theboondork's RV blog

I've been thinking again. And that never works out well for me

3/19/2021

Jack be nimble, Jack be quick, Jack jumped up and clicked the pic.

Sunset

As I've mentioned numerous times, I have a one-track mind, and it's really hard for me to be interested in more than one thing at a time and the last few days I've been interested in making the new footpads for the Arctic Fox.

But they're almost done now except for some cosmetic things, so that left a cavernous empty place in my brain that needed to be filled because I can hear marbles rolling around if I don't put something in there. So I have delayed writing about the new footpads I built for the Arctic Fox until the urge to write about them hits me again..... Don't hold your breath.

On the way back from Laughlin Nevada and Lake Havasu, I noticed numerous dirt roads going off into the desert that had smaller RVs boondocking along them, and every road I saw I thought how much I would enjoy driving down that road and boondocking there, but they all looked too scary to pull a trailer down. And it made me wish that I lived in something smaller and could go down any dirt road that looked interesting to me, just like I can in the summer with the little Bronco pop-up camper on the back of the truck

looking out the window this morning I saw a tent that moved in last night about a hundred yards away, and the tiny tent reminded me about those dirt roads and all the places you can go when you're not pulling a 30-foot trailer and started me thinking again about living in something a lot smaller than the Arctic Fox.

The last time I wrote anything about that concept I had kind of narrowed my thinking down to something along the lines of a large van or a very small class "C", and I had mentioned slide-in truck campers because I've had a considerable amount of experience with pop-up slide-in truck campers.

Giving all that some more thought of late, I just can't see myself being able to afford a fancy new camper van or a small class "C". and having owned more than my share of used vehicles in the past, I don't trust their reliability, and I have neither the desire nor maybe even the ability to crawl under it to repair things like I did when I was younger.

All that leads me to the conclusion that my choices of simplifying my life are fairly limited and for the sake of clarity here are some choices that would serve my purpose, and be economically feasible.

The cheapest choice would be to modify the little Bronco pop-up camper so it could be lived in full-time... That's kind of a scary thought since so far one week is about all I can stand living in the little Bronco. Mostly because I don't like putting that top up and down every time I want to move the truck. And the thing is built really flimsy.

Another choice would be to buy a regular slide-in truck camper that's light enough to be carried by my truck and yet big enough to live in full-time. That's a lot to ask since regular slide-in truck campers that are built for full-timing and not just a weekend, often weigh almost two tons.

Possibility number three is to buy a lightly used low mileage trustworthy van I can stand up in, and build it out myself into an RV. I've kinda done that before, but I was a lot younger, used to hard work, and had something that at least resembled ambition.

So I'm still thinking about this, and what if anything I want to do. Fortunately for me thinking requires a lot of relaxing in my easy chair while staring thoughtfully out the window. And I'm good at both those things.

theboondork

This tiny tent made me start thinking again about simplifying my life.

Could a slide-in camper like this be the key to my future happiness?

4 Comments

John

3/20/2021 09:51:07 am

That little tent looks like my old Eueka Timberlite without the rain fly. My little tent saw over 2000 miles of backpacking, but none of it was in the desert so I always used the rain fly.

Tom

3/20/2021 10:01:36 am

2000 miles is a lot of backpacking. I think I was in my late teens before I had even driven a car that far.

I can't believe how much better tents are now days than the first one I ever bought. Back in the day tents were expected to leak and the sign of an experienced camper was someone who knew how to deal with all the water in the the tent.

Tom

Linda

3/21/2021 03:14:58 pm

A fairly new innovation is no-build van conversions. You basically buy a cot, some plastic drawers, and a bucket toilet and move in. There are lots of utube videos showing how people have done it.
I have friends who live in them so I know they are real.

In fact some of my friends are going to be doing four conversions in Pahrump next month if you want to go see their process.

3/21/2021 05:19:13 pm

Your probably way too young to remember but the heyday of customizing vans was the early 1970s and everybody that could lay their hands on a van was cutting holes in the side for porthole windows, and the top for roof vents, and that's when I customized my 1973, or 74 I forget, Ford Econoline van that I've mentioned before into something I could sleep in, carry my motorcycles, and even my 15 foot Grumman aluminum canoe, which stuck pretty far out the back door, with only bungee cords holding my backdoors partially closed to keep the canoe from sliding out the back of the van

Since it was a hauling and a camping van it had to stay pretty empty inside so I just insulated and carpeted the whole thing, and except for a matching carpeted storage box where I could set my 12 inch black-and-white 12 volt TV, or my Coleman two burner white gas stove, that you had to pump up the fuel tank to make it run. But you had to be pretty brave to use it because it caught fire on a regular basis. That and an ice chest was pretty much all I wanted, and being in my late 20s that was all I needed.

So there was nothing inside the van except that box and a mattress folded up against the inside of the van, it was pretty spartan to say the least. But I spent many a long weekend in that van and have many great memories of it to this day.

But like I've said before, I really need something I can stand up in so a regular height van is out of the question for me, I'm simply too old and creeky to be crawling around on my hands and knees or bent over for any length of time. And the hightop vans are pretty expensive if I got a diesel and four-wheel-drive like I would want.

But watching somebody build something like that in Pahrump Nevada, does sound interesting to me. I would like to see that but I'll have to figure out where I'm going from here which I still have no idea, which is why I'm still sitting in Quartzsite even though I thought I was only going to spend a couple of nights here.

Thanks for the information. I always enjoy reading other people's thoughts, opinions, and ideas.

Tom

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I've been thinking again. And that never works out well for me

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