Van Philosophy
Ramblings about inspiration and experiences that led me to a short-wheelbase, low-top work van as the basis for my budget road tripper.
In the winter of 2013, I spent two months in Europe traveling and living out of smaller vans. In January, I joined Cyrus Sutton and Ryan Burch on a trip to the Basque Country to surf Mondaka and some other waves. We crashed on people’s couches but mostly slept in a rental van that we called the “Campy Camper.” It was maneuverable, easy to park in the ancient roads of San Sebastián and Biarritz, and had just enough room to sleep comfortably. By day, we folded the bed up and hauled surfboards and blanks up and down the coast. The Basque Country in January is hardly hospitable, but the van kept me dry and let me stealth camp on sleepy side streets. It’s one of my fondest traveling memories.
Around the same time, back in California, I was spending time with Jeff Johnson and Chris Reardon, both enjoyers of the smaller, simpler van builds. Jeff had an 118 low-top sprinter that he outfitted for surfing and rock climbing. Chris Reardon had an E350 Ford Econoline with a 7.3 Power Stroke that he used as a work van and stealth camping van for ripping down the coast looking for waves. Both of their setups were tastefully capable but also very practical. I featured them in Home Is Where You Park It, and shameless plug, if you join the substack as a founding member, I’ll send you one.
At the time, I was 25, naive, and fixated on making a rig capable of traversing off-road places and had just bought a Toyota Tacoma and ordered a Four Wheel Camper to replace my VW Syncro. The Toyota flatbed camper ended up being a failure functionally but a sign of the times for the direction that “overlanding” was going to go, i.e., very expensive, overweight driveway art that fails to do anything other than look cool in photos.
Jeff Johnson’s 118 low top sprinter in Easter Sierra in the spring of 2013. With the benefit of hindsight, I should have gotten a van, probably a Quigley Econoline similar to the setup that Primal Outdoors has on YouTube.
As explained in my last write-up, sitting down and putting together the Confessions of a Facebook Marketplace Daydreamer got me thinking again about getting a van. In 2019 I bought 118 Sprinter and built it out for traveling. I didn’t want to do this again; instead, I wanted a van that could be used for hauling materials, equipment, and other shit one day and then, the next, in 20 minutes, swap in a modular setup for traveling and camping. The beauty of a van is that it can fill a variety of different roles; this beauty is lost when people try to make small RVs. Before that, I had basic, Vanagon Syncro weekender. I know lots of people that buy fancy van-based RVs, and virtually none of them use the features like the outdoor shower, the indoor shitter, or the built-in, automated awning system. These are features designed to sell people on a 175k rig in some parking lot at a dealership, not features people actually use.
