After being on the road for a few months we’ve had a lot of interest from friends, family and followers about what it’s like living in the Winnebago full time. We’ve narrowed it down to 5 of our most asked questions and thought we’d share the answers!
- Where do you sleep at night?
- Where do you use the bathroom.. and where does that waste go?
- Where do you get water from?
- How much does it cost to live this way and how do you afford it?
- How do you charge all of your devices?
Where do you sleep at night?
This is a fun one, sometimes the answer is.. we don’t know! We boondock or dry camp using our generator and solar setup from Jackery. This allows us to park anywhere we’re allowed to overnight camp. That ranges from national forest land, BLM land and the side of the pacific coast to sometimes parking lots or rest areas. We generally try to plan ahead and find spots that we’re legally allowed to park overnight that are also beautiful, but it doesn’t always work out and sometimes we end up at a rest stop between two 18 wheelers.
There are a few apps and sites that we use to help find overnight parking like iOverlander, Campendium and freecampsites.net. So far we’ve only had 1 knock at the door to ask us when we planned on leaving and it was because we were unknowingly within city limits that didn’t allow overnight camping. Remember that just because there isn’t a “No Parking” sign, it doesn’t always mean it’s allowed or legal. In this situation, the officer was kind and offered us to stay another night. We decided to move somewhere else to be respectful. We checked the county website to get a map of the city limits and were able to drive about 5 minutes down the road to legally park and “camp” for the night.
Where do you use the bathroom? Where does the waste go?
Our rig is large enough that we have a decent sized bathroom with a flushable toilet. It’s not much different than our toilet at home aside from where the waste goes. The waste is split up between two areas- a 27 gallon gray tank and a 33 gallon black tank. The gray tank holds the used water from the sinks and shower. The black tank holds the used water from the toilet. We have a fresh water tank that is 34 gallons. This means that we can fill up our fresh water almost 2x before having to empty our waste tanks. We don’t fill up our tanks evenly though and typically have to dump our gray tank after 3-4 days. We use a lot more water washing dishes, doing laundry and showering than we do flushing the toilet. Jeffrey mostly empties the tanks for us but I’ve done it once or twice. It’s not that gross but we wear gloves and are careful when we wrap up the hoses. We use apps like iOverlander and Campendium to find places to dump our tanks. Sometimes you have to pay to dump but there are actually a lot of free dumping stations that we’ve found through the apps so we’ve never paid to dump.
Another note, we’ve thought about installing a composting toilet because it’s a more sustainable option (doesn’t require water). It would also eliminate the need to worry about finding or paying for dump stations. The downside is that it requires a little more maintenance to clean and you still have to “dump” by carrying your waste to a nearby trash can. For now we’ll stick to our current setup.
Where do you get your water from?
This is another “refer to iOverlander” answer from us. This app has been so beneficial in our journey if you haven’t figured that out yet! We typically find water from places like gas stations, state parks, rest stops and sometimes water spigots in public day-use areas. It’s funny how some of the basic necessities that we never thought about at home, like finding water and shelter (AKA somewhere to legally park) have become our lifelines on the road. We usually have to fill up with water every 2-3 days. We can stretch it a little further if we’re conservative. Jeffrey has found a few ways of conserving water that he mentions in our post here: Energy & Water Conservation Tips while Boondocking. These tips and tricks help us extend the life of our fresh water tank. We have 2-3 ways of filtering our water to make sure there’s no bacteria in it. We first have a filter that screws on to the hose pipe at the water spigot, then a kitchen sink filter and lastly a Brita water pitcher for drinking. This filtration process has worked well for us so far and we haven’t had any issues with bad water.
How much does it cost to live this way and how do you afford it?
For us, this lifestyle is more affordable than our life at home was. The nice thing about vanlife is that it’s actually pretty variable and you can spend as much or as little as you want depending on your wants and needs. A few examples.. If you don’t work a traditional 9-5 and don’t need wifi 24/7 like we do, then you may have a huge savings every month that we do not (our monthly internet setup runs us $170). We also typically dump our tanks for free but we know people that pay $7-$10 to dump everywhere they go. If you’re driving a lot, then you’ll spend more money on gas than someone who is parked full time. So our answer is it depends..
When you simplify the expenses though, the major costs to consider are fuel, food, propane (if you have a generator) and parking if you’re staying at an RV park. We just eliminated our parking expense and most of our propane expense by going solar. Our food expenses are about the same as they were at home because we still like to eat out 2-3 days per week to try new restaurants and support local businesses. For us, fuel is the largest expense and Winnie prefers diesel..
As I’ve noted, this lifestyle is less expensive than our normal life at home because we aren’t going out as much with friends/family or spending money on entertainment. Our new entertainment expense is $0 because our source of entertainment is the outdoors- which is free! The way we afford this lifestyle and the biggest difference we’ve seen compared to other RV/Vanlifers is that we’re both still working our full time corporate jobs. Most people we’ve met have either retired, work for themselves, do odd jobs or just travel during vacation. Continuing to work our FT jobs is and has always been the plan. We both enjoy having side hustles and passion projects that we work on, but they don’t generate enough income to replace our 9-5 incomes. We also both enjoy the type of work we do and don’t let our personal goals get pushed to the side by our careers. This isn’t always easy and there are times that we work late into the night missing the sunset to hit deadlines at work or finish something that we’re working on for the website. However, this lifestyle and the way we live it is extremely rewarding.
How do you charge all of your devices?
This one takes some practice! With both of us working full time, we have to have our laptops fully functioning for 9-10 hours per day. When we would stay at RV parks it was never an issue because we were always plugged into electricity. However when you’re boondocking and not plugged in, the batteries die pretty quickly. Before solar we would run the generator for a few hours per day to charge up the batteries. We also utilize places like the coffee shop or restaurants to charge our devices when we’re in town. This works 90% of the time. We try to take advantage of the 12v plugs in the van while we’re driving to charge up anything that’s close to dying. Jeffrey calls out a few other ways that we’re efficient with battery life in the same post mentioned earlier: Energy & Water Conservation Tips while Boondocking. The Jackery has multiple outlets for us to get juice from when it’s fully charged as well and it’s the main source of our battery life.
