I didn’t say the “Lesser of two evils” because there are certainly more than two evils lurking out there.
I use two of the most hated retailers in the United States: Walmart and Amazon. Yes, I sometimes feel guilty about it but that’s life, right? I absolutely detest giving a penny to Sam Walton’s kids, but with some things there’s just no getting around it. When is was anchored off of Anna Maria Island, Florida, I got the meds that keep my blood pressure in check and lessen the severity of my COPD from CVS. Since finding out that that enterprise has contributed heavily to conservative Republikunts I have issues with them, too. I used CVS because it was a bit less expensive than Walgreen’s and, conveniently, it was right on the island’s free trolley service. The Wally World pharmacy over there was in Bradenton, on the mainland, an area I always referred to as “The Dark Side.” To visit there was a three hour exercise in bus rides and patience.
When I traded in pelicans and dolphins off the island for manatees and alligators deep in the swamp in DeBary off the Saint Johns River, I switched the prescriptions over to Wally World. They have a pharmacy only a couple of miles away once I slog through 3 miles of dirt road and hit pavement. CVS is a lot further away. Plus, if you’ve been following me recently you know that I’m planning a mega road trip soon. I plan on heading up to New York state to rent a boat for a few hours on Lake Ontario and then head over to Minnesota and do the same thing on Lake Superior. Then I can claim to have been boating on all five of the Great Lakes. ( I did the lengths of Michigan, Huron and Erie back in 1974 when I took a boat from Chicago to Fort Lauderdale, but that’s another story).
When I’ve done the boat thing I plan on traveling down US Rte. 61 from Wyoming, Minn. to New Orleans, stopping off in Canton, Missouri, where I went to college. I spent two years living with 61 rolling right past my front door.
Later on in life I used to wait for the streetcar on Baronne Street near Canal in New Orleans and look at a stone cenotaph marking the southern terminus of Highway 61.
The thing about using the Wally World pharmacy is THEY’RE EVERYWHERE. When running low on my meds I’ll be able to find one more easily than trying to do the same thing with CVS.
The other loathsome enterprise I use, and I use it a LOT, is Amazon.com. Their prices are nearly always the lowest, and instead of running around to a half-dozen retailers that don’t have what I want anyway, with just a few clicks of the trackpad on my notebook computer I’m able to find what I want/need and have it delivered within days. In fitting out for this proposed expedition I’ve purchased a tent,
a folding camp table,
a Bluetti solar generator,
a bed frame,
and just today I ordered an aluminum trailer hitch cargo carrier…
And a lockable cargo container to put in the carrier. It will hold things like a folding chair that I may purchase at Wally World, my single-burner stove and 11 lb. propane tank, kitchen utensils, etc.
These things are scheduled for delivery this Thursday. By the end of the weekend I should have the stuff together and ready to hit the road.
One of the reasons I don’t particularly mind using Amazon is that the Great Orange Wart, Donald Trump, DETESTS Jeff Bezos and the enemy of my enemy is my friend.
I plan on making my departure soon after the 4th of July. I have to be here for the 18th of June to meet with my new physician and then I’ll wait out the roadside carnage festival that a long three-day holiday weekend creates. When I was touring around on my boat I used to drop anchor Friday evenings and not get moving again until the weekend was over.
No, not THAT kind of working out, sillies! My idea for converting the Mitsubishi Montero Sport for camping and land cruising seems to be working out..
When I went to pick the SUV up in Ft. Lauderdale I told my friend Stef that I might just “throw my tri-fold mattress and the fridge in the back and take a trip this summer.” Well, it’s not that simple. Got stuff to lug around like a tent because some parks and the like won’t let you sleep in your vehicle. A table. A chair. Canvas for a shade awning. Tools, computers, solar generator, etc. How do you fit it all in?
Well, I started by taking the the back seat out opening up all that room. The seat folded down, but not completely flat, so out it goes. I had a problem with getting the tailgate open which I detailed and had to tear off the covering to get at the latching mechanism. That could be a blessing in disguise. Without it on I can open the gate from inside the van which you normally can’t do. Instead of putting the covering back on I might just cover it with some kind of fabric. I don’t know. That probably won’t happen and I’ll just leave the guts exposed. I just don’t get hung up on esthetics.
I spent hours poring over online images of how people had tricked out their vehicles. It was hard to find any specifically about the Mitsubishi Montero Sport. Recently I discovered that the Aussies have the same vehicle. They call theirs the “Pajero.” Having lived in Panama for eight years and speaking Spanish I pronounce that as Pah-HAIR-oh. Down under the Crocodile Dundee wannabes call it a Pah-JAY-row. Now I could see how others did it even if they put the steering wheel on the wrong side.
What so many of the buildouts have in common is they take up the whole width of the vehicle.
While this provides plenty of storage below to stash things like the folded up tent, folding table, etc. I want an aisle on one side for things like drawer cabinets, water jugs, fridge. Can’t really do it with something like this.
I have an electric saw and drill and the basic skills to build this, but have you seen the price of a piece of 3/4-inch plywood lately? The cheapest 4X8 sheet at Home Depot today is going for $54.68. And, the last time I looked that stuff is real crap. A lousy whitewood 2X4X8 is going for $8.24 and even a 2X2X8 will set you back $4.48 for crying out loud!
A lot of people have gone for what they call a “No Build” solution. They do this mainly because they use the vehicle for other things besides camping and need to be able to take things in and out of the vehicle so they can use the seats they’ve left intact.
Even with my seats gone the biggest problem with the Montero Sport are the intrusive wheel humps. This is not mine, but exactly the same.
I thought about using milk crates as a base for a mattress platform. Sort of like this…
The crates, sold by Home Depot and Lowes, are higher than that stupid wheel hump on the passenger side, but then I’d need to figure out how to even it all out.
My brother Mark sent me a link to a video I’d seen previously and had bookmarked for future reference and seems like just the solution I need. You don’t need to watch the whole thing, but at least the first 8 minutes to give you the idea of what I’m thinking about.
Now, if I take the middle, outboard leg off I can lay the frame on top of the hump and even everything out with the PVC pipes. That gives me plenty of room to store stuff beneath the bed and leaves almost a foot and a half aisle on the driver’s side to put things in. (“In which to put things” for you grammatically pedantic jerks <actually me much of the time>)
To that end I ordered this bed frame from Amazon last night. It has exactly the measurements required.
At the same time I also ordered this table which my brother recommended from his own personal experiences in car camping…
Regardless of the stowage available under the bed I think I’m going to have to add a trailer hitch cargo carrier.
I’ll fit it out with a large Rubbermaid-type container with a lock. In here I’d keep things like my stove, 11 lb. propane tank, tarps, that sort of thing.
One good thing about having lived on a small sailboat at anchor for the last four years is that when I finally move over to the SUV there’s a lot of gear that will easily make the transition. But there are some things I’m just going to have to buy from scratch. I’m waiting for the Coleman 6-person Instant Instant Tent to be delivered. Traveling around there are a lot of campgrounds that have rules against sleeping in your vehicle. So a tent is necessary. I could have gone with a smaller tent, but I like the idea of being able to stand up. My youngest brother, Mark, used to do a lot of backpacking but in recent years, as he closes in on his dotage, has taken up car camping and he recommended this tent. He has one himself. Looking at videos of the tent and setting it up I figure even with my COPD I can set it up with little effort. Some other advantages are that if I run into a couple of days of inclement weather, a distinct possibility, it will be more comfortable being in a tent this size than being cooped up in an SUV. It’s also a place where one can poop in private if there’s no nearby facility available.
I need to buy a table. Mark pointed out one he got on Amazon that collapses easily for storage. Also need a folding chair.
I already have a lot of things…A propane stove. I recently bought a smaller 11 lb. tank with an eye on space requirements. Have been looking at a smaller water jug than the 5 gal. size I have on board. You can buy smaller 2.5 gal. jugs on Amazon but they’re $25. Yesterday at Wally World when I went to get my meds I saw at their water vending unit small 2.5 gal. jugs. Will buy one of those the next time I go out. I have a rechargeable pump that can be used as well as a still in the box manual pump as a backup.
I’ve been sleeping on a very comfortable 4″ Memory Foam tri-fold mattress for a couple of years now. That’s coming with, of course. It’s width will also be the determining factor in the construction of the bed.
My Enya polycarbonate ukulele will be riding along
as well as my computers, iPad, and cell phone with its mobile hotspot. Needless to say my 12-volt mini fridge will find a place to live in the van.
While nearly everything I have runs off of batteries…2 notebook computers, an iPad, a semi-literate phone, and my interior lighting comes from a pair of Luci Lights though I only use one at a time. My mini fridge operates off of 110-volt AC or 12 volt DC. I have a car-type socket directly wired to the 150-watt battery bank that runs the unit. The power supply for everything comes from cigarette lighter-type sockets. I also have a 2000 watt AC/DC inverter to run the couple of power tools (corded drill and jig saw) that I use occasionally.
You don’t have to delve very far into Facebook van camping sites before you find someone extoling the virtues of their Jackery power station. Usually the 500 watt-hour version.
Occasionally the more powerful 1000 hour model. My first reaction, months ago, was yadda, yadda, yadda. I wasn’t interested. The price really threw me off. The 1000 cost nearly a grand and the 500, like the big brother, was about a buck a watt. Besides that, I have been living exclusively on solar power on my boat for the past three years. And realize that when I say “living on my boat, I mean just that. I haven’t slept on land now in nearly five years! I figured that rather than shelling out that kind of cash I’d simply take my two deep cycle batteries off the boat along with my 160-watt Renogy monocrystalline flexible panel and solar charger, leaving the 100- and 50-watt rigid panels secreted inside the boat when I’m off journeying. To that end I even ordered a $20 battery isolator so I could have a starting battery bank and a “house bank.”
Jackery’s biggest rival is a company called Bluetti. They make units the same size as Jackery…500 watt, 1000 watt, but they also make one that’s in between. A 750 watt unit. It had different battery technology…Lithium Ferric Phosphate by which it’s capable of 2,500 charging cycles versus the Jackery 500s 500 cycles. Also, the price for each unit is nearly the same which makes the Bluetti the winner in my mind.
So, thinking about the hassle of setting up and installing the panels, the controllers, the outlets, etc., and looking at my bank account, I went ahead and ordered the Bluetti. It will take about a week to ten days for delivery, but that’s quite all right. I don’t need it right now.
The next big deal is to do the build out of the SUV. I’ve spent hours poring over photos online of what I think are good designs. I’ve also spent time just looking at the space and trying to visualize how things need to go together. Today I noticed that the two intrusive wheel well covers are not mirror images of each other.
The idea burbling in my head says I’ll just make the bed wide enough to accept the mattress and leave the side behind the driver’s seat to the tailgate open to accept storage. More stuff to mull over.
Some songs simply have a life of their own. Great from the moment the first note pealed out. One of my favorites is the old Jackie Wilson song, “Higher and Higher.” EVERYBODY has tried to cover it. This evening I was watching some YouTube vids done by the great Ukulele Orchestra of Great Britain when they covered the song. That made me remember seeing The Mint Juleps, a group of British girls who sing acapella who blew the Neville Brothers (one of my favorite groups ever) off the stage when they opened for the Nevilles at the Juan Les Pins Jazz Fest in Juan-Les-Pins, France in 1990. Never knew even Bruce Springsteen did his own cover. Here, if you can endure it, is a collection…
How great is this version. Not many of today’s entertainers have talent like these two…It’s almost as if they were actually dancing to the song.
I believe I mentioned that the tailgate on my Mitsubishi Montero Sport wasn’t opening. Reason unknown. I need to be able to access the back of the van, of course, and this was really a problem. The solution did NOT reside online. There were no YouTube vids dealing with MY specific problem with MY specific vehicle. The few pics I could find did nothing to help.
So, the other day I went in and ripped the covering off of the back of the tailgate. There were some cut-outs that I could just barely get my hand into, and peering down to where the latching mechanism was was awful. My friend and neighbor, Capt’n Natural Lee, here deep in the swamp off the Saint Johns River in DeBary, Florida, lent me his large Dremel tool. I widened the major opening for better access with it but despite everything I tried it still wouldn’t open. I gave up for the day and returned to my boat to cogitate.
Yesterday Lee came down and spent almost two hours pushing and pulling on the rod that activates the mechanism between the door handle and the other doohicky to no avail. In the afternoon I went to the local Ace Hardware and bought the smallest can of TriFlow lubricant they sell. Got back to the swamp and DRENCHED the damned thing and left it to soak overnight.
One way or another I was going to get the effin’ thing open TODAY! After my morning mug of espresso I went on up t the van. Pushed on the rod and same thing as yesterday. I got some light shining down into the hole and watched what was happening to the mechanism. There seemed to be a small, perhaps 1/16 to 1/8-inch something down inside the slot that was blocking the whatchamacallit from fully travelling to the end. I found a little something and after a while I was able to get rid of it. Pushed down on the rod and pushed on the door and, as we used to say when I was living in Antibes, France, VOILÀ!!!
Sprayed TriFlow on the underside, opened and closed the hatch a half-dozen times using the door handle and finished the job. Now I can go to Home Depot and get them to cut me a 3/4″ piece of plywood for a platform to lay my mattress down on and I’m one step closer to being my next “Good Adventure.”
One advantage of being in Facebook Prison and not being able to post or comment is that it frees up the time normally wasted on that to do other things. Take today, for instance…
Having decided that I’d stick to the Mitsubishi until it either makes the big loop or falls apart along the way, I need to have more internal space. Yesterday I lay down in back and there was JUST enough room from the back of the front seats to the back door of the vehicle. JUST! So this morning I dismantled the seats. Or more specifically, seat. There’s just the one. It was unbelievably simple. Six bolts total. Gives me almost a full foot of extra reclining space. The worst thing about the back space, however, is the large amount of room taken up by the covers of the wheel wells. But the only thing I can do is work around them.
Yesterday my youngest brother, Mark, called for some information about our brothers who died in infancy. He didn’t know either of them and I only have a vague remembrance of the second one. Brother Jim died before he was two and I was only three.
Anyway, I told Mark that I’d looked at the minivan and decided not to buy it and we got to talking about camping. When I was in grade school we used to spend the entire summer, from the day school let out until the day after Labor Day at Nickerson State Park in Brewster, Mass, out near the elbow of Cape Cod. Mom and dad lived in a small trailer.
Brothers David and Gary slept in a tent with me. Dad had started Philbrick’s Snack Shack down at Skaket Beach on the Bay Side of Orleans and would leave every morning for work. I think the last time I slept in a tent was when I was, maybe 11 or 12 years old. Way more than half a century ago.
Mark, and brothers Gary and Jeff were all Eagle Scouts. Jeff has been a life-long devotee to scouting and has served in various capacities within the organization and helped kids learn survival skills in the wild. Jeff also hiked a great deal of the Appalachian Trail until blowing his knees. His son Ken, on the other hand, through hiked the trail after getting out of the Army. In our conversation, until my phone ran completely out of juice, Mark said that he’d given up back packing and had been doing a lot of car camping over the past couple of years He said he bought a Coleman Instant Tent. The 6-person model because it has 6-foot headroom and can be set up in, literally, a couple of minutes.
Even with my COPD I should be able to do that without overtaxing myself. I was so impressed that I immediately got on Amazon and ordered one!
A tent is going to be essential for this adventure for a lot of reasons. I plan on using National Park Lands and U.S. Army Corps of Engineers campgrounds along with state parks as much as possible to keep expenses reasonable. Many places don’t allow you to stay in your vehicle and require a tent. It also gives a place to use one’s bucket toilet, to change clothes, and simply a place to chill out in on those days when it’s raining and dreary. Should be a lot more comfortable than being stuck inside the SUV.
More to come…
Comments Off on Getting Ready For The Next Adventure
As mentioned in a previous post I’m thinking of making a large circular tour of the eastern U.S. this summer. Sort of a land version of boating’s “Great Loop.” I’ve joined a half dozen Facebook Groups about van living and camping and I’ve devoured much of the films and forum posts on Cheap RV Living. Despite my friend and neighbor’s ill feelings towards Chrysler products and lots of other bad mouthing of Dodge vehicles, lots of it warranted I’m sure, there are also tons of others who are loyal fans of same. I wrote to a friend who owns a delivery company that uses vans and asked his opinion of Dodge vans. He said he was driving one currently and loves it. I posed the question on the Facebook groups and got overwhelming thumbs up for the Dodge Grand Caravan as a minivan camper and it’s listed online as one of the top 10 minivans for camping. Some people are living in them full time, too, which I suspect is what I’ll eventually be doing.
The other day I went and looked at a Kia Sedona, one of the three of the top 10 I wanted to check out. Didn’t like it a whole lot.
Today I drove down to nearby Sanford, FL and looked at a 2006 Chrysler Town and Country with only 80,000 miles on the clock. LOVED IT! It was clean inside and out and underneath. the only fault I saw was when I lifted the hood and found the positive anode of the battery covered with corrosion. Looked just like this:
There are several things that could cause this…an old battery that has been overcharged. Electrolyte leakage. Overfilled with water. Or it could simply be an old battery past its time. Most likely NOT a big deal and easily fixed.
I have enough money in the bank that I could have bought it right then and still had money left in the bank to go on the trip. But something just wouldn’t let me do it. Cheapskate at heart, I guess.
On the way back home I got to thinking of the time when I was still wearing a suit and tie to work and dreaming about cruising around on a small boat. I’d bought the book “Sensible Cruising: The Thoreau Approach: A Philosophic and Practical Approach to Cruising” by Don Casey and Lew Hackler. I’ve always remembered their answer to the question: “What’s the best boat to go cruising on?” They said: “The one you have!” The book is long out of print but is available used from places like: http://Sensible Cruising: The Thoreau Approach : A Philosophic and Practical Approach to Cruising Don Casey, Lew Hackler
So, as I’m driving back to the swamp (in case you missed it I live on a small sailboat moored on a canal off the Saint Johns River in DeBary, Florida, 3 miles from the nearest paved road) I’m thinking about whether or not I need a new van to make this journey around the states. I HAVE a vehicle. Before I went out this morning I looked up the Blue Book value and if I was lucky I could get, maybe, 750 MAX in trade in, but most likely not more than $500. That’s okay. I got it for FREE, so whatever I get in trade would be like “found” money. I don’t need a van for a place to live. I HAVE a place to live…my boat. And it will be here when I get back, ready to move into. What it boils down to is I should use what I have. If it makes the whole 4,000 mile circuit I’m a winner with a bunch of money still in the bank. If I have a serious breakdown then I’ve got the money to buy something wherever I happen to be.
One of the big problems with the Montero is storage space. There is no roof rails so I can’t mount a box topside. But it does have a trailer hitch set up. So I went up to the local Harbor Freight and found I can get a carrier for between $49 and 90 bucks depending on whether I want steel or aluminum. Then I’d need to buy a box to carry a few things. Like a chair, a tent, a place to keep my cook stove and 11 lb. tank, etc. I can lie down in the back of the Montero…JUST, but I can. Tomorrow I’ll take the old air mattress out and blow it up and see what that looks like. I slept on an air mattress for a couple of years here on the boat and didn’t have a problem with it. Well, four of them got leaks, but they’re less than a dozen dollars at Wally World.
I think I can put a camping package together with everything I need to do the trip for less than a grand which would leave $4K untouched that I was going to use for buying a minivan. I can buy one of those when I return to DeBary.
Q: What’s the best vehicle to go on an adventure with?
For the second time in over a month I’ve been locked up for 30 days in Facebook prison because of something I posted. Each time it was something that triggered an algorithm.
The first time was when I wrote that “Right wingers want EVERYONE to own a gun…except for ‘darkies’ and ‘beaners,’ of course…” Got me for using racist terms. I didn’t dispute the ban except Facebook doesn’t recognize sarcasm or consider context. So I sat it out.
I belong to a lot of “Groups” on the site that have a special interest for me…ukuleles, boats, and most recently van life. I also have three groups of my own that I created, one of which has close to two thousand members!!! I can READ what’s posted, but I’m unable to post or make comments on the groups. I CAN, however, moderate my groups, approving or denying requests for membership.
After getting off of the ban a couple of weeks ago I was slammed again by an algorithm against “Bullying.” I appealed because, again, context was not taken into consideration. My appeal was denied. This is what caused it…There was a cartoon of a flatbed truck with a swimming pool and a guy on a high diving board zipping along the road in frame one. In frame two the truck has gone forward and the guy dives into the road. The poster read “Science, bitches!'”
I posted, “Since the truck, pool and diver are all traveling along at the same velocity, when he dives he will dive into the pool because “Physics, bitches!”
That’s considered “Bullying.” I appealed and someone with a dot on their forehead sitting in a haze of curry-scented air surrounded with tens of thousands of their Covid-killed countrymen said it WAS bullying. Fuck THEM! And Fuck ZUCK!
I’ll be posting here. I’m hunting for a minivan to start my next adventure. In fact, going to look at one in a little while in nearby Sanford, FL.
I’m getting ready to start out on my third “Good Adventure.” It will be the next to last. The first adventure detailed here was my retirement and eight wonderful years living in the Republic of Panama. The biggest adventure while there was transiting The Canal in 2014.
When health problems, COPD, made me decide to repatriate I bought a small sailboat and spent the next four years doing some cruising, but mainly living at anchor off of Anna Maria Island, Florida a bit south of Tampa Bay. During that adventure I rode out Hurricane Irma tucked so safely away in the mangroves that I actually slept through the height of the storm.
I knew the end of this adventure was coming to an end when I rode out Tropical Storm Eta at anchor. I was in semi-protected water by the Coquina North Boat Ramp where I was in a bit of lee from the worst of the wave action because of Leftis Key a quarter mile south of my location. Those who were up in the main anchorage off the Bridge Street Pier didn’t fare as well. NINE boats, including that of my friends Shawn and Pete, sank.
One problem I had down at the lower anchorage was an engineless, 28-foot Carver power boat that was constantly dragging anchor. One day they came within 20 feet of drifting down on to me.
They stopped RIGHT OVER where my anchor was buried in the sand! I’d gone up to check for chaffing of my anchor rode where it went over the side and to think about letting out more line to avoid the dragging boat if necessary. My COPD is such that in the short distance from the cockpit to the bow and back, perhaps 20 feet round-trip, I had to spend five minutes gasping desperately for my breathing to return to normal. THAT was when I said “I can’t do this anymore. I have to move ashore.” If something had gone seriously tits-up I wouldn’t be able to handle it.
When I posted this on Facebook a “Friend” wrote that he had a spot off the Saint Johns River in central Florida where I could keep both a boat and a van. So I took him up on the offer. Another friend, who owns a boat rental business on Anna Maria Island, towed me over to DeBary, and here I sit tied to the bank of a canal deep in the swamp. SO DEEP that alligators are constant neighbors and there was a black bear within 25 feet of my gangplank one afternoon! It’s also over three miles to the nearest paved road.
Of course my first instinct was to think of buying a cargo van to convert to camping. I enlisted a nephew who is a total gear head who lives in North Carolina to search for one. But then an old friend offered me, FREE, his 2001 Mitsubishi Montero Sport. It has NEW tires, a NEW, not rebuilt, starter, a NEW a/c compressor and a bunch of other goodies. I brought it up to the swamp recently.
Now, believe me, I’m VERY grateful to have gotten this car, and the idea I’m about to expound on only occurred to me AFTER I’d brought the car to the swamp.
I want to do some land cruising. I’ve been around the eastern half of the United States by water. It’s called “The Great Loop.” It’s time to see what’s on the land side of the shoreline after a lifetime on the water. I had talked about throwing my tri-fold mattress in the back along with the 12-volt fridge and taking off for the summer. But I began to realize this isn’t the vehicle I need to do that. And there are a lot of reasons.
One, it’s a Mitsubishi. I’ve always remembered a remark my dad made when one of my brothers was contemplating buying a Peugot…”Good luck getting it fixed in East Podunk!” I feel it would be the same with the Mitsubishi in West Whatthehell, Wyoming. Not that I ever plan on going to Wyoming, you understand. Hell, Dick Cheney could be out hunting there. On the other hand, something like a Honda or a Toyota would be fixable just about anywhere in North America.
I’ve ditched the idea, for now, of a large van and am downsizing the idea. I think, after lots of web browsing and searching, the vehicle I want is a mini-van. Since most of my initial travels will be in the eastern part of the country with not nearly as many National Parks or other Federal lands to perch on, and campgrounds can easily eat up the monthly SS check “Stealth” overnighting will be essential. A minivan “blends in” with everything and would surely reduce the chances of getting the dreaded midnight “knock.”
Here are some of the downsides of the Montero Sport…
No roof rack. So adding a carrier isn’t possible. I think that’s going to be a necessity since I’m going to want to have things like a tent. I mean there are campground that REQUIRE you to have a tent so you pop one up and then sleep in the van. A tent is also a place you can poop in private or cook supper when it’s raining. I looked on Amazon for roof racks that aren’t permanent and none of the ones offered even got a 50% five star rating.
While mine isn’t one, the Montero Sport also came in a 4 wheel drive version. The body on both are the same but with the 4 wheel version larger sized tired are common and the body is built to take them. That means the wheel wells are HUGE in order to take them and they intrude into the available space behind the front seats. Makes setting up living quarters difficult even with the rear seats removed.
There are no roof rails. I think they’re important because somewhere along the line, and soon, I suspect, I’ll want to get one of those roof pods to carry things like a tent and an awning. An awning makes things comfortable but there needs to be an attachment point on the van and that’s usually a roof rail. Also, the roof pod is a place to secure a solar panel. I have a 100-watt solid panel and a 160-watt flex panel I’m going to be taking along.
Looking at various van-living sites I’ve found these are considered the best minivans for camping conversion:
Toyota Sienna
Nissan Quest
Mazda 5
Chrysler Pacifica
Kia Sedona
Honda Odyssey
Dodge Grand Caravan
Ford Transit Connect
Ram ProMaster City
Mercedes-Benz Metris
If I could afford to buy a Mercedes I wouldn’t be writing any of this, so scratch that one.
After spending hours online looking at the rating for various minivans I’ve narrowed my search to these three: Toyota Sienna, Honda Odyssey, and the Kia Sedona. The Kia comes in a distant third, however even though it offers the largest interior and has many fans.
In that twilight zone just before dropping off into full-blown sleep the outline for the next “Good Adventure” came to mind. It combines land and water aspects. In the autumn of 1974 I took a 43-foot Hatteras tri-cabin from Chicago to Fort Lauderdale via the Great Lakes. Well, three of them, anyway. I traveled the lengths of lakes Michigan, Huron and Erie before entering the Erie Canal. But that’s just three of the five Great Lakes. I need to get on the other two, Ontario and Superior. So, why not take a road trip and do a huge loop? Leave Florida, visit family in North Carolina and Virginia and travel up to Lake Ontario. Rent a boat up there and go for a ride. One down.
I got my passport renewal application the other day. Renew the passport and run up into Canada and visit a Facebook friend who lives in the town with the longest freshwater beach in the world. It’s on Georgian Bay, a rustic and scenic part of Lake Huron. Roy has a great houseboat he built and sells plans for with several being built even overseas. Perhaps I could get a day trip with him.
From there I’d mosey on over to Lake Superior, rent another boat and hit the water topping off the list.
After that I’d go to Wyoming, Minnesota, or thereabouts and wander down legendary Highway 61. It would, like Bob Dylan’s song, be “Revisited.” I lived right on Highway 61 for two years while attending college in Canton, Missouri. Could stop in at the old alma mater, even. Then roam on down to New Orleans which is the terminus of the route. I even know where there’s a small concrete cenotaph marking the spot.
I would hit as many national and state parks and US Army Corps of Engineers campgrounds as possible. Also try and find FB “friends” along the way where I could crash in their driveways for a night. One of the groups I run has a couple of thousand members (that number completely blows me away) and I bet there are some along the route, too.
Over the past few months my COPD has been catching up with me here in my small, anchored sailboat near the Coquina North Boat Ramp on Anna Maria Island, FL. Simple tasks like going forward to check the anchor rode leave me gasping for air. More and more I’d say to myself, “I can’t do this anymore.”
Since I exist totally on a small Social Security deposit each month and a pittance in food stamps renting a room or an apartment ashore is financially out of the question. So, my choices boil down to returning to the Republic of Panama where I lived for eight years or “living in a van down by the river.”
I have three arterial stents, and I’m carrying some rather large kidney and bladder stones. The medical care I encountered in Panama was excellent and very reasonably priced, especially compared with the U.S. And I liked the fact that I was given the doctor’s cell phone numbers. I also liked that meds are all “over the counter.” No doctor’s prescription needed.
But the problem with Panama is it’s a “Pay up front” system. I’d have no insurance if I was down there. No company is going to insure a 78 year old guy with COPD and three arterial stents. If something serious happened to me there I’d have had to put up, IN CASH, a couple of thousand bucks to be admitted into one of the two private hospitals in David (dah VEED). You don’t even want to think about having to go to the government-supported hospital there. Sometimes, it’s been said, you have to provide your own bed linens. Panamanian officials and doctors really don’t like expats who have no health insurance and end up in a situation where the government has to take care of them when they need to be hospitalized. Who can blame them? I don’t want to be one of those people. It was one of the incentives for my repatriation three years ago.
One of the smart things, and there haven’t been that many in my life, that I did when I moved to Panama was to keep paying Medicare Part B. Many who expatriate drop this coverage to save the $140+ a month. But then, if they have to repatriate and sign on again, they are accessed a penalty and it’s hefty. I didn’t sign up for the Part D, prescriptions, when I turned 65 because wasn’t on any meds then. Now, because of the penalty, I’ll pay $100/month, FOREVER! Well, at least until I die…
So, really, the only solution is to remain here and move into a van. Lots of people have, and why not? It would actually have more living space than this 22-foot sailboat. I have a nephew in North Carolina who is a total gearhead. I’m going to rely on him to find a van for me. I have total faith that whatever he would choose will be sound and a good value. I’m in no big hurry so he can take his time.
It’s over three and a half years that I’ve not had to pay any rent, living anchored here off of Anna Maria Island, Florida. You can kinda do that in a van by “stealth” parking in urban areas or camping at state and national parks and on Bureau of Land Management or U.S. Army Corps of Engineers areas. My dad did that quite a bit in his travels. But he was vacationing, not doing it because he had to.
When I posted on Facebook that I was going to have to move ashore and live in a van the owner of a campground near Ocala, Florida wrote and said they rent van spaces for $295/month. That’s do-able on my limited income. If I was in Panama I’d be spending up to $350/month for a place to live. Shortly after that a Facebook “Friend” I’ve been following and corresponding with for several years wrote and said that I could keep a van AND the boat at some land he owns on the Saint Johns River. It wouldn’t be free, of course. I’d pay half the electric (he lives on a boat there, too) and internet connection and “maybe $100/month to help with taxes.” Seems like a pretty good deal to live at THIS spot…
There are two ways I could get there. I have a boat friend, here, that has a trailer that could easily haul my boat. Load it up at the nearby ramp and we’d be at the new location within three hours. I’d pay him, of course though I don’t know how much. Didn’t ask. But knowing him for the last three years and being friends it wouldn’t be excessive.
But where’s the challenge in that? Where’s the romance? Where’s the ADVENTURE?
No, I’m going to get the boat over on its on bottom. It’s roughly a 650 mile voyage. It won’t be a fast trip. I generally can’t go faster than five miles an hour when everything’s going well. And there won’t be any long days at the tiller like when I was nearly four years younger and headed out on my first trip on the boat towards what I’d hoped would take me to Louisiana. We all know that ended up being rescued off the boat and taken to Tallahassee Memorial Hospital suffering from complete renal shutdown caused by severer dehydration. I put in some 10 and 12 hour days on that trip. No more of that. The last trip I made, about a year and a half ago was down to Cayo Costa, about 75 miles away. I took did with five and six hour runs. Pecking away at the journey in baby steps.
I could leave almost immediately, but in the recent Tropical Storm Eta, my kick-up rudder was damaged. I need to repair it. It’s an easy fix. But I still came out better than the NINE boats that sank up at the big anchorage by the Bridge Street Pier. In one instance a large catamaran broke loose from its mooring slammed into a good friend’s boat which caused them to be separated from their mooring and drove them into the nearby “Day Dock” at the city pier. Pete got off and helped get Shawn off the boat and onto the dock only seconds before the nearly six foot high waves forced their sailboat, and home, beneath the dock sinking it. A total loss but at least they’re alive. Fortunately her family lives in Bradenton so they weren’t forced into a cheap motel.
With the exception of a 15 mile section of the Rim Route around the eastern and southern edge of Lake Okeechobee I couldn’t traverse because a swing bridge with just 11 feet of vertical clearance was being worked on and couldn’t open, until I get to the Saint Johns is back tracking over ground I’ve already covered.
I’ll be able to do that part of the Rim Route now that my mast is down and my air draft is a hair over 7 feet. I can sneak under it now. I might have to open the Fort Denaud swing bridge on the land cut section of the waterway. It has vertical clearance of only 9 feet. But I snuck under the 9-foot bridge at Blackburn point on my way too and from my last trip to Cayo Costa. Other than that I don’t think I’ll have to open any bridges.
I took my mast down three years ago when Hurricane Irma was set to roll over us here on the island. I decided not to put it back up for a couple of reasons. One is that on my 600 mile journey from Lauderdale to Carrabelle and back to Anna Maria I didn’t have the sails up but, perhaps a half dozen times. Then, with my COPD, raising the damned things left me tuckered out, and my arthritic fingers made the job painful. Since I’d done practically the whole trip under power I just decided to use the boat as a “terminal trawler.”
All along the Indian River there are dozens of spoil islands where I can spend the night. Many of them are set up with picnic tables and charcoal grilling facilities. I’m looking forward to that section of the trip.
There will be days when I won’t travel at all because of weather. I’m not going to be spending my time plowing through a rainy day. And since it’s winter there will be cold fronts passing through every couple of weeks that will keep me holed up somewhere. On the first trip I spent almost a month anchored in the Suwannee River waiting on the weather. A couple of weeks in each direction.
I also avoid travel on weekends. That’s when all the amateurs are out and many of them believe the boat is incapable of moving if they don’t have an alcoholic beverage in their hands. Better to drop anchor in some peaceful gunkhole Friday afternoon and wait until Monday before continuing on.
I love the planning of a trip. I use a program called Pro Charts on my iPad for plotting routes. Coupled with my small GPS receiver via Bluetooth it acts as a plot charter while underway giving me information such as speed, courses to steer, time to destination, etc.
I also rely on a site called Waterway Guide. This is indispensable. It shows where there are free anchorages and docks. Marinas if you want them, bridges and, most importantly, places along the way to refuel.
There are things to get done before hoisting the hook and I think I’ll wait until Christmas is over and the new year begun before heading out. Should pull into the new home port sometime in the middle of February.
One More Good Adventure 