and a bed and bedding and hiking gear and tools and snow chains and anything else you think you might need in the next year or two spanning basically every climate on the planet. It is way more than you think, mind you I never ever ever thought it would all fit but somehow it did. It is messy and hard to keep clean and I am constantly thinking I wish we had a high top or I wish it was 30cms longer or whatever extra space we could possible have. As I write I am sitting in the front seat typing because well Sara is cooking and its hard to do both things in the back unless I want to get into bed. You move one thing to get to another and then both things are out of place and never seem to get put back when they should then all of a sudden you open the side door and you can’t even see the floor… What ever though really basically sounds and looks like my bedroom since the age of about six, clean it, stays clean for about 8 and a half hours then one thing on the floor then the next and then full blow chaos. I think it will get better though as it gets warmer. It is extremely hard to get out of the car and open the back, remove a box and re arrange when it is minus 25 and you know every single little bit of heat you have managed to create in the van will be gone in seconds.
This is what it looked like after we stripped it back.
This is what we started to turn it into. Sink is on the left, stove is on the right next to the door. Food storage and bench seat on left.
The Plan.
The plan was to buy a van and drive from Alaska to the bottom of Argentina but as we took too long building the thing by the time we were ready to go to Alaska it was minus 50 and we knew there was a line that could not be crossed and we figured it was about minus 30. We will see where we end up though and how far we get or if we have enough money to even get half way..
Building our van.
The build was fun. We bought a ford econoline e350, we actually tried to buy something that was completely set up so we could just go. This one looked like it was on the adds but when I got there to look at it, it well, was and it was not. It looked like it had been built by 14 year old girls as a school wood working project but their hearts were not really in it. So we stripped it back completely except about half of the flooring and some insulation and started again.
Van Life Cost.
So far just on the van and build alone we have dumped about $9000 US but we put $4500 of that back into the engine. We did everything ourselves so we obviously saved money that way and had access to a lot of timber. Most things actually cost less than I was expecting.
The cost of living is surprisingly low also. We spend almost nothing. We spend the same amount of money on food and we spend extra on petrol obviously but before I left for this trip I was paying $1000 a month for rent and I am spending no where near that on petrol and that is after covering huge distances through Canada.
Super messy and cramped with everything not put back where it is meant to go haha. Just too cold to operate sometimes though.
How to live the van life. So Far.
We decided to start the trip in Canada… In the middle of winter… Yeah I kind of was not really prepared for that. I mean I was as far as clothing goes but it is hard to get out of bed in winter when you live in a nice warm house and its just a little bit cold and you’re thinking about going out… We were waking up to everything we had bought to eat or drink frozen. Veggies, frozen! Milk, frozen! 25 liters of water.. As solid as a rock. This happened alarmingly quickly as well. I’d never really seen thick layers of ice inside of anything besides a freezer before but every morning the few small bit of un-insulated metal and the windows were completely covered in a thick layer of ice that never really went away unless the car had been on for a good 20 minutes. It got so cold one day that our diesel gelled. It needs to be below minus 30 C for this to happen, well we ended up stuck in some parking lot about 60kms from the closest town for almost 4 days before I called it time and decided to hitchhike back to town to get a tow truck. As it turns out about 20-30 minutes after I left a group of military men arrived and got the car going for us. I still got to hitchhike in the snow and minus 20 though. Surprisingly enough people actually drove past me… I was a little shocked literally in the middle of no where with nothing around for 60kms I clearly needed help and you just leave me to get eaten by wolves in the freezing cold… Cheers man. We just entered the USA a few days ago, we had a few small visa issues so instead of 3 months we will only be here for another 6 weeks. That obviously means less sleep, longer drives and more money on petrol but we are super stoked about it thus far.
The sun has finally started to show itself.
Van life essentials.
Van life essentials well we’re still trying to figure this out but I would say if you’re going anywhere cold a massively thick blanket and a really good sleeping bag. We managed to endure minus 35C and I personally took a few layers off during the night that I had preemptively put on thinking I was going to probably die. Other than that the two things we have found the most essential when it comes to van life are our solar set up and our gas stove. Solar is not big 2×100 watt panels and 2x12V batteries with a 300 watt inverter. We really only need it for camera gear and computers but it is a dream after being in a van for 2 months without it it just makes it so much easier. Gas cooker kind of goes without saying. I drove around Europe for about 5 months with a friend in a tiny hatch back packed to the roof with everything we needed to go surfing and camp. We didn’t have a stove and literally ate cold beans with tomato sauce on bread every night of the week… Not that great. We want to get a fridge but we figured we could do that in LA because we deffs didn’t need it in Canada. But we don’t have that much space and they are kind of expensive so we are not really sure where to go with that one.
SHOVEL!!! Cant stress this enough actually. We bought a little one. We have been stuck so many times now and without it we would probably never have gotten out! I would probably get a tow rope as well especially if you want to get adventurous which you probably do!
Things happen and we were lucky we decided to buy a tow rope literally the day before leaving.
Snow chains were actually life in Canada and we never would have gotten to half the places we did without them.
Overall.
Overall I can not actually imagine doing this kind of a trip any other way. We have arrived at so many incredibly remote locations, pulled up and just crawled into our nice warm bed in the back… Mostly warm, sort of, sometimes. My pillow has actually been frozen for over a month now and feels more like a brick than a pillow but apparently memory foam does that.. Who knew. Besides that we wake up and as cold as we are we get dressed, make breakfast, turn our little gas heater on, make coffee and then start our day. I am looking forward to a time when my fingers don’t hurt from cold but I figure that will happen somewhere around California.
Ice inside our car on one of the colder mornings. Normally it just stuck to the metal and glass but there were a few crazy days where it formed on the timber also.
More morning ice sculptures. 
Incredible roads.
Amazing camp spots!
