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Quin’s Van Life Tips

All right. Day three, let's do this. Some people factor in stealth a lot more than others. I think about stealth a lot, but for instance my Sprinter van, I did not go for stealth. You know, I put this new hood on that is not stealthy. It looks cool, people think it looks cool. They give me thumbs up down the road. When I park this and I pretend like I'm not camping in it, it also is kind of a dead giveaway, you know? The van looks cool, it looks like there's something inside of it, potentially a camper van. People wave at me and they knock on my door and they give me a thumbs up for the cool camper that I'm in. On the other hand, my box van from the outside looks like a U-Haul or a bread truck, or I don't know. You know, nobody thinks I'm in there sleeping. So there's value in having a not stealth camper van or a super stealthy camper van. It just kind of depends on your approach to things. If you want to make connections in van life, maybe your van should celebrate the fact that it's ...

a camper so that you attract a lot of people and you make a lot of cool friends. The parking lot that I hang out at the beach is just full of vans that are celebrating this, you know, overall vibe that my van is a custom camper and come in and check it out and let's all hang out together. So really you just gotta determine what you're going for. If you're celebrating that camper aspect that you're making or if you wanna be able to park on any city street and nobody even looks twice at you. Yeah, especially in the beginning of van life when you're trying to find somewhere to park, it can be a little stressful where to park because you're probably not gonna want to pay for a $30 or $50 campground every night. So likely you're just looking for somewhere free to park, ideally somewhere convenient maybe next to your friend's house or something. So parking on a random street with an obvious camper van can get you knocked on by the police or by the neighbors, the neighbors call the police on you. So that is something to factor. If you're planning on living in the city in your van, stealth goes a long way. If you're planning on being out in the middle of nowhere, you know, Utah, BLM land, all this free public land that we have in the US then, yeah, like a Sprinter that looks really cool, I don't think anyone's gonna be out there hassling you or anything. So it's really what you plan to do, where you plan to live in it the most. I would say it's never a good idea to have like a falling apart RV anywhere 'cause that draws attention wherever you're at. You know, like even if you're in the middle of the desert, you know, like people I've seen Breaking Bad and they're curious what's going on, you know? So that's a risky running when you have like a big broken down RV or even a van that's like drawing attention in like a sketchy or negative way, you know? The paint job is all chipping off or whatever. It just kind of like, it does draw a little bit of attention. Yeah, overall it's super important to know the rules of where you're trying to camp also. A few months ago we're about to summit Half Dome in Yosemite and if you know Yosemite, you're not supposed to sleep in your car in Yosemite at all. But we were about to summit Half Dome, we were gonna get a really early start. So we ended up just saying we're gonna risk it and sleep at kind of an obscure trailhead. And yeah, ended up getting knocked on at 7:00 AM, right about the time we were waking up and gonna go leave or gonna go start summiting Half Dome. And yeah, the ranger was super hardcore about it. He gave us a $300 fine and on top of that took away our permits to summit Half Dome. I've wanted to do that hike for my whole life and finally we got permits. So we completely lost out on that opportunity. Moral of the story, know the rules of where you're trying to camp, try to do it legally. Just be aware of that. If you're trying to bend the rules, take off at 5:00 AM before it gets light or just really, you know, be aware of where you're trying to sleep. So one thing I will say when you're not camping in campgrounds, lots of times you're rolling up onto uneven ground and sometimes it's a little hard to figure out where the most even spot is just by a feel of like rolling onto it or moving around. So I've found that having levels, I have two levels in my van at all times, really helps me to determine where it is level. So I have one level that goes side to side, one level that goes front to back in the van. So I compare those two levels to find that flat spot. Now lots of times there just isn't a flat spot and when that happens, I have these Maxtrax. So Maxtrax are generally designed to get you out of, if you get stuck, if you're offroading, if you fall into sand or mud or something, they're engineered to gain more traction, help your wheels gain more traction to get out. But honestly, 90% of the time I use them to help my van level. So if the left side is a little bit down, I slide 'em under. Or if it's a little bit dipped in the front I'll slide them under my wheels. I'll jump up onto 'em with my wheels to hopefully level out that angle 'cause at this point I've slept in my van so much that I can feel when it's even a little bit off, you know? And sometimes that does bother me when I'm sleeping. Let me go grab the Maxtrax for you, I'll just show you. When I'm on the road I'm usually using these every night. So just roll up onto that and you have maybe a three inch little raise for whatever side of the van needs it. Mercedes did a really good job designing the cockpit of this thing, I love driving it. But one thing I noticed is that the side, when I'm driving the side on the door, my elbow sat way lower than the side on the kind of the middle of the van. So I ended up getting these like, I don't even know, I think they're called elbow buddies. I'll have to confirm on that, but just a soft nice cushy pad for your elbow for long drives. I kind of sit back like I'm in a lazyboy now. So that's a nice little comfort that I've found. There's a little cubby above my, basically above the driver's seat. So it's always just kind of right outside my view but in my peripherals kind of tempting me to keep grabbing more and more snacks. That might not be a good thing, but I mean it is pretty nice. I'm pretty into the luxury of wireless chargers. So when I'm driving, I just throw my phone up into the mount and it starts charging. I don't have to deal with cords. Also when I'm going to bed I have wireless chargers placed all around the bed. Yeah, I've just really grown to like not having to deal with pulling out a cord, plugging it into the wall, plugging into my phone. Yeah, just a little hack for me and it makes it feel more homey. It's something that I actually put a lot of time and effort into finding the exact right location for my phone mount so that it's in my view but not blocking the road view, so that I can like casually just, you know, search something on GPS and it's not dangerous, I'm not swerving or anything like that. So just to find that little sweet spot where your phone goes, it's pretty nice. I have the window covers for like when I'm in BLM areas and I'm staying for like multiple days to keep that volume and that livability accessible. But when I pull into a travel center I just draw the blackout shade, turn on all the lights, nobody knows I'm in there living or anything like that, you know, so it's nice. And then I also block out the light from all the other trucks or like, you know, the glowing light from the gas station, like loves gas station, whatever. So yeah, it's nice to have a really quick way to block out the light to get privacy. And then in the morning throw it right back up and you're good to go. That efficiency is very valuable when you're just stopping. You're so tired you want to jump in bed, don't want to do anything, you know? Yeah, sometimes you pull into a travel center or even an off grid campsite and people are partying, it's super loud and distracting. So I use my roof vent on high just as a white noise machine and usually that does the trick. If that doesn't do the trick, I turn on a white noise machine on my cell phone and then I just got this crazy amount of white noise going on in the van. Maybe not the most ideal night, but definitely can still at least sleep through the party noise. Yeah, it's important to have those things readily available in case you run into that situation. If you want to play into stealth even more and get even fun with it, I have a lot of friends that make fake work orders, they put 'em on the dashboard, they put a hard hat or like, you know, one of those orange reflective vests as if they're a construction worker. Just kind of playing into the fact that it could be a cargo van, it could be full of, you know, hazardous chemicals or something like that. And people have fun with it. And I mean, I kind of want to design a goofy logo to put on the side of my box van just to call it a plumbing van or something like that, so nobody thinks that I'm living in there. Honestly, my first night in my first Sprinter we got really stuck in Arizona. Just, it was just an invisible sand patch, you know, it was just hard dirt everywhere else and then right where we deem the best place to camp turned out to be just like a big sand pile. So we had to hike probably probably a mile to the main road and flag down just someone that looked capable enough, it ended up being like a Toyota Sequoia. I don't think it had four wheel drive or anything but it was a big enough car. I grabbed my slack line out of the back, did some funky knot, tied it to my axle, tied it to their axle and luckily we were able to get out. But that was my first night in a Sprinter. And it was quite the intro. Honestly, I've never gotten stuck that bad ever again. A lot of places out in the west, you know, are pretty remote and it's important to have a GPS that has a lot of information especially if you're going to different spots, you're trying to search how to get from this lake to this mountaintop. I like to download Google maps offline maps before I go out. So when I have wifi I just circle the area that I know I'm gonna be in, download that, so that when I'm out there it works seamlessly. Another really, really nice thing to have is saved pins of the places that I want to go so I don't have to search for those places in the moment. I just kind of pull up the map and remember, or I have basically a, here I'll pull this out, show you guys. I have a system that I use where with Google maps you can either pin places, favorite places or want to go places or hearted places or something like that, there's three different icons. So I use that accordingly. And on my map, I just have a bunch of different hearts or stars or flags, so green, yellow, and red. It's nice to have those when you're out there just so you remember kind of what you researched. If this is a place that you've already been, a place you want to go. Google maps, the app of Google maps is an extremely important resource for me. There is a bit of a disconnect for people that want to work remotely and also be off grid in these amazingly picturesque places 'cause the reality of it is that those off grid picturesque places lots of times don't have service. So the idea of working remote in that location lots of times isn't even possible. Now sometimes there's like the golden spot that has good service and also feels off the grid. But those are pretty few and far between. So just to set the expectation there. Lots of times if you're in a picturesque place, you don't have service. And to get that service you have to go into civilization and working remote in a van lots of times involves, you know, being at Starbucks or McDonald's or wherever you can find wifi. So not necessarily the place where you're gonna get your Instagram photos. Yeah, I've grown to really just embrace that off the grid mentality. I can always benefit, with my career as a photographer and social media influencer, I can always benefit from having service. That doesn't necessarily mean that I want it or need it. So I've really tried to embrace, you know, when I'm off grid, I'm off grid. I don't have service and it's a blessing. I try to embrace that, try to enjoy it. And then obviously, you know, a few days later when I finally get service, I'm glued to my phone, answering emails like a maniac. And that's kind of the reality of my situation is I'm either kicking back enjoying it or I'm typing as fast as possible to try to get everything done in the shortest amount of time possible. You know, I don't know if that's normal but that is kind of my workflow. My workflow is answering a hundred emails in one hour and then going back off the grid to enjoy it again. Yeah, that's honestly what I wanted. That was what I was hoping getting into van life was that I could just camp at trail heads. I could be ready for that sunrise shoot. I don't like waking up early, I don't know if anyone does. But just being that much closer to the photo that I need to get. One thing that you run into sometimes is, you know, sometimes you're not really supposed to camp at trailheads. You know, somebody will come up to you and knock on your door and say, "Hey, you're not allowed to camp at this trailhead." So sometimes you gotta do a little bit more research as to like where you can actually camp, where the closest potential place that's legal to camp is. So I don't know if that's like the fun and exciting answer, but I mean that's kind of like the reality of people are cracking down on trailhead camping. Middle of nowhere camping, you're still a lot more likely to have a good time. But like, I think because van life is becoming so popular, trailheads are becoming like unofficial campgrounds. And if it's a popular hike lots of times you're not allowed to camp at that. I mean, Trader Joe's frozen meals I like to kind of just throw those in the pan. Maybe I'll add some mushrooms and onions and veggies and stuff, but the gnocchi, the gnocchi that they have. I pretty much make that every week, that's a van life staple for me. And just like sweet potato burritos I've gotten really into or cook a lot of eggs. Yeah, it kind of depends on how much time I have and how much I want to dedicate to making a nice meal versus making a quick meal. It's kind of important for me to have both of those. Probably in my fridge I have like seven meals ready to go at most and then like breakfast and lunch I just won't really cook like a full, full meal. I'll just, I don't know, make some toast or yogurt or something like that. Yeah, so those are a few of the hacks that I've come up with over the years. I'm sure when you're living in your van you'll come up with your own.