Question for all the RVers here on HN: why do so many of you refuse to use designated pull outs? The ones specifically created for vehicles like yours to move over and let the dozen+ cars behind you pass so they can go more than 20 under the speed limit. Many RVs I encounter even go out of their way to prevent passing. I don't really understand it, and it seems like an RV-specific behavior.
As an RV-driver, I try my best to use the pull outs when I can. There are a few complications, though.
First is the visibility of these pull-outs is often very poor. You'll be driving through long winding roads and then all of the sudden the pull-out appears. In an RV, you can't just slam on the breaks and swerve into the pullout, ESPECIALLY if you're going downhill.
Second, often times (in the USA at least), these pull-outs have rough terrain going in an and out of them. There will be a little bump or uneven ground that most vehicles wouldn't mind hitting every now and then, but in my rig, that causes the whole thing to sway back and forth (Class-C built on a Mercedes Sprinter). I REALLY need to upgrade the suspension.
Third is time. Since I'm slower than everyone else, people tend to pile up behind me pretty quickly. Pulling into the pull-out, coming to a complete stop, waiting for everyone to pass, then getting back up to speed takes a long time. If I did this every time there was a car behind me, it would take forever. So, I tend to wait until there's more than a few cars behind me before pulling off.
Fourth is my wife. She says I have "overly-considerate disorder" and I need to make our safety #1 and stop caring about other people so damn much.
Just wanted to confirm those first three points. I keep a 25' converted bus in California for when we fly to the US for holidays. I really dislike holding people up, so will turn out whenever possible, but...
There isn't always advance signage, so you often see them at the last second and don't have time to check the quality of the approach, check if the person behind you has enough warning, etc.
They're always far poorer quality than the road itself, so you're aggressively decelerating a heavy vehicle in usually mountainous conditions, approaching a 4"+ drop into ragged pavement or gravel. I've hit some of those spots at speed and it's felt like the vehicle was going to fall apart.
And yes, often you're going slowly because you've just let a few cars past and reentered the road, just for another person to drive up behind you and start the whole game again.
It's very very rare to find signed turnouts that are good and long enough that it's trivial to pull off the road at a reasonable speed, let people through, and then continue on without just creating more problems.
I remember turnouts in NW Idaho or closer to Spokane maybe where the signage suggested you were meant to use the shoulders to let cars pass, but they were really narrow and I wasn't sure how exactly they were meant to be used? Anyone familiar with that area? If it's not wide enough to get fully out of the lane, wouldn't the passing car just overtake using the opposite lane anyway?
> says I have "overly-considerate disorder" and I need to make our safety #1 and stop caring about other people so damn much
I can't speak about your (w|l)ife, but in my (w|l)ife, people who say this are the people who personally enjoy taking advantage of my nature, and my "overly considerate behavior" is only pointed out when someone else seems to be getting benefit at the expense of my (w|l)ife; i.e it's a statement of selfishness.
Hey John!! Wes here, sitting in the shade of my RV right now. Funny to hear the last line, because mine says the same thing about when I am driving. And when she is driving she literally tell me "fuck em, I will drive how I want" lol.
Definitely agree with the first and second points above. I absolutely will if I can see it with enough time to safely slow the RV, and the terrain doesn't look like I might blow a tire or damage the RV doing it. I'm usually less concerned about time when traveling in the RV. I try to do what I can to build up good karma with other drivers, but it's not always a good idea to pull off.
On the other side. someone with road rage isn't going to care about others so much either (you) and possibly risk their own life, and yours, just out of frustration.
Being excessively considerate of others on the road is safer from my experience.
Are those terribly paved slow vehicle lanes a California thing? In New England they are the exact same quality as the other lane. I have never once had to navigate a drop to let faster traffic pass.
I personally believe non-use of pullouts is more about the sorry state of the other drivers, not the RV drivers. (Assuming reasonable road conditions, which as you note, is not always the case.)
> coming to a complete stop
You're not meant to come to a stop. That absolutely kills what momentum you do have. It's exceptionally difficult to start a heavy vehicle from a stop. You're meant to pull out, maybe slow down a little, then pull back in, cars be damned. Some cars will pass, maybe not all. The new lead set of cars will get by at the next pullout, and so on in incremental fashion.
But what happens in practice is that the first or 2nd idiot behind you does not prepare in advance and then does not race like mad when you go into the pullout, thereby allowing as many following cars as possible to also make the pass. Even if that first car did execute it correctly, the 2nd car likely does not. Then the 2nd or maybe 3rd car is "in the breach" when the pullout lane ends, blocking your (RV) re-entry and forcing you to stop. Then you're doubly fooked. You have to start from a complete stop and you're at the very end of the pullout lane, with no speedup zone at all.
... this is why we can't have nice things ...
My daily commute involves a 2 lane highway (ie, 1 lane each direction) with a pullout for slow moving vehicles. Semi trucks and other heavy construction type vehicles use this road a lot, as it's the only viable route. They do almost always use the pullout, but they pull back in at the end without regard for anyone in the traffic lane. They have to -- they are even worse than any RV on getting started from a stop again. So I see this crap driving from the auto drivers almost every day. If I happen to be the first car waiting behind a truck, I race on past and then it's always the case that only 1 other car in a long line also make it past, when 6-7 should be making it. I also frequently witness the slow passing fool have to slam his brakes as the truck re-enters the lane.
I don't fault any RV for not using the pullout lanes.
> Many RVs I encounter even go out of their way to prevent passing.
Only you would know, but this could be something other than what it seems like.
When I had a motorcycle, I'd tail a slow vehicle for miles in anticipation of a passing zone. When we got there, they'd all of a sudden accelerate-- which I always assumed was them fucking with me, until one day I realized I do the same thing myself when in a car.
We speed up when we perceive it is safe to do so (long stretches of straight road), similar to unconsciously letting off the gas when you notice a cop running a speed trap.
If this is what you encounter, it may be an unconscious thing, or the RV driver consciously speeding up for your convenience. If they're swerving, consider that they're tall and wind pushes them around easily.
> When I had a motorcycle, I'd tail a slow vehicle for miles in anticipation of a passing zone. When we got there, they'd all of a sudden accelerate-- which I always assumed was them fucking with me, until one day I realized I do the same thing myself when in a car.
There's a mountain pass I travel a few times a year where this happens.
The limit is 45 mph throughout the curves, and that's a reasonable speed, though I prefer to go a bit faster, but will inevitably get stuck behind someone going 35.
We reach a point where there's a passing lane, and the limit is 55 mph. I try to pass the person that was going 35 mph before, and suddenly they seem to think that 70 mph is a reasonable speed. I have to pass these people regardless of how fast they want to go when there's a passing lane, because otherwise, I'll get stuck behind them once the passing lane ends and they decide to drop back down to 10 under the limit.
Luckily, these days, I have a car that can easily pass 98% of the other cars on the road, and the remaining 2% are already going at speed.
passing lanes usually open up on straight stretches of road with good visibility. Its like, here we are twisty, turning, and the speed limit is like 35 around these curves, and then we get to a 2 lane stretch straight up a hill with the 55 speed limit. What are we supposed to do?
As a 25 foot Class C RV driver, I've encountered what you describe from heavy trucks, Class A's, other Class C's, Priuses, and Teslas. It's all over the place. I have to have a certain calm about it, especially on summer weekends on 101/SR2/SR20/etc in Washington.
The thing people don't realize is that speed limit advisory signs (on turns or downhills usually) are essentially mandatory for high CG vehicles - to avoid rollover risk.
To help you understand some reasons to refuse a pullout, here are the conditions that I think must be true for an RV or heavy truck to safely and practically use a pullout: (Maybe I'm missing something)
1) Vehicle is slower than the speed limit or lower than the safety speed advisory by more than 10 mph. (Yes, this is annoying for people that want to exceed the speed limit, but they can use passing lanes.)
2) Pullout must be visibly paved and clear for entry in advance of safe braking distance. (This is often a problem.)
3) The pullout must have good visibility behind it so the vehicle can safely get back up to speed from 0 after stopping. (Sometimes a problem.)
4) Traffic must be light enough such that rejoining the travel lane is feasible in less than a couple minutes. (This is often a problem.)
5) The pullout must have a safe path to return to the travel lane. (I have had to balk pullout attempts after nearing the pullout because this is not always immediately clear at a distance.)
6) Most importantly, the vehicle must not be followed either at an unsafe distance or by someone driving erratically. (I am not going to risk damage to my vehicle by braking for someone following too closely.)
Ah, Washington drivers! Paying no attention at all until someone nears their space, then all of a sudden VERY attentive and territorial yet unwilling to be actually aggressive, so instead just kind of interfering.
In my experience most drivers are not very aware of their surroundings and just seem to do stupid things like form rolling roadblocks by accident. I wonder if RVs are just more noticeable because they are longer, and so their accidental traps tend to be bigger. The other vehicles that size are typically driven by professionals, who are at least a little more with-it. Usually.
My big pet peeve about RVs is when they're in the mountains on 2 lane roads and insist on driving with a foot of their RV over the centerline when going around blind curves.
I used to live in a small tourist town, and people died on a regular basis because of RVs doing that. You could spot the local drivers because they're the ones hugging the fog line when going around a bend.
I don't think people insist on it, it's just very technically challenging to drive any larger vehicle precisely. A Semi, a dump-truck, probably anything with air brakes, these have more stringent licenses and testing. You have to learn to drive them. You can go out today and buy a 3500 diesel truck that can tow 30,000 lbs, weighs close to 10,000 lbs on its own, a crew cab with a long bed coupled to a massive RV that is 45 feet long with triple axles, and the only thing you need to drive that is to have passed a driving test when you were 16 in your mom's Honda Civic.
Many RVs are 8.5 feet wide. Common highway lanes are 10 feet wide. There are curvy highways like route 1 that I swear are only 9' wide. I worry more about line selection and holding my rig inside the yellows than I worry about line selection when I'm racing my motorcycle. It's challenging for me and I drive things as a sport. I'm not covering for someone who went over the yellows, that's unforgivable, but I wanted to add some context for you.
These lanes and pull outs aren't common everywhere. When I visited NZ, it took me a day or two to realize they had a purpose. RVers usually are not driving in their home country.
I just recently tried to use the side lane in DK to let others pass (set signal, decelerate, pull over as far as possible). It actually confused the other drivers so much that they didn't dare to take over, even when there was lots of space to do so.
It depends. If it is a passing lane and the RV is not passing, shame on them. If it is a small pullout you often cannot slow down fast enough to catch it unless you are really paying attention for it. Remember, slowing down a big rig (especially one with all your belongings in it) can be near impossible to do. But mainly the reason is probably that there is no training or licensing required to teach folks how to drive these things.
Often they are a short paved lane meant for slow vehicles to pull off onto to allow slower traffic to pass, but often on mountain roads, it's a gravel off-road area that serves the same purpose. But pulling into one can be a bumpy ride, and the gravel service means it's hard to accelerate quickly until you get fully back on the road so you need to be sure you have a lot of clear space behind you (which can be hard to ensure on twisty mountain roads).
I was stuck behind a big RV recently who was driving part way over the center line most of the time. I eventually realized he was trying to avoid clipping all the low branches along the edge of the road.
I noticed the slow (right) lanes in California are the most beat-up. My guess is because the shipping trucks use them. This could be a possibility as well.
I've driven plenty of windy roads for years, and I've only been "stuck" behind a slow RV (with a line of traffic) once.
I've been behind plenty of RVs who don't drive as fast as I want to. But that's what happens on a public road. (These RVs still drive at a reasonable speed, just not as fast as I want to. IE 48mph in a 50 when I want to drive 55.)
The big problem is obvious drivers, who often are in passenger cars. I've been stuck behind far more oblivious drivers than RVs. These drivers do 20 in a 50, and ignore the long line of cars behind them.
Ha. I always do when I’m towing my trailer. People like that annoy me to no end. I first helped move an old Winnebago class A up to the small mountain town of Idyllwild above Palm Springs in California. The highway is steep and switchbacks up the mountain with great views of the desert below. I must have stopped 15 times on the way up to let others pass.
Gotta disagree here. Almost always when I get stuck behind something going 20 under, whether it's an RV or a Corolla, the driver of that vehicle blows past every available pullout and accelerates to 30+ over when a passing lane appears. Drivers are just raging assholes, no matter what they're driving.
I had the reverse experience last time I was driving in the US. Most RV owners seemed to be aware of people behind them and used the pull-outs fairly often. Drivers of Honda CR-Vs and similar vehicles, on the other hand, seemed oblivious to the idea that they might be holding other people up, and never got out of the way at all.
I'd imagine it's because it takes so much effort and gas to asymptote up to 40mph or whatever, that they can't fathom electing to stop and do it all again. Most tractor trailers have a large enough engine to handle going up hills with common cargo at highway speeds (exceptions exist, of course). From what I've observed, most RV's just don't.
I spent several months living out of my car+tent in national parks/forests and often referred to them as Ruins Views. Breathtaking scenery in those national parks, that you can't focus on when you're stuck in a line of twenty cars riding your brakes and smelling theirs, because Big Bob doesn't want to get his tippy palace going too fast.
I do get the appeal, but lugging around so much tonnage seems like a recipe for a bad time. Now I'm at a different life stage where I've been doing a bunch of towing with an underpowered SUV, and I make it a point to get out of peoples' ways. Luckily most of that has been on multilane highways where it's easy to do so.
If you’re driving you just can’t focus on scenery period, no matter how many cars you’re stuck behind. Whenever I ride as a passenger on roads I drive every day, I’m amazed at the details outside that I don’t see when I’m driving.
Just keeping a car on a road with no traffic takes a fair amount of focus: for evidence, just see how many people don’t do it and plow into objects that are alongside the road.
I really really wish turnouts were designed more like passing zones, with an actual lane.
Driving a huge RV I have trouble seeing and pulling off at my destination, let alone a fall-off-the-road-into-dirt pullout that comes up quickly around a turn.
I don’t think it’s RV specific - there are two types of people in this world people who drive in the passing lane and the people that hate them, some of them just own RVs…
One thing that has changed a lot since this article was written and everyone bought RVs during COVID: good luck just showing up and finding a camp spot. Pre-2020, we'd either just show up to a state park on a Friday night, or maybe reserve a spot a couple of days before. Not anymore; I booked all of the spots we might want, or at least could even find available, in March or so and even then we had to schedule around available spots, and not the weekends we necessarily wanted.
Now, maybe it's just WA state, but if we hit the road for an extended period I'd be reserving spots ahead of time even at places far less popular than, say, Yellowstone.
Yeah, it's super busy out there now. This is one reason for boondocking. I pretty much don't even look at campgrounds anymore, knowing they'll either be full, or I'll be packed in between two noisy groups when I'm trying to relax. I don't have an RV, and I imagine it's a lot harder to drive those up a forest service road in the Cascades, but there are still plenty of places you can go (looks like that's the author of the article's preferred method too).
This year in Colorado so far hiking trails and camp sites have been way less utilized especially not on the popular weekends. The last 2 years it was as you described booking months in advance but so far this year you can nab a same day spot at most parks during the week and there is much more overall availability. Hiking trails and parks I've done are probably 30-40% as busy as they were this time last year. It definitely is starting to feel like people are moving on and doing other things this year.
It’s not just WA. It’s everywhere. New campgrounds are popping up fast and people are becoming disenchanted with the failure-prone covid wagons, so I don’t think it’ll be this way for long.
Figured it wasn't just WA, my parents in FL don't camp as much as they used to, but they're saying the same thing on the occasions that they do go out.
I imagine it'll die off because as you point out, folks will find out that RVs always need something, and in a lot of ways are kind of a pain-in-the-ass. But, man, thought it would have happened by now.
Likewise. Camping used to be spontaneous up until Covid. We might book a popular site a few weeks in advance but only for popular ones on holiday weekends.
Now they can be booked months in advance when you've no sense of how available you'll be or what the weather will be like.
For Michigan's booking system, people also game it by booking long stays that finish on the dates want (thus getting around the "within 6 months" booking window) and then cancelling down to the dates they want for a paltry cancellation fee, given how in demand they are.
It seems as if about the only things WA State Parks has invested in for the past 40 years are parking lots and a new headquarters building in Tumwater.
This is largely a west coast problem. We are doing a trip to the west coast this summer (sitting in the shade of my RV in AZ right now on our way) and we had to book a lot more in advance than other destinations. The past few years in the central and east we can usually find a spot day of unless it is right near a major attraction.
I am sitting at a campgrounds in Sweden right now. There are a few dozen cabins, of which maybe a handful are being rented. Six, maybe, at the most. Meanwhile, the camping area is absolutely packed with RVs and camper vans. So, maybe not just Washington?
I don't think most people care enough to bother you, but there's very little "stealth" about a Sprinter/ProMaster van. They used to go unnoticed but they don't anymore. It's a dead giveaway when there is a MaxxAir roof vent and solar panel(s).
I draw the line at not having a private shower and toilet. Yeah, a lot of van dwellers utilize gyms for this, but I don't want to tie my basic hygiene to external sources.
Washington might have more populated parks simply because they have a state-wide pass for getting access to a wide variety of camping spots for cheap. Other states I've been to still have some kind of registration and check-in process where you need to pay cash on the spot for each place you go to
I usually just pull off at a truck stop for sleep if I'm traveling, but even those have been getting filled up lately. Plenty of exits will just have semis lined up on the shoulder because there's no room anywhere else and they can only drive so many hours by law.
I think this is one of the reasons motorcycle camping is seeing such a huge increase. Those that liked to camp moved to overlanding. Then that filled up. So now they are moving to adventure bike camping.
The best RVing advice I was given was to not buy an RV and buy a pull trailer instead which somewhat correlates to the TFA's "bigger is not always better". RVs get horrible gas mileage, and are not easy to drive around. This is why you see a lot of RVs pulling trailers with a smaller car on it. The trailer route allows you to drop off the trailer and then use the pulling vehicle separately. I'm sure it's confirmation bias, but people I know that have RVs use them less than the people I know that have trailers.
I’ve got a 35’ travel trailer I live in usually for 4-6 months at a time for this reason. The benefits:
1. Just one engine to take care of. If you have a motor home, you’re towing a car too. So that’s two sets of drivetrains with all of the maintenance and expense that goes with it.
2. Easy to replace the drive part. If my truck dies I can just get another truck. The trailer lives on. Whole lot easier than dealing with what happens when an RV dies.
3. More maneuverable (though also harder to learn to tow if you’re not already used to it) because it pivots at the point where it connects to the vehicle.
4. Much cheaper in the long run. A diesel 3/4 or full ton truck barely depreciates at all in absolute dollars even in normal times. RVs can’t say that at all. If you buy a camper and a pickup you can probably sell them in five years for most of what you put into them.
>3. More maneuverable (though also harder to learn to tow if you’re not already used to it) because it pivots at the point where it connects to the vehicle.
5th wheel trailers help with this (so I've been told by family members that have them).
I’ll give you the reasons I bought a small RV over a trailer. There are always trade offs!
1. You can boondock much more discretely. I can move quietly from the driver seat into the sleeping area without letting the neighborhood know anyone is there at all. Also safer in that if someone is bothering me, I can also just drive away.
2. Much faster to setup. I usually just hop out of my rv, connect the power cord and back in. Press a button for leveling out. When you have a trailer and you need to go somewhere, it probably involves disconnecting the hitch which is a ton of work. It’s possible to leave it connected but the length of both the trailer and car is usually too long for a campsite
3. Slightly related to that last one but length. My RV is 24 feet, I can just pull straight into most driveways, press a button and I’m setup. Not a fan of backing trailers into steep or across uneven driveways.
4. Incredibly easy to drive. As other people are discussing letting folks overtake you, it just wasn’t as necessary because you can drive a short rv like a car. Miss a gas station? Just hit that uturn at the signal and go back. Good luck with a trailer or even more fun in a 5th wheel
5. Cross wind. I haven’t driven much with a trailer but in the desert, the cross winds were sorta scary while driving an RV. I have to imagine this is worse with a trailer.
6. Having that back living space easy to reach. Thirsty on that 6 hour drive? Just send a passenger back to the fridge to grab a cold drink or food from the pantry
7. Storage. This can go two ways but I only have a driveway for two cars. My RV fits in one spot. If I had a trailer, I would have to park the truck separately which wouldn’t leave room for another car off the street
8. Battery recharging. When the RV is running, the deep cycle batteries charge. I can let the car idle instead of running the connected generator. There is also a button you can hold down and it uses the deep cycle batteries start the car engine in case the car battery dies. The whole system is integrated so you theoretically can’t have a dead battery on both the engine portion or the rear living space portion
9. Ac, I have had issues with my rear AC, I can start the car and run the AC from the front vents to keep the back area livable
That's assuming that you actually want or need a truck (or other tow vehicle large enough to pull your trailer). I went with a motorhome (but don't pull a car) because my other care is a small EV, and I don't really have a use for a truck or other large vehicle.
When you look at the total cost of ownership, cost of maintenance, depreciation, and the relative comfort of driving a new nice diesel truck vs a box van it's a no Brainer. When we're too old amd weak to disconnect the trailer from the truck we'll get a motorized rv, until then we'll stick with our truck and trailer.
> 1. Just one engine to take care of. If you have a motor home, you’re towing a car too. So that’s two sets of drivetrains with all of the maintenance and expense that goes with it.
Now you're doing your grocery shopping, sightseeing, and trailhead parking with a dualie pickup truck.
Maybe that's me being too european but why towing a car? Here in europe most RV users either carry a 50 to 125cc moped or a set of electric bicycles to wander around. Seems like using a car is just a bit excessive for really small trips.
RVs get horrible gas mileage, and are not easy to drive around.
Guess what else gets horrible mileage when you hook a trailer to it? I'll put our 26' Sprinter class C's 15mpg up against anything pulling something larger than a pod trailer. And after I did some much-needed suspension upgrades, the thing drives like a car. Best of all, I don't have to pull a trailer. We use ours a fair amount because all we do is toss food in the fridge, turn the key and go.
A lot of the reason I see for pulling a car (often referred to as a "toad". "towed", get it?), is so one doesn't have to roll everything up just to go see the sights.
That's a huge difference - an RV that does not expand or really hook up is much easier to just jump into and go somewhere than one that folds out until it's larger than a Manhattan apartment.
And both can be supplemented by auxiliary transportation (bikes, motorbikes, small car).
The thing that has worked for me is going the trailer route with my lightning. You can get 60-70% charge overnight (since I power the trailer with the lightning) with one of the KOA RV outlets included with the camping spot price. KOAs are a bit pricier than a mom and pop but totally worth it for the extra $7-10 you might pay per night because they’re cleaner, have great restroom facilities and I can drive a whole day on the charge.
I live full-time in a 25 foot class C; it's just fine for errands (can park in any grocery store parking lot for example).
There are some times where it's annoying to break camp to go to some activity but it's much less annoying than towing a car full time, not being able to back up, etc.
When I took the plunge I bought a van (Ford Transit with the high roof) and converted it to an RV myself. The van is light(ish) and powerful enough. We fly up mountains and can park in a normal parking lot space.
Hmm, having difficulties finding you a driver at the Grand Canyon.
I've never had success with a ride service outside of a city, and outside of cities is where RV sites that people are interested in tend to be located.
Me too. We have a 2019 diesel and we tow a 30ft toy hauler. They really designed those trucks well, it has so many great towing centric features that I appreciate more and more. The time with my wife and dogs seeing the country has been priceless. I too love driving my f250
Don't get a Tacoma for this - a Kimbo weighs upwards of 1k lbs, right at the limit of a Tacoma's payload capacity. Add in fuel, people, water, anything else heavy and you're above the rated capacity before you know it.
Tacomas have small beds compared to other trucks. It’s all trade offs though. Slide in campers can b nice but are more difficult to decouple from the vehicle than a bumper pull. Bumper pulls or even fifth wheel campers have the benefit of being much larger when people need more space.
Here's what my list would be: (full time for 7 years, now building a house so I don't need full time RVing ever again).
1. RV parks are full, they converted almost all the nightly sites to monthlys to guarantee revenue. RV Parks are the new mobile home park but with monthly RVers who got wind of the "Gone with the Wynns" blog and cheaper cost of living.
2. RV Park nightly rates have literally gone from $35 a night to $70 a night during the 2020s -> 2023s. A lot of the time you're the one that showed up paying $70 per day and all the loud blubs next door are paying $10 per night at the monthly rate.
3. Free camping areas are getting shut down after sites like "campendium" have advertised them to everyone. Most of the problems are related to illegal gray and black tank dumping on public lands.
4. Quartzsite is an absolute shit-show now, it's still probably worth going, but it's crowded. I wouldn't be surprised if they shut down the free areas in the next few years over the same gray/black tank issues.
5. Internet problems are 1000% solved with Starlink now.
6. Solar does not power the A/C. To power the A/C you need 10+ residential solar panels and a $2000 inverter on a 48 volt system. There are ways to have a 48 volt battery and down-regulate to 12v for the rest of your RV. People that run A/C off solar have "special ways" to have that many residential panels, typically involving fold outs and trailers.
7. Gas prices have skyrocketed in CA so it's not worth going anywhere near the state - let alone find a park that's cheap.
RV Progression
Cedar Creek 5th Wheel (2 years) -> Arctic Fox TC 1150 (5 years) -> Alliance Paradigm (1 year) -> building house
> 6. Solar does not power the A/C. To power the A/C you need 10+ residential solar panels and a $2000 inverter on a 48 volt system. There are ways to have a 48 volt battery and down-regulate to 12v for the rest of your RV. People that run A/C off solar have "special ways" to have that many residential panels, typically involving fold outs and trailers.
I have not found this to be true. I run a Cruise N Comfort 12v AC and it works great (most it uses is about 60amps at 12v which I run off my solar panels). See my post here https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36408382
As the other commenter said, there are very low wattage AC units that work fine for very small spaces. I saw a guy on YT convert a tiny window unit into a mini split and that thing only used 800 watts I think. Which is only one or two solar panels you can fit on a van roof easily. He had to drain the refrigerant and resolder the copper tubing to place the radiator directly below the van, but it honestly didn’t look that difficult. Most challenging part is having someone drain the refrigerant who’s certified to do so
Living in a van is either a necessity if you're very poor, or it's a luxury if you're rich.
If you really understand what living in a RV or a van really involves, you quickly realize several things:
* If you plan a long journey, it's still a lot of time spent on the road, and gas money. So it's not about just living in the wild, it's just driving and sleeping, which is not that great, and it's not what people mean when they mean to live in a van. It's a home that can move, but it's not meant to travel.
* It's better to keep a real home, use a station wagon to sleep in it or carry stuff, a bicycle, a tent etc, and not go too far from your home and still enjoy the wilderness, and do this for several months and still enjoy being in the wild without using a RV or van. A station wagon is not the full luxury, but it's still pretty nice.
The trend is on vans which are smaller RVs, but I really thing using a station wagon is largely enough.
I cannot stress enough how absurdly expensive it is to keep an RV moving on the road. They are built in by far the least weight efficient manner imaginable and consume gas or diesel as if prices hadn’t changed since 1986. It is wild how little manufacturers have spent on R&D to come up with more weight efficient solutions.
My neighbors recently bought a $200k+ _tiny_ Mercedes RV and they mainly drive it for day trips. Basically it’s a really, really expensive porta-potty you drive anywhere you think you may need to use the bathroom.
It’s absurd but no less absurd than a similarly priced boat that might get 20-30 hours if use a season. Plenty of other neighbors have those.
I'm pretty sure I was considering the same one lol. Used, but still. Tiny is a feature (for me at least) because I wanted it to fit where most cars would fit and not have to take into consideration what sorts of bridges and roads I would be able to fit into. My goal is eventually to do 1-2 months per year on the road in total, with the possibility to work from the road some of the time. Still looking around, but I really liked that one haha.
My long journey experience (perhaps not fully typical) was at odds with both of your "realizations".
* I spent most of a year on the road, circled the U.S., about 18k miles in all (and averaging almost 17mpg). Sure, it's a lot of miles, but some people do that commuting. The experience was in no way "just driving and sleeping" in fact the driving part was not particularly unpleasant (amazing views, music, books on tape, conversation, photo stops) but was a very minor part of the overall experience.
* With a compact (25') class C, I had a comfortable queen sized bed, 2 TVs couch, heat, A/C, 2 sinks, stove, microwave, fridge, flush toilet, closet, large dinette (seats 6), and a great hot shower every morning. A slide out made it very roomy when parked. A huge awning made for comfortable outdoor living on sunny days. I've done the station wagon thing, and it can be great for a while - but for a year on the road? NFW.
So long as the station wagon or other non-van vehicle is used for occasional on-the-road camping ...
... it's quite possible to carry bathing (not necessarily shower), cooking, and at least modest toilet facilities (a bottle and/or bucket in a pinch). In many places these aren't entirely necessary. Even many van-lifers forego full facilities as these impinge highly on available space, weight budgets, and flexibility.
The designs that seem most appropriate to me tend to make flexible use of space. E.g., a countertop which may conceal a composting or cassette toilet, which itself can be pulled out and a curtain up to provide a shower or sponge-bathing space.
Similarly, cooktops which can be used either inside or outside the vehicle. I can only imaging that cooking smells, grease, and the like can easily permeate everything if used extensively. In most cases ventilation requirements would mean that you'd want to have doors / windows open anyway, and an outside kitchen gives far more working and maneuvering space.
I don't full-time or even part-time RV. I own a class-a 36' diesel pusher. During the summer, I spend one month on the Oregon coast, and during the winter, I go to Twenty-Nine Palms or Palm Springs for one or two months. This allows me to fully immerse myself in an area and explore national parks and new places for an extended period.
I wish I would have known how stressful it can be. For me, It feels like there is always a drag of stress - maybe a 30% overhead of stress. If you suddenly don't have hot water, it is on you to fix it because when you are "living" in it for that period, someone won't be able to come to help you repair it for several weeks. You can't even throw money at it, they just are too busy and can't come out.
Driving can be stressful too. You get experienced to it after a while but driving at night down a two-lane highway with diesel trucks behind you, in front of you (another lane), and directly to your left where the vortex pulls you in all while you're trying to keep it in the lane can be stressful. Pulling into a truck stop to fuel can be stressful.
I like to stick to around < 300 miles per day. I prefer to arrive before it's dark. This means a 12-hour drive I would make in my car can end up taking 2-3 days in the RV. I don't mind taking the time now. I relax, unplug and enjoy it. It now relaxes me. I would rather it take time than to worry about driving at night or pulling into a spot at night.
The last few times we went we had two older dogs. One was having seizures. We didn't know it yet but she had kidney failure and had quit eating as much. We didn't notice her feeding habits at home since the other dog was a jerk, eating her portions without us knowing. The trip was fortunate because we got to see everything up close and in person. I have a slight deficiency in object permanence and for them to be right there in my face, we were able to see it. The other dog -- nicknamed Pigbert now -- was having serious issues with his arthritis. He would randomly screech due to pain. A steroid for two weeks solved it quickly.
If you combine those things with the 30% constant drag of stress it can be very unpleasant. No hot water, caring for dogs in crisis, and stressful drives all lead to something that is quite unmanageable.
My advice is to just be aware of managing stressors and ensuring you have as few as possible on travel days. My other advice is - if it sounds like it is for you - DO IT. I have backpacked Europe and traveled to very nice resorts. None of them top the amazing experiences I have had on the road. I won't personally live in that small of a space full-time or part-time but I admire those that do it.
This is a pretty good summary of how I feel and why I dig my heels in every time my wife starts talking about a new camper, a boat or whatever. I suspect she envisions it like a magazine cover: better, carefree versions of ourselves enjoying the sunshine with friends (who are ideally green with envy).
Boats are just holes in the water you throw money into.
Campers, I actually agree with you and that's as someone on his second purchase. But, my agreement comes in the form that I believe everyone should baby step their way in. Tent camp at an improved campground (meaning, at least a toilet onsite. Plumbing very optional and probably not happening). If your crew enjoy it, then it makes sense to step up but I'd still go small. Small towable/travel trailer. By that point, you'll know what you want/need.
You need to be the sorts of people for whom the highs make it worthwhile. For me, that's what I live for - adventuring around, seeing things, getting away. So I tolerate the stress, the costs, trying to find somewhere safe to sleep in a random forest after midnight, etc. Otherwise, it's a lot more hassle and getting the new camper doesn't just make it all easy. You're still vying for popular camping spots, still trying to get time off work when you want it, etc.
This isn't a stressor, just an observation. Another thing I would share is that most of the people on the road are twice my age. This can be a pleasure when you meet unique people who like you because you remind them of their grandkids which means they spoil you with meals and stories. This can also be a nightmare where they are retired, have nothing to do but complain and there is a major generational difference in how they understand and respect your same-sex marriage.
I drive a class B up to 400 miles a day. You really don't want to drive more than 8 hours daily no more than you want to work more than 8 hours daily. And I say that as someone who went from San Diego to Seattle in a single crazy marathon drive once in a sports car during the very dar.kest days of the pandemic. I will eventually trade mine in for an EV option because my limitation isn't hot water or gasoline but rather electricity. I have both a generator and lithium batteries but on a 100° day I like to be polite. So the idea of charging the silly thing at an electrify America is really appealing. Cue someone ranting about the environmental toll of EVs.
I did this for about 2 years across the United States. If you’re employed, make sure your manager is supportive/already remote friendly.
Get good internet. I found Verizon to be the best for cellular and this was before Starlink Mobile was available. Get a directional cellular antenna and mount (not a repeater/amplifier) and learn how to point the antenna at towers if you plan to do any “boondocking” out in the west of the US. Otherwise, everywhere else these days likely has internet.
Compost Toilet is a win in my book. Very little maintenance and no nasty tanks to deal with. But, it’s not for everyone.
Decide if you need showers in your wheeled home or not. That drives the cost of your rig significantly. Most RVs are absolute trash for quality south of $50k.
There, edited it for you for accuracy. :-) Seriously, our Thor retailed for $100K in 2018, and I've been through that entire vehicle while installing solar/inverter/battery. As I've told my spouse, "there isn't a straight screw in that whole interior". I've probably pulled a bathroom garbage container worth of crap out of the walls (leftover trimmings and the like). Yeah, didn't think anyone would look in there, eh? :-)
"South" to mean down or below, and likewise for north, drives me up a wall. If you are standing at the south pole, north is down. There's also no concept of up/down in space, and so northern hemisphere normalcy is false. To Australians, North America is below!
We've been in a 20-year old class-C for a year, it requires regular handyman maintenance (we bounce down a lot of dirt roads) but it has been very mechanically reliable. Upgrading to 200ah of LiFePO4, adding a 140L water tank on the hitch, and plumbing in an external hose for beach showers really improved our quality-of-life. The only thing that will kill them is roof leaks, make sure you replace the rubber roof every 5 years or so.
Give it a few months before you start accessorising, we've kept it to a couple of ebikes, camp chairs+table, and a paddleboard. Don't bother with Starlink unless you need to be online 24/7, and if you do get it, consider it only as a supplimentary to a good rugged dual-sim 4G modem.
Back home (NZ) we were in a almost-new Sprinter, which was great on fuel, but less fun once you wanted to go off-road or abuse it in any way. Our 2WD Ford goes places people don't dare bring their shiny new 4x4s.
I wouldn't go over 22' long, especially in Mexico and the fun parts of Canada, otherwise you'll just be touring RV parks with all the other people towing F150s and jetskis and bouncy castles.
I travel for months at a time but have a "real" property to land at, so not completely nomadic. YMMV especially if full-time.
> share their general setup
I own a mid-sized SUV that gets 25-30 MPH. Think RAV4/CRV/Forester/Rogue/etc -- it's all the same just buy whatever you can get a good deal on (definitely RAV4 hybrid if you plan on lots of city driving; otherwise financially it's a wash until you get to $5/gal or so).
- bed platform in the back.
- Passenger seat is converted into a desk.
- onboard storage under the bed, in the back foot wells, and a battery in the spare tire well.
- outboard storage (including spare tire and water) on the roof rack. Solar panels over that stuff. Ran a cable from the panels to the battery.
- I have a little tent setup on the side which is nice when you have a place to land and want to... stand up.
> monthly costs
When on the road, I make due on about $500/mo and live quite luxuriously. I eat out and drink, even. Not counting the cost of the car or health insurance.
That number is going up over time due more to lifestyle creep than inflation. I try to keep my monthly expenses below one twelfth of 4% of 30% of my liquid post-tax assets.
> any tips/tricks/advice?
People spend stupid amounts of money to avoid renting and dependency on others.
Don't buy a bunch of shit. Instead, invest and rent!
Case-in-point: showers. You can blow $50K extra to have a setup that gives you indoor showers. Or, you can buy notes and have 50000*.05/12 = $200/mo = at least a few showers per week AND you get to keep the principal!!! (and that's just the winter months -- for the cost of one hour/month of cold water showering for 9 months you get an extra $1800/yr to reinvest!)
If you are young and single, anything bigger than Transit Connect is unnecessary. Honestly, I've seen people live in priuses for years at time quite comfortably. As that number as gone up, so too have the number of lobsters/cocktails/burgers/dates.
Try not to work from the car. A transit connect or RV beats an SUV you want to work from the car, but I promise you would prefer to work from a coffee shop or by following the weather and working outside as much as possible. You'll end up avoiding work days in the rig even if you have the space, so why blow stupid amounts of money? You live out of a car; I promise you won't want to also work out of a car.
I got laid off at the start of Covid, but I had enough money saved up that I wasn't in a hurry to get a new job. I looked at lots of manufactured trailers and considered vans as well.
Vans are great because you always have everything with you, but that also means you always have everything with you. Trailers are great because you can drop them and just have a normal car, but then you have to find somewhere to drop them. In the end, I went with a trailer because they're a lot cheaper and I didn't want to go cutting holes in van.
I'd initially planned on getting a manufactured trailer, but all the ones I looked at didn't seem worth the money. The real deal breaker for me was I wanted to do a lot of camping near ski areas and cheaper trailers (sub-$50k) all have plumbing outside the insulated area. I didn't really want to spend $30-50k and then not be able to use the plumbing.
Driving back from an RV dealership, I saw someone pulling a U-Haul and that got me wondering. Sure enough, there's tons of content on youtube of people building out cargo trailers. I actually started by renting a U-Haul for a week and camping out of it in the middle of winter. It wasn't great, but it worked.
At this point, I'm pretty happy with the choice I made, but it's been a ton of work and lots of uncertainty. It's a lot less stressful cutting a hole in a $5k trailer vs a $20-70k van, but it's still pretty stressful. I basically knew nothing about building when I started out. You can just start camping in a cargo trailer right away and it's still better than a tent ... or a teardrop trailer imo.
I've come up with lots of tricks along the way and at some point I'll blog about them. I still have a million ideas I want to try building too though.
It's going to be more expensive than you think, if you try to live in it the way you would in a regular apartment or house. The need for lightness in construction means there are compromises that you will have to work around.
I found Visible to be fast enough at 5mbps for most things. I hooked up a Wifi router to serve as a client for those cases where I wasn't tethering.
I think it is tougher when you try to work a remote job, since you basically do everything in the same small space. Eat cook work sleep read etc all in the same x square feet.
It really depends! I mean you can get by for not much money, or you can live in a million dollar RV at a $200/night park in the keys with a private dock and cabana.
You can get a pretty decent truck/camper combo for under $100k.
Also curious. I was looking locally for some sort of meetup/show where I could see people builds, ask about cost, etc. Sadly I just missed an expo the previous weekend.
I'm in a Leisure Travel Vans Wonder Rear Twin bed, which is a 25 foot "Class B+" RV built on a Ford Transit Chassis.
For internet, we use a combo of Verizon (via a Wineguard antennae on our roof) and Starlink (the not-mounted, mobile version) and it's worked wonderfully. Verizon works great near cities. Starlink works great in more remote settings as long as there aren't trees, but the extra long starlink cable makes it pretty easy to find spots where I can connect.
We largely moochdock (staying in family/friends driveways), but when we travel we will alternate spending a week or two in remote parks, then parks nearer a city, etc. so that we get a good combo of civilization and nature. Parks near cities normally run us around $40 per night, and more remote places are largely either free or around $20 per night. There are a surprising number of random costs that have popped up over time, and our budget typically is cheaper than when we owned/rented different houses, but not by that much.
My wife and I can comfortably make it about 7 days without any hookups before we need to go to a park. We have solar + a gas generator, so we never have issues with electricity. It's usually either running out of fresh water or filling our black tank that will limit our remote stays.
There are high highs and low lows with RVing. Highs include being able to work comfortably from literal caves and beaches with nobody in sight (Red Rock Park in CA is gorgeous and nobody goes there, as an example). Lows include being stuck in a place we didn't like for two months after we needed unexpected window/body repairs and couldn't drive. Having your house be your mode of transportation can be extremely limiting. We don't tow a car or have the tow capacity to in our current RV, but I wish we did.
My biggest piece of advice is to meet new people and to see old friends/family as much as possible. Hot tubs and hiking are my go tos for meeting new people, and I've made some incredible friends doing each. But it's different than before I was nomadic. I meet people, and two days later we're hiking together, and three weeks later we're hiking in Hawaii together staying in the same AirBnb, and then one of us goes to the midwest and the other to California and we don't see each other for months/years. It's fast paced and fun, but it can also do a number on your mental health if you need consistency in your life. A therapist helps me, as do frequent trips to see family/friends, as does having friends at my place of work that I chat with remotely, but coordinating in-person meeting can be hard when many of my nomad friends could be in any of 48 states most of the time.
I love my RV, and choose to live in it even when I have other options available (like if we're at a cabin, hotel, etc.). If you can make an RV your happy place, it can be a lot of fun touring the world.
Readit News
First is the visibility of these pull-outs is often very poor. You'll be driving through long winding roads and then all of the sudden the pull-out appears. In an RV, you can't just slam on the breaks and swerve into the pullout, ESPECIALLY if you're going downhill.
Second, often times (in the USA at least), these pull-outs have rough terrain going in an and out of them. There will be a little bump or uneven ground that most vehicles wouldn't mind hitting every now and then, but in my rig, that causes the whole thing to sway back and forth (Class-C built on a Mercedes Sprinter). I REALLY need to upgrade the suspension.
Third is time. Since I'm slower than everyone else, people tend to pile up behind me pretty quickly. Pulling into the pull-out, coming to a complete stop, waiting for everyone to pass, then getting back up to speed takes a long time. If I did this every time there was a car behind me, it would take forever. So, I tend to wait until there's more than a few cars behind me before pulling off.
Fourth is my wife. She says I have "overly-considerate disorder" and I need to make our safety #1 and stop caring about other people so damn much.
There isn't always advance signage, so you often see them at the last second and don't have time to check the quality of the approach, check if the person behind you has enough warning, etc.
They're always far poorer quality than the road itself, so you're aggressively decelerating a heavy vehicle in usually mountainous conditions, approaching a 4"+ drop into ragged pavement or gravel. I've hit some of those spots at speed and it's felt like the vehicle was going to fall apart.
And yes, often you're going slowly because you've just let a few cars past and reentered the road, just for another person to drive up behind you and start the whole game again.
It's very very rare to find signed turnouts that are good and long enough that it's trivial to pull off the road at a reasonable speed, let people through, and then continue on without just creating more problems.
I remember turnouts in NW Idaho or closer to Spokane maybe where the signage suggested you were meant to use the shoulders to let cars pass, but they were really narrow and I wasn't sure how exactly they were meant to be used? Anyone familiar with that area? If it's not wide enough to get fully out of the lane, wouldn't the passing car just overtake using the opposite lane anyway?
I can't speak about your (w|l)ife, but in my (w|l)ife, people who say this are the people who personally enjoy taking advantage of my nature, and my "overly considerate behavior" is only pointed out when someone else seems to be getting benefit at the expense of my (w|l)ife; i.e it's a statement of selfishness.
Being excessively considerate of others on the road is safer from my experience.
> coming to a complete stop
You're not meant to come to a stop. That absolutely kills what momentum you do have. It's exceptionally difficult to start a heavy vehicle from a stop. You're meant to pull out, maybe slow down a little, then pull back in, cars be damned. Some cars will pass, maybe not all. The new lead set of cars will get by at the next pullout, and so on in incremental fashion.
But what happens in practice is that the first or 2nd idiot behind you does not prepare in advance and then does not race like mad when you go into the pullout, thereby allowing as many following cars as possible to also make the pass. Even if that first car did execute it correctly, the 2nd car likely does not. Then the 2nd or maybe 3rd car is "in the breach" when the pullout lane ends, blocking your (RV) re-entry and forcing you to stop. Then you're doubly fooked. You have to start from a complete stop and you're at the very end of the pullout lane, with no speedup zone at all.
... this is why we can't have nice things ...
My daily commute involves a 2 lane highway (ie, 1 lane each direction) with a pullout for slow moving vehicles. Semi trucks and other heavy construction type vehicles use this road a lot, as it's the only viable route. They do almost always use the pullout, but they pull back in at the end without regard for anyone in the traffic lane. They have to -- they are even worse than any RV on getting started from a stop again. So I see this crap driving from the auto drivers almost every day. If I happen to be the first car waiting behind a truck, I race on past and then it's always the case that only 1 other car in a long line also make it past, when 6-7 should be making it. I also frequently witness the slow passing fool have to slam his brakes as the truck re-enters the lane.
I don't fault any RV for not using the pullout lanes.
Deleted Comment
Dead Comment
Only you would know, but this could be something other than what it seems like.
When I had a motorcycle, I'd tail a slow vehicle for miles in anticipation of a passing zone. When we got there, they'd all of a sudden accelerate-- which I always assumed was them fucking with me, until one day I realized I do the same thing myself when in a car.
We speed up when we perceive it is safe to do so (long stretches of straight road), similar to unconsciously letting off the gas when you notice a cop running a speed trap.
If this is what you encounter, it may be an unconscious thing, or the RV driver consciously speeding up for your convenience. If they're swerving, consider that they're tall and wind pushes them around easily.
But they could also just be dicks, sure.
There's a mountain pass I travel a few times a year where this happens.
The limit is 45 mph throughout the curves, and that's a reasonable speed, though I prefer to go a bit faster, but will inevitably get stuck behind someone going 35.
We reach a point where there's a passing lane, and the limit is 55 mph. I try to pass the person that was going 35 mph before, and suddenly they seem to think that 70 mph is a reasonable speed. I have to pass these people regardless of how fast they want to go when there's a passing lane, because otherwise, I'll get stuck behind them once the passing lane ends and they decide to drop back down to 10 under the limit.
Luckily, these days, I have a car that can easily pass 98% of the other cars on the road, and the remaining 2% are already going at speed.
The thing people don't realize is that speed limit advisory signs (on turns or downhills usually) are essentially mandatory for high CG vehicles - to avoid rollover risk.
To help you understand some reasons to refuse a pullout, here are the conditions that I think must be true for an RV or heavy truck to safely and practically use a pullout: (Maybe I'm missing something)
1) Vehicle is slower than the speed limit or lower than the safety speed advisory by more than 10 mph. (Yes, this is annoying for people that want to exceed the speed limit, but they can use passing lanes.)
2) Pullout must be visibly paved and clear for entry in advance of safe braking distance. (This is often a problem.)
3) The pullout must have good visibility behind it so the vehicle can safely get back up to speed from 0 after stopping. (Sometimes a problem.)
4) Traffic must be light enough such that rejoining the travel lane is feasible in less than a couple minutes. (This is often a problem.)
5) The pullout must have a safe path to return to the travel lane. (I have had to balk pullout attempts after nearing the pullout because this is not always immediately clear at a distance.)
6) Most importantly, the vehicle must not be followed either at an unsafe distance or by someone driving erratically. (I am not going to risk damage to my vehicle by braking for someone following too closely.)
edit:formatting
Ah, Washington drivers! Paying no attention at all until someone nears their space, then all of a sudden VERY attentive and territorial yet unwilling to be actually aggressive, so instead just kind of interfering.
Highway driving at its finest.
In my experience most drivers are not very aware of their surroundings and just seem to do stupid things like form rolling roadblocks by accident. I wonder if RVs are just more noticeable because they are longer, and so their accidental traps tend to be bigger. The other vehicles that size are typically driven by professionals, who are at least a little more with-it. Usually.
Usually doesn't bother me as much, and if I had adaptive cruise I'd be even less unbothered, but it can be annoying.
RVs are like moving rental trucks, the drivers of them don't really know what they're doing.
Deleted Comment
I used to live in a small tourist town, and people died on a regular basis because of RVs doing that. You could spot the local drivers because they're the ones hugging the fog line when going around a bend.
Many RVs are 8.5 feet wide. Common highway lanes are 10 feet wide. There are curvy highways like route 1 that I swear are only 9' wide. I worry more about line selection and holding my rig inside the yellows than I worry about line selection when I'm racing my motorcycle. It's challenging for me and I drive things as a sport. I'm not covering for someone who went over the yellows, that's unforgivable, but I wanted to add some context for you.
I just recently tried to use the side lane in DK to let others pass (set signal, decelerate, pull over as far as possible). It actually confused the other drivers so much that they didn't dare to take over, even when there was lots of space to do so.
Often they are a short paved lane meant for slow vehicles to pull off onto to allow slower traffic to pass, but often on mountain roads, it's a gravel off-road area that serves the same purpose. But pulling into one can be a bumpy ride, and the gravel service means it's hard to accelerate quickly until you get fully back on the road so you need to be sure you have a lot of clear space behind you (which can be hard to ensure on twisty mountain roads).
https://youtu.be/sKLhtlO_aZs
https://california.public.law/codes/ca_veh_code_section_2165...
I've been behind plenty of RVs who don't drive as fast as I want to. But that's what happens on a public road. (These RVs still drive at a reasonable speed, just not as fast as I want to. IE 48mph in a 50 when I want to drive 55.)
The big problem is obvious drivers, who often are in passenger cars. I've been stuck behind far more oblivious drivers than RVs. These drivers do 20 in a 50, and ignore the long line of cars behind them.
https://www.mit.edu/~jfc/right.html
Gotta disagree here. Almost always when I get stuck behind something going 20 under, whether it's an RV or a Corolla, the driver of that vehicle blows past every available pullout and accelerates to 30+ over when a passing lane appears. Drivers are just raging assholes, no matter what they're driving.
I spent several months living out of my car+tent in national parks/forests and often referred to them as Ruins Views. Breathtaking scenery in those national parks, that you can't focus on when you're stuck in a line of twenty cars riding your brakes and smelling theirs, because Big Bob doesn't want to get his tippy palace going too fast.
I do get the appeal, but lugging around so much tonnage seems like a recipe for a bad time. Now I'm at a different life stage where I've been doing a bunch of towing with an underpowered SUV, and I make it a point to get out of peoples' ways. Luckily most of that has been on multilane highways where it's easy to do so.
Just keeping a car on a road with no traffic takes a fair amount of focus: for evidence, just see how many people don’t do it and plow into objects that are alongside the road.
Driving a huge RV I have trouble seeing and pulling off at my destination, let alone a fall-off-the-road-into-dirt pullout that comes up quickly around a turn.
Deleted Comment
Now, maybe it's just WA state, but if we hit the road for an extended period I'd be reserving spots ahead of time even at places far less popular than, say, Yellowstone.
I imagine it'll die off because as you point out, folks will find out that RVs always need something, and in a lot of ways are kind of a pain-in-the-ass. But, man, thought it would have happened by now.
Now they can be booked months in advance when you've no sense of how available you'll be or what the weather will be like.
For Michigan's booking system, people also game it by booking long stays that finish on the dates want (thus getting around the "within 6 months" booking window) and then cancelling down to the dates they want for a paltry cancellation fee, given how in demand they are.
Used to be friends with Nina back in the day and recently sold our full-timing Airstream. https://www.wheelingit.us/2013/04/26/campsite-lottery-red-ro...
A white van can go and park anywhere a delivery truck can go, whereas RVs may get unwanted attention.
1. Just one engine to take care of. If you have a motor home, you’re towing a car too. So that’s two sets of drivetrains with all of the maintenance and expense that goes with it.
2. Easy to replace the drive part. If my truck dies I can just get another truck. The trailer lives on. Whole lot easier than dealing with what happens when an RV dies.
3. More maneuverable (though also harder to learn to tow if you’re not already used to it) because it pivots at the point where it connects to the vehicle.
4. Much cheaper in the long run. A diesel 3/4 or full ton truck barely depreciates at all in absolute dollars even in normal times. RVs can’t say that at all. If you buy a camper and a pickup you can probably sell them in five years for most of what you put into them.
5th wheel trailers help with this (so I've been told by family members that have them).
1. You can boondock much more discretely. I can move quietly from the driver seat into the sleeping area without letting the neighborhood know anyone is there at all. Also safer in that if someone is bothering me, I can also just drive away.
2. Much faster to setup. I usually just hop out of my rv, connect the power cord and back in. Press a button for leveling out. When you have a trailer and you need to go somewhere, it probably involves disconnecting the hitch which is a ton of work. It’s possible to leave it connected but the length of both the trailer and car is usually too long for a campsite
3. Slightly related to that last one but length. My RV is 24 feet, I can just pull straight into most driveways, press a button and I’m setup. Not a fan of backing trailers into steep or across uneven driveways.
4. Incredibly easy to drive. As other people are discussing letting folks overtake you, it just wasn’t as necessary because you can drive a short rv like a car. Miss a gas station? Just hit that uturn at the signal and go back. Good luck with a trailer or even more fun in a 5th wheel
5. Cross wind. I haven’t driven much with a trailer but in the desert, the cross winds were sorta scary while driving an RV. I have to imagine this is worse with a trailer.
6. Having that back living space easy to reach. Thirsty on that 6 hour drive? Just send a passenger back to the fridge to grab a cold drink or food from the pantry
7. Storage. This can go two ways but I only have a driveway for two cars. My RV fits in one spot. If I had a trailer, I would have to park the truck separately which wouldn’t leave room for another car off the street
8. Battery recharging. When the RV is running, the deep cycle batteries charge. I can let the car idle instead of running the connected generator. There is also a button you can hold down and it uses the deep cycle batteries start the car engine in case the car battery dies. The whole system is integrated so you theoretically can’t have a dead battery on both the engine portion or the rear living space portion
9. Ac, I have had issues with my rear AC, I can start the car and run the AC from the front vents to keep the back area livable
That's assuming that you actually want or need a truck (or other tow vehicle large enough to pull your trailer). I went with a motorhome (but don't pull a car) because my other care is a small EV, and I don't really have a use for a truck or other large vehicle.
When you look at the total cost of ownership, cost of maintenance, depreciation, and the relative comfort of driving a new nice diesel truck vs a box van it's a no Brainer. When we're too old amd weak to disconnect the trailer from the truck we'll get a motorized rv, until then we'll stick with our truck and trailer.
Now you're doing your grocery shopping, sightseeing, and trailhead parking with a dualie pickup truck.
And when one engine breaks, you are stuck...
Guess what else gets horrible mileage when you hook a trailer to it? I'll put our 26' Sprinter class C's 15mpg up against anything pulling something larger than a pod trailer. And after I did some much-needed suspension upgrades, the thing drives like a car. Best of all, I don't have to pull a trailer. We use ours a fair amount because all we do is toss food in the fridge, turn the key and go.
A lot of the reason I see for pulling a car (often referred to as a "toad". "towed", get it?), is so one doesn't have to roll everything up just to go see the sights.
And both can be supplemented by auxiliary transportation (bikes, motorbikes, small car).
There are some times where it's annoying to break camp to go to some activity but it's much less annoying than towing a car full time, not being able to back up, etc.
When I took the plunge I bought a van (Ford Transit with the high roof) and converted it to an RV myself. The van is light(ish) and powerful enough. We fly up mountains and can park in a normal parking lot space.
But there are benefits as well - it’s way more comfortable for passengers, and it’s easier to setup on arrival.
I've never had success with a ride service outside of a city, and outside of cities is where RV sites that people are interested in tend to be located.
Here's what my list would be: (full time for 7 years, now building a house so I don't need full time RVing ever again).
1. RV parks are full, they converted almost all the nightly sites to monthlys to guarantee revenue. RV Parks are the new mobile home park but with monthly RVers who got wind of the "Gone with the Wynns" blog and cheaper cost of living.
2. RV Park nightly rates have literally gone from $35 a night to $70 a night during the 2020s -> 2023s. A lot of the time you're the one that showed up paying $70 per day and all the loud blubs next door are paying $10 per night at the monthly rate.
3. Free camping areas are getting shut down after sites like "campendium" have advertised them to everyone. Most of the problems are related to illegal gray and black tank dumping on public lands.
4. Quartzsite is an absolute shit-show now, it's still probably worth going, but it's crowded. I wouldn't be surprised if they shut down the free areas in the next few years over the same gray/black tank issues.
5. Internet problems are 1000% solved with Starlink now.
6. Solar does not power the A/C. To power the A/C you need 10+ residential solar panels and a $2000 inverter on a 48 volt system. There are ways to have a 48 volt battery and down-regulate to 12v for the rest of your RV. People that run A/C off solar have "special ways" to have that many residential panels, typically involving fold outs and trailers.
7. Gas prices have skyrocketed in CA so it's not worth going anywhere near the state - let alone find a park that's cheap.
RV Progression
Cedar Creek 5th Wheel (2 years) -> Arctic Fox TC 1150 (5 years) -> Alliance Paradigm (1 year) -> building house
I have not found this to be true. I run a Cruise N Comfort 12v AC and it works great (most it uses is about 60amps at 12v which I run off my solar panels). See my post here https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36408382
You can easily run standard old-school RV rooftop A/C for hours with good 12 V LiFePOs and a pretty bog-standard 3 kW inverter.
Trying to charge those batteries up with ~1000 W solar is gonna take a looong time though.
If you really understand what living in a RV or a van really involves, you quickly realize several things:
* If you plan a long journey, it's still a lot of time spent on the road, and gas money. So it's not about just living in the wild, it's just driving and sleeping, which is not that great, and it's not what people mean when they mean to live in a van. It's a home that can move, but it's not meant to travel.
* It's better to keep a real home, use a station wagon to sleep in it or carry stuff, a bicycle, a tent etc, and not go too far from your home and still enjoy the wilderness, and do this for several months and still enjoy being in the wild without using a RV or van. A station wagon is not the full luxury, but it's still pretty nice.
The trend is on vans which are smaller RVs, but I really thing using a station wagon is largely enough.
I cannot stress enough how absurdly expensive it is to keep an RV moving on the road. They are built in by far the least weight efficient manner imaginable and consume gas or diesel as if prices hadn’t changed since 1986. It is wild how little manufacturers have spent on R&D to come up with more weight efficient solutions.
It’s a garbage industry full of garbage vendors selling unremarkable trash, YoY.
a) the majority of RVs are designed to be driven with a standard car license, so fully loaded must weigh less than 3500kg
b) The vans that are used as base of RVs all run on diesel, and have a fuel consumption of around 8l/100km or 30mpg. Add around 20% for a Class B RV.
It’s absurd but no less absurd than a similarly priced boat that might get 20-30 hours if use a season. Plenty of other neighbors have those.
* I spent most of a year on the road, circled the U.S., about 18k miles in all (and averaging almost 17mpg). Sure, it's a lot of miles, but some people do that commuting. The experience was in no way "just driving and sleeping" in fact the driving part was not particularly unpleasant (amazing views, music, books on tape, conversation, photo stops) but was a very minor part of the overall experience.
* With a compact (25') class C, I had a comfortable queen sized bed, 2 TVs couch, heat, A/C, 2 sinks, stove, microwave, fridge, flush toilet, closet, large dinette (seats 6), and a great hot shower every morning. A slide out made it very roomy when parked. A huge awning made for comfortable outdoor living on sunny days. I've done the station wagon thing, and it can be great for a while - but for a year on the road? NFW.
I like to describe my Toyota Sienna as a "metal tent on wheels". It's got a full mattress, but it's no house.
There's no bathroom, kitchen, or shower in your station wagon.
... it's quite possible to carry bathing (not necessarily shower), cooking, and at least modest toilet facilities (a bottle and/or bucket in a pinch). In many places these aren't entirely necessary. Even many van-lifers forego full facilities as these impinge highly on available space, weight budgets, and flexibility.
The designs that seem most appropriate to me tend to make flexible use of space. E.g., a countertop which may conceal a composting or cassette toilet, which itself can be pulled out and a curtain up to provide a shower or sponge-bathing space.
Similarly, cooktops which can be used either inside or outside the vehicle. I can only imaging that cooking smells, grease, and the like can easily permeate everything if used extensively. In most cases ventilation requirements would mean that you'd want to have doors / windows open anyway, and an outside kitchen gives far more working and maneuvering space.
I'm glad people are happy with 'em, but the more I learn about that lifestyle the more I love my small pickup truck and hammock.
I wish I would have known how stressful it can be. For me, It feels like there is always a drag of stress - maybe a 30% overhead of stress. If you suddenly don't have hot water, it is on you to fix it because when you are "living" in it for that period, someone won't be able to come to help you repair it for several weeks. You can't even throw money at it, they just are too busy and can't come out.
Driving can be stressful too. You get experienced to it after a while but driving at night down a two-lane highway with diesel trucks behind you, in front of you (another lane), and directly to your left where the vortex pulls you in all while you're trying to keep it in the lane can be stressful. Pulling into a truck stop to fuel can be stressful.
I like to stick to around < 300 miles per day. I prefer to arrive before it's dark. This means a 12-hour drive I would make in my car can end up taking 2-3 days in the RV. I don't mind taking the time now. I relax, unplug and enjoy it. It now relaxes me. I would rather it take time than to worry about driving at night or pulling into a spot at night.
The last few times we went we had two older dogs. One was having seizures. We didn't know it yet but she had kidney failure and had quit eating as much. We didn't notice her feeding habits at home since the other dog was a jerk, eating her portions without us knowing. The trip was fortunate because we got to see everything up close and in person. I have a slight deficiency in object permanence and for them to be right there in my face, we were able to see it. The other dog -- nicknamed Pigbert now -- was having serious issues with his arthritis. He would randomly screech due to pain. A steroid for two weeks solved it quickly.
If you combine those things with the 30% constant drag of stress it can be very unpleasant. No hot water, caring for dogs in crisis, and stressful drives all lead to something that is quite unmanageable.
My advice is to just be aware of managing stressors and ensuring you have as few as possible on travel days. My other advice is - if it sounds like it is for you - DO IT. I have backpacked Europe and traveled to very nice resorts. None of them top the amazing experiences I have had on the road. I won't personally live in that small of a space full-time or part-time but I admire those that do it.
I see myself disassembling the toilet.
Campers, I actually agree with you and that's as someone on his second purchase. But, my agreement comes in the form that I believe everyone should baby step their way in. Tent camp at an improved campground (meaning, at least a toilet onsite. Plumbing very optional and probably not happening). If your crew enjoy it, then it makes sense to step up but I'd still go small. Small towable/travel trailer. By that point, you'll know what you want/need.
And always remember that if it gets too bad for a while there's no shame in stopping at a hotel for a night or two.
Get good internet. I found Verizon to be the best for cellular and this was before Starlink Mobile was available. Get a directional cellular antenna and mount (not a repeater/amplifier) and learn how to point the antenna at towers if you plan to do any “boondocking” out in the west of the US. Otherwise, everywhere else these days likely has internet.
Compost Toilet is a win in my book. Very little maintenance and no nasty tanks to deal with. But, it’s not for everyone.
Decide if you need showers in your wheeled home or not. That drives the cost of your rig significantly. Most RVs are absolute trash for quality south of $50k.
It sounds like the pandemic generated such a crush of orders that now even more expensive ones are slapped together at the factory.
Mercedes Streeter at The Autopian (spiritual heir to Jalopnik) has been looking at her parents’ new RV.
https://www.theautopian.com/my-familys-62800-camper-is-junk-...
There, edited it for you for accuracy. :-) Seriously, our Thor retailed for $100K in 2018, and I've been through that entire vehicle while installing solar/inverter/battery. As I've told my spouse, "there isn't a straight screw in that whole interior". I've probably pulled a bathroom garbage container worth of crap out of the walls (leftover trimmings and the like). Yeah, didn't think anyone would look in there, eh? :-)
"South" to mean down or below, and likewise for north, drives me up a wall. If you are standing at the south pole, north is down. There's also no concept of up/down in space, and so northern hemisphere normalcy is false. To Australians, North America is below!
Give it a few months before you start accessorising, we've kept it to a couple of ebikes, camp chairs+table, and a paddleboard. Don't bother with Starlink unless you need to be online 24/7, and if you do get it, consider it only as a supplimentary to a good rugged dual-sim 4G modem.
Back home (NZ) we were in a almost-new Sprinter, which was great on fuel, but less fun once you wanted to go off-road or abuse it in any way. Our 2WD Ford goes places people don't dare bring their shiny new 4x4s.
I wouldn't go over 22' long, especially in Mexico and the fun parts of Canada, otherwise you'll just be touring RV parks with all the other people towing F150s and jetskis and bouncy castles.
I travel for months at a time but have a "real" property to land at, so not completely nomadic. YMMV especially if full-time.
> share their general setup
I own a mid-sized SUV that gets 25-30 MPH. Think RAV4/CRV/Forester/Rogue/etc -- it's all the same just buy whatever you can get a good deal on (definitely RAV4 hybrid if you plan on lots of city driving; otherwise financially it's a wash until you get to $5/gal or so).
- bed platform in the back.
- Passenger seat is converted into a desk.
- onboard storage under the bed, in the back foot wells, and a battery in the spare tire well.
- outboard storage (including spare tire and water) on the roof rack. Solar panels over that stuff. Ran a cable from the panels to the battery.
- I have a little tent setup on the side which is nice when you have a place to land and want to... stand up.
> monthly costs
When on the road, I make due on about $500/mo and live quite luxuriously. I eat out and drink, even. Not counting the cost of the car or health insurance.
That number is going up over time due more to lifestyle creep than inflation. I try to keep my monthly expenses below one twelfth of 4% of 30% of my liquid post-tax assets.
> any tips/tricks/advice?
People spend stupid amounts of money to avoid renting and dependency on others.
Don't buy a bunch of shit. Instead, invest and rent!
Case-in-point: showers. You can blow $50K extra to have a setup that gives you indoor showers. Or, you can buy notes and have 50000*.05/12 = $200/mo = at least a few showers per week AND you get to keep the principal!!! (and that's just the winter months -- for the cost of one hour/month of cold water showering for 9 months you get an extra $1800/yr to reinvest!)
If you are young and single, anything bigger than Transit Connect is unnecessary. Honestly, I've seen people live in priuses for years at time quite comfortably. As that number as gone up, so too have the number of lobsters/cocktails/burgers/dates.
Try not to work from the car. A transit connect or RV beats an SUV you want to work from the car, but I promise you would prefer to work from a coffee shop or by following the weather and working outside as much as possible. You'll end up avoiding work days in the rig even if you have the space, so why blow stupid amounts of money? You live out of a car; I promise you won't want to also work out of a car.
Got any pics of your rig?
Deleted Comment
I've been slowly building out a 10-foot cargo trailer similar to this: https://www.trailersplus.com/Nevada/Las_Vegas/6-Wide-Cargo-T...
I got laid off at the start of Covid, but I had enough money saved up that I wasn't in a hurry to get a new job. I looked at lots of manufactured trailers and considered vans as well.
Vans are great because you always have everything with you, but that also means you always have everything with you. Trailers are great because you can drop them and just have a normal car, but then you have to find somewhere to drop them. In the end, I went with a trailer because they're a lot cheaper and I didn't want to go cutting holes in van.
I'd initially planned on getting a manufactured trailer, but all the ones I looked at didn't seem worth the money. The real deal breaker for me was I wanted to do a lot of camping near ski areas and cheaper trailers (sub-$50k) all have plumbing outside the insulated area. I didn't really want to spend $30-50k and then not be able to use the plumbing.
Driving back from an RV dealership, I saw someone pulling a U-Haul and that got me wondering. Sure enough, there's tons of content on youtube of people building out cargo trailers. I actually started by renting a U-Haul for a week and camping out of it in the middle of winter. It wasn't great, but it worked.
At this point, I'm pretty happy with the choice I made, but it's been a ton of work and lots of uncertainty. It's a lot less stressful cutting a hole in a $5k trailer vs a $20-70k van, but it's still pretty stressful. I basically knew nothing about building when I started out. You can just start camping in a cargo trailer right away and it's still better than a tent ... or a teardrop trailer imo.
I've come up with lots of tricks along the way and at some point I'll blog about them. I still have a million ideas I want to try building too though.
I have some pics and stories on my photoblog (another thing I'm working on): https://photoblog.mallocs.net/
https://thedogisdriving.com/six-months/
https://thedogisdriving.com/one-year-of-travel/
https://thedogisdriving.com/two-years-on-the-road/
https://www.watsonswander.com/
I found Visible to be fast enough at 5mbps for most things. I hooked up a Wifi router to serve as a client for those cases where I wasn't tethering.
I think it is tougher when you try to work a remote job, since you basically do everything in the same small space. Eat cook work sleep read etc all in the same x square feet.
You can get a pretty decent truck/camper combo for under $100k.
For internet, we use a combo of Verizon (via a Wineguard antennae on our roof) and Starlink (the not-mounted, mobile version) and it's worked wonderfully. Verizon works great near cities. Starlink works great in more remote settings as long as there aren't trees, but the extra long starlink cable makes it pretty easy to find spots where I can connect.
We largely moochdock (staying in family/friends driveways), but when we travel we will alternate spending a week or two in remote parks, then parks nearer a city, etc. so that we get a good combo of civilization and nature. Parks near cities normally run us around $40 per night, and more remote places are largely either free or around $20 per night. There are a surprising number of random costs that have popped up over time, and our budget typically is cheaper than when we owned/rented different houses, but not by that much.
My wife and I can comfortably make it about 7 days without any hookups before we need to go to a park. We have solar + a gas generator, so we never have issues with electricity. It's usually either running out of fresh water or filling our black tank that will limit our remote stays.
There are high highs and low lows with RVing. Highs include being able to work comfortably from literal caves and beaches with nobody in sight (Red Rock Park in CA is gorgeous and nobody goes there, as an example). Lows include being stuck in a place we didn't like for two months after we needed unexpected window/body repairs and couldn't drive. Having your house be your mode of transportation can be extremely limiting. We don't tow a car or have the tow capacity to in our current RV, but I wish we did.
My biggest piece of advice is to meet new people and to see old friends/family as much as possible. Hot tubs and hiking are my go tos for meeting new people, and I've made some incredible friends doing each. But it's different than before I was nomadic. I meet people, and two days later we're hiking together, and three weeks later we're hiking in Hawaii together staying in the same AirBnb, and then one of us goes to the midwest and the other to California and we don't see each other for months/years. It's fast paced and fun, but it can also do a number on your mental health if you need consistency in your life. A therapist helps me, as do frequent trips to see family/friends, as does having friends at my place of work that I chat with remotely, but coordinating in-person meeting can be hard when many of my nomad friends could be in any of 48 states most of the time.
I love my RV, and choose to live in it even when I have other options available (like if we're at a cabin, hotel, etc.). If you can make an RV your happy place, it can be a lot of fun touring the world.