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Lessons
Why Van Life
24:42 2Understanding What You Want
03:02 3Breaking Down Your Budget
22:39 4Determining the Overall Best Layout for your Needs
03:52 5Bed Type
11:50 6Van Details: Bathroom or No?
07:37 7Van Details: Temperature Regulation
12:31 8Van Details: Power Management
14:05Van Details: Storage
07:02 10Van Details: Cooking
03:07 11How To Actually Live In Your Van
02:30 12Van Life: Where to Sleep
07:17 13Quin’s Sprinter Van Tour
37:11 14Quin’s Box Van Tour
24:55 15Van Tours: Keon’s Van
05:34 16Van Tours: Shaiden’s Van
11:19 17Van Tours: Brandon's Van
01:05 18Quin’s Van Life Tips
17:26 19Workshop Recap
00:46Lesson Info
Van Life: Where to Sleep
(slow acoustic music) Where do I actually sleep on a day-to-day basis? Well, to be honest, I'm actually sleeping in driveways of my family and friends, kind of working my network that I've built over the last years as a photographer. But when I'm on the road, the most common place that I sleep is truck or gas stations. Might sound a little bit weird. And I definitely didn't anticipate when I got into van life that I would be sleeping at gas stations the majority of the time. But it is, it's become a pretty, a nice comforting feeling to pull into a gas station surrounded by truckers who are all sleeping in their trucks, just like me. So I just kind of fit right in to all the, just the lines of trucks. Nobody looks at me. I don't look at them. We all know we're just staying the night and taking off in the morning. One thing I will say is that those truck stops can be a little bit loud because lots of times the trucks run their engines all night long. So what I do with these truck stop ...
gas stations is I turn the fan on all the way high so the ambient noise is really loud. And I honestly sleep like a baby on the road. I know a lot of van lifers that don't necessarily like sleeping in truck stops. That's just what I've come to. That's kind of my comfort zone on the road because it's literally right off the freeway when I'm trying to get to, you know, from California to Oregon and I'm making time. There's generally a truck stop, cause yeah, in reality I'm sleeping in driveways the majority of the time, cause I have different connections in different bases. So I have my parents in Southern California and a lot of friends in Southern California that I can sleep in their driveway. And then I also have my brother and different family members up in the Pacific Northwest and a lot of friends in Utah. So I have different bases where I basically drive the van, I park in their driveway. I use their shower usually. That's kind of the reality of my van life is just to, to work my network that I've built over the last five years as a travel photographer and I hop different driveways. That's a nice way to go. Now when I'm on the road, there's definitely an option to stay in campgrounds but that does involve planning in advance. So lots of times campgrounds sell out and you have to reserve it a few weeks, a few months. I mean the campgrounds in Southern California, you have to reserve like a year in advance. So just that didn't fit my lifestyle. I didn't know exactly where I was gonna be. You know, how long I was gonna take shooting different photos in this location and how long it would take to get to the next location. So I couldn't say I was gonna be in this campground on Thursday night and I knew that a few weeks prior, it just didn't fit my lifestyle. You know, if you're a weekend warrior and you're planning around your schedule, there's a good chance that maybe you could reserve, you know, that nice campsite and have that prepared. But for my lifestyle, I just almost never hit campgrounds. What I tend to do is I search on my phone on Google maps app. I just search Travel Center. So what a Travel Center is is just a big gas station where a lot of truckers stop and they, you know, there's just this big group of trucks. Everyone is gathered there and sleeping. I don't ever really see much of a social scene there. It seems like everyone just kind of stays in their truck. Occasionally there are other van lifers, but most of the time I'm like one little camper van surrounded by massive diesel semi trucks. And I've really grown to like the fact that everyone is sleeping. Everyone knows everyone else is sleeping in their vans. So it just feels like it's almost like a community without ever having to socialize or I guess deal with that fact. Travel Centers also usually have showers and just extensive restaurants and snacks and, you know, decent prices on gas obviously. So yeah, I stay the night in travel centers most often when I'm on the road. It's also really nice cause I just keep driving until I get tired. And then I search Travel Center at that point in time and go for another 20 minutes or 30 minutes or whatever it is to the next travel center, that's become my, just my flow is, you know, I wanna, if I wanna make it as far as possible and I get tired at midnight, I'll search for the next travel center and I'll pull in at 12:30 and crash. Then on the next morning, I just take off as early as I as I wake up. Probably the best resource for finding off grid camp sites or even pictures camp sites for van life is called iOverlander. I don't know if you can see this but I have it filtered to find off grid campsite. And there's like a hundred of them right around where we're at right now. So wherever you find yourself, you can pull up this app and you can filter for what you want. You can even filter for, oh, I need to fill up my water tanks. So I'm gonna filter for where the water fill stations are, things like that. So I would definitely check out and download iOverlander. If you're looking for off grid campsites, even just to meet people on the road, it really helps connect van lifers with one another. Yeah, looking at what iOverlander has to search for, you can search for propane station, water station, sanitation, dump station to dump your composting toilet, short term parking, where you can store your vehicle long term. If you're taking off on a trip and you live in your vehicle full time, there's a bunch of established places where you can store your vehicle safely. So there's a lot of good resources on the app and I highly recommend checking it out. Yeah. In the beginning of my van life journey, I was totally fine risking it, just stopping on some random street and saying, Hey, we might get knocked on, but let's go for it. Let's try to sleep. After getting knocked on a few times, it was almost kind of like a paranoia thing. Like I didn't wanna risk it again. I got so tired of waking up kind of frazzled and having to put my clothes on and answer the police officer. I don't justify risking it anymore. I almost always just go to those travel centers where I know that I'm welcome to stop and sleep and nobody's gonna bother me. That just helps me get a good night's rest, to sleep with comfort. But that's just me, you know, some people like the adventure of sleeping anywhere and potentially, you know, getting knocked on and then having to move a block down the road and then maybe getting knocked on again. That's not my style, especially, you know, five years into van life, get tired of getting those knocks.