Van Life Road Tripping - Not Camping; Just Sleeping

Some years ago I spent a few nights just outside Stonington Maine in a campground. This establishment also had ferry services out to nearby offshore islands, permitting island picnics or camping. They also rented canoes and kayaks and generally provided lot of natural water activities in a beautiful spot. Sadly, that campground is no longer operating as of 2020. But aside from the great days there and around the wonderful Stonington area, those few nights taught me something fundamental about traveling around in a car or van while not staying in a hotel. It isn’t really about the camping.

When I decided to go up there and camp for a few nights, my mind immediately began to fill with images of me sitting beside a campfire making breakfasts or just poking the fire while the stars whirled by silently overhead. So I imagined also all the equipment needed for fire, food, shelter and so on. With these thoughts firmly in place I loaded up my car and drove to Maine.

When I got to Stonington, the actual campsites were about 50 yards into the woods from the parking area, which made them isolated and very nice. They even provided truck like dollies to cart your gear along the path from car to campsite and back again. Three or four trips later and I knew I had made a grievous mistake. What on Earth was I thinking with all this crap? Just because the junk gets there by car doesn’t mean that it will be used in the car. Every item becomes a hands-on lift and move experience.

And did I make any meals over stove or fire? Of course not. In Stonington there are a couple of really nice local diners with wonderful harbor views. I went there for a classic diner breakfast, then for lunch to another local cafe for the best haddock sandwich I have ever had, along with a view there as well, and when dinner time came I was exploring somewhere else anyway. I went to a concert one evening at the Stonington Opera House and saw Gordon Bok perform (wonderful by the way). I got back late that night and just climbed into the tent simply for sleep. When the sun rose, I drove into town for another great diner made breakfast looking out over the harbor. Next evening I went back to the Opera House for a movie night. Same drill that night and next morning.

One evening, instead of sitting by a campfire I went looking for sunset views across the water. Frankly, there never really was time for camping. I was not there sitting around my camp, I was exploring Stonington and its environs. So I did not engage in a single camping sort of experience other than the act of sleeping in a tent. All of that gear that went to and from the car and campsite remained wholly unused.

That doesn’t mean I didn’t enjoy sleeping outside and paying a reasonable cost in order to sleep compared to the price of hotels, inns and Airbnbs in town. It just meant that to get that advantage I didn’t need to put my head into camping mode. I didn’t need all the accessories of camping. I didn’t need to make this so complicated. And I certainly did not need to haul all that gear around. Less is more, for backpacking and car camping alike.

There is usually a scene in any Hollywood movie involving backpacking (or a western with the hero riding a lone horse around day and night) when the characters settle down for an evening of exposition, deep reflection or character development over a campfire. Usually there is a large enameled camp pot of coffee sitting on the fire and every so often one of the conversationalists/hikers/ranch hands will reach over to the fire and pour some hot coffee into an enameled mug. (Worst example of this was the film “A Walk in the Woods”, where they not only had the obligatory coffee pot in a backpackers’ camp, but Robert Redford one evening, while taking a break from hiking the Appalachian Trail by staying in a hotel, walks around in a nice powder blue bath robe he apparently had stuffed away in his backpack.) Next morning the actors get up and hoist their packs on their backs while nowhere are there any bulges indicating that coffee pot (not even the bath robe) is resting in there. Well, if you stick to that image of what camping is going to be like, big coffee pots resting on an open fire, you will have to actually carry that damned thing around with you, It won’t disappear come daybreak as it does in the movies. Put the excess space allowed by a car into the mix and things only get worse, not better.

With the covid pandemic inching slowly towards resolution, but not quite back to normal, it is expected that millions of Americans will be hitting the road this coming summer to enjoy domestic travel on road trips in RVs, camper vans, cars, bikes and whatever mode works. And millions of those will not be staying in hotels but will be camping along the way, or at least staying in their vehicles. For many this will either be a new experience or one they haven’t undertaken in awhile. As they do so, it is possible that many will have this same instinctive reaction to the camp experience that I had, that if you are sleeping outside then you must be camping. So you need all the gear and activities of camping. You need to chop wood, build fires, roast marshmallows and wave a sheath knife around a lot.

There is no reason that you can’t do that if that is what you want. But it isn’t required. It took me a lot of trips back and forth carting unused gear to figure that out. And once I did, it was liberating. I could fully enjoy the travel experience while taking advantage of the freedom (and considerably lower cost, often free) of sleeping outside. But I no longer needed to weigh myself down with the baggage of preconceived notions of what a camp experience looks and feels like.

I do still carry in my car a little bit of camp/kitchen gear. It fits into a very small zippered bag only 16 inches long. My self imposed rule is that if it fits in there, then that is okay. If not, then it doesn’t come along. Because that is all I need in case I decide to prepare a meal and eat something on the side of the road or in a park. In there is a tiny backpacking stove, some gas canisters, a small pot and skillet and a few kitchen and camp implements. That, and an ice chest, is the sum total of my commitment to the idea of camping while on the road. So far these pieces of camp gear, other than the ice chest, haven’t gotten a lot of use. But in the pandemic world it is nice to have that option. Especially if traveling in a remote area. But usually I just get carry out from a diner in the last or next town and find a park or rest area.

Eventually this pared down notion of just sleeping, not camping, led me to overnight inside my car. Which makes traveling outside the confines of a hotel so easy. It opens up the true freedom of the road that many of us are hoping for. It is usually free, or close to it. And you can self isolate to whatever degree you feel comfortable.

The photo on the cover of this post was snapped at a spot where I spent the night on an Army Corp of Engineers’ station alongside the Sturgeon Bay Ship Canal in Wisconsin. It was several miles off the main highway and a bit down a gravel road. I found it on one of my many boondocking apps, of which I will write more later. I pulled in, found some level grass, watched the sunset, ate a pasty I had imported that afternoon from Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, climbed in back, read a little, spent the night with fresh air and in complete isolation, and in the morning simply got into the driver’s seat and went on my way. Free, easy, quick, alone and memorable as well. That was not camping.

I will be offering up in a few future posts some Van Life tips for the some-times van traveler. My focus is not really the same as those million or two You Tube videos from and for people who’ve removed seats, built out permanent internal structures and actually live in their vans. My focus is on someone, like me, that just wants to undertake a road trip in their car and sleep in it without doing a lot of work or damage to the car.

So this is the first in the series of posts under the heading: “Van Life Road Tripping”. There will now also be a banner category at the top of the blog page where readers can click to bring you to all of these posts, Van Life Travel. I hope these make your own over-the-road journeys cheap, easy and enjoyable.

Just keep in mind, when sleeping out of doors, you don’t have to camp. It’s a choice, not a requirement.