The Plan….
Join us as we plan out our latest crazy idea…
A Bright Idea
We learnt a lot from our last trip and with that experience behind us, we can safely say what worked and what didn’t work for us. We want to put our experience to use in formulating our ideas with this coming burst of freedom.
The good
- Freedom
- The truck
- The culture
Besides the generally amazing experience and the spectacular amount of freedom we had, without doubt one of the best things from our previous trip was the Dodge RAM truck that we hired. The Chrysler that we had was also a fantastic experience but picking up the truck in Texas was the icing on the cake!
We definitely want to keep the independence of our own schedule on the next trip. We loved being able to stop off and visit places we wanted to see and we loved the immersion into society from each gas or food stop. Signing up and going on a tour, being places at a certain times and being told what you’ll see is just not for us. We had some unique experiences and many priceless memories that simply wouldn’t have happened had we not been so free to visit random non touristy places.
The bad and the ugly
- Cost of renting
- Constant lugging of luggage
- Lack of cooking equipment
Renting a truck and motel hopping was exceedingly fun and we felt like we were more integrated into the society and had a more in depth experience, however it was costly. This would not be sustainable for a long trip and there is certainly no investment being made with the money. At the end of a long days drive (sometimes well over 8 hours) the last thing either of us wanted to do was to then have to lug our suitcases up three flights of motel stairs and then start to cook what we could in the microwave that we hoped was going to be there. When we knew there were going to be no cooking facilities, we often found having to locate food places quite stressful particularly when tired.
The Lightbulb Moment!
With all these things in mind we feel we have come up with a plan that will give us the freedom we desire and remedy some of the pitfalls from last time. Having ruled out for the second time, train or coach hoping around any part of the world as we’d still have the luggage to deal with, limited facilities and the cost of renting. Last time out we had considered and even looked into renting an RV. This would solve all of the issues above, however there were several limitations with this.
- Hideous MPG (think 8-10)
- Limited leisure battery power
- Not very discrete
- Would need to pay to park at sites and it costs about the same as a motel
So what can we do? We’d essentially like a home on wheels! So browsing through a travel documentary on Amazon the idea was right in front of us. We’ve decided to buy a cargo van and convert it to campervan!
- The MPG is much better at 25-30 (we averaged 20 out of the truck)
- We can build our own power spec, allowing us to remain off grid
- Less obvious than an RV from the outside
- Completely custom layout to suit our needs
- Finally, cooking facilities that does not involve a microwave!
Where Will We Go?
There are many places we’d both still like to see, however we fancy a visit to Canada! During this visit we’ll be able to pop over to the US and visit some of the places we didn’t get around to before because of seasonal openings or not enough time. Making it doubly worth shipping a van over to Canada! Wish us luck!