*Where we talk about camping which includes toilets
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Let’s go camping
Last Friday, I woke up knowing we were going to take the van for a test run. We had contacted a nearby winery through Harvest Hosts (we have a membership) to see if any spots were available for camping. I told Will don’t worry about packing the food. I’ll take care of it since I get off of work earlier, I said. The night before, he had spent a lot of time in the garage to finish up the kitchen build. The water wasn’t hooked up and we hadn’t bought the tubing that would be our pipes for the sink yet, but we really wanted to try out some things before we were on the road. One of them being the cassette toilet.
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The layout of the van is simple. Front cab with 12V refrigerator between the seats. Kitchen area with a sink, a butcher block counter with table extension, and water storage behind the driver’s seat. Also behind the driver’s seat is the propane camp stove. And the back half of the van is a U-shaped bench with storage underneath that converts into a bed for us. The toilet is stowed in the center of the U between the benches.
As soon as it was 3:30 pm, I shut my work laptop and ran around trying to plan our dinner and our breakfast and everything we would need to prepare it. I packed things as a kind of dry run, trying to use the storage bins I plan on using when we move into the van. I packed clothes and toiletries. And toilet paper! Can’t forget toilet paper. And I filled the cassette toilet. A cassette toilet has a bottom removable cassette where the waste goes that has water and a chemical that dissolves solids. It also has a reservoir of water for flushing. So I set all of that up for the first time.
When Will got home I wasn’t quite done but we both tried to get everything in the van. And we absolutely forgot stuff. Does anyone else do this in their relationship:
Lisa-Will, did you get a lighter to light the propane stove?
Will-No.
I then assume because I asked him, he is going to get it. He assumed because he said no, that I was going to get it. No one got it.
First Campsite: Harvest Host Location at Eagle Haven Winery
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Our campsite was only about an hour from our house. We had looked for a Harvest Host location near us and found a winery with a Saturday morning farmstand. Harvest Hosts is a way to camp for a night at farms and wineries. There is no cost that night, but you pay for an annual membership and are expected to support the hosts by visiting their tasting room or buying food from the farmstand. We arrived close to 7, and after we checked in, we got a snack and some huckleberry soda. They gave us a map to get to the parking areas for Harvest host guests. We had the whole place to ourselves. In the morning, we saw the hosts out with their dogs but they gave us a wide berth. The whole first-time experience was pretty easy.
We set up to make dinner, a vegetarian chili. This is when we realized we had no lighter. We used our single burner backpacking stove that has an igniter on it to light the propane camp stove. We played music on our JBL speaker, sat in our camp chairs, and soaked up the view. Around us was a big empty flattened-out field that they use for parking for guests or parking for events (when events were happening). Beyond that was a small orchard to the southeast and one to the west for pears and apples. As it got cool, we decided to turn the benches into a bed and get the toilet out in case we need it in the middle of the night. That’s another thing about Harvest Hosts, you have to be self-contained. You have to have your own water, to manage your own waste, etc.
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Everything that’s annoying at home is annoying in 65 sq feet
One of the things I learned on this trial run was that anything your spouse or your dog does that annoys you is annoying in the van. I am the same person who tells my husband to take his shoes off when he comes in the door. I am sure he was not surprised that I wanted shoes off in the van. It wasn’t a surprise to me when I found myself annoyed that Teddy had squeezed into bed and made the covers come off of me in the middle of the night. I wasn’t surprised when Will wanted to leave the windows open or keep some windows uncovered so he could look at the sky. The window covers were all up on my side of the van. Those are the same things they do at home. But the combination of both of those left me cold and I woke up trying to close windows and turn off the fan above us. I was fairly comfortable on our cushions but I still think adding a memory foam topper might improve our sleep. It’s just where do we put everything? I think that was our biggest learning experience. We knew the van was a small space, but we had sort of convinced ourselves that we had made all kinds of storage. But we keep thinking of more things to bring. It’s going to be very tight.
The last thing I got from this trial run, was living in a van really makes you consider your resources. Your refrigerator is only going to hold a certain amount of food. Your water containers will run out. Your toilet will get full and need to be emptied. Your battery only holds 140 amp hours (or at least ours does) but we do thankfully have the solar panels. You will have to dump your trash somewhere. A lot of our lives don’t include considering how much of our resources we use and how much waste we create. We don’t think much about what happens when we flush the toilet. I found myself thinking about this a lot more in the last few weeks. And in the morning of our trial run, I found myself wondering how many times can we use the toilet before we have to empty it. Like in a very nurse-like fashion. I was doing the whole calculation, we both will make > 60 ml an hour of urine X 24 hours + the base water I put in the cassette…..but needless to say, we did not fill it up in 24 hours. And it does have a little tab that changes from green to red to let you know.
And now, 14 more days until we move in.
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We are dealing with a boat head for the first time so I get that new toilets being new challenges. Are there specific places where you have to dump the waste?
We can dump it in any toilet. So we can empty it in a rest area bathroom or gas station bathroom when it’s full. Anyone get sea sick on the boat?