Obviously living and traveling in a van makes you think about your resources. You have to make sure you’re getting enough sun for power. You have to find a place to dump gray water and get more drinking water. You are constantly assessing your resources and figuring out how and when you’ll get more. Do we need a new propane canister? Where is the next place to shower or dump our cassette toilet? When we started this, I was already very aware that van living required a kind of peripheral dependence on society, despite the constant message of independence you hear from vanlife people. There is a lot of independence in traveling from place to place, but there is also a need to use services wherever you can find them, services that may not have originally been intended for nomadic people. Like showering at gyms.
This month we had a number of things to do. Doctor and dentist appointments, Thanksgiving, and the onset of winter (in my mind) were something we really felt. Since Will still works in northern Washington once a month, we knew we were going to have to spend time up here. With the rain and potential snow, we decided to get a winter place before our next big adventure. An added benefit is that Will could work more and we could save for next year’s plan.
We’ve been in our apartment for several days and I am constantly thinking about the unlimited resources. Water, electricity, the gas fireplace, the gas oven. Ok, they aren’t unlimited. They cost money. And that may be part of our problem. We live as though they are unlimited when in fact they are not. We experienced that this summer in Mendocino when the city ran out of water. The city ran out of water. I’m not the best steward of the environment and resources but this experience has made me want to do better. I think the biggest thing van life gave us were skills to make meals with limited resources and it typically took longer than meals would have taken in an apartment. Everything takes longer in van (especially when you are filling a pot with water by foot pump!). Because of that, making dinner without using convenient prepackaged meals seems like no big deal. There was a time when these were our go-to freezer items because we were both coming home from the hospitals we worked at and were too tired to make dinner.
Although we are in an apartment, we still have a lot to share about the last three months. And we’ve been sharing our videos over at our youtube channel. Catch up with our journeys over there!