Van Life Road Tripping - Off Season Travel

While there are sound reasons why so many people travel to popular destinations during good-weather times of the year, there is reason to prefer going when the others don’t. I have been drawn more and more to get out on the road during the shoulder seasons of Spring and Fall, and even in the dead of Winter. At these times I experience places when the light is different, the landscape of vegetation is not quite so green, a little snow may add some contrast to the views, things are cheap and, most importantly, the popular places are largely empty (or at least not overrun with summer crowds). If you want to experience this but don’t want to stay in hotels for cost or pandemic reasons, want to socially distance as you go, travel to regions where campgrounds are still closed for the season but aren’t afraid of a little weather, then sleeping in your car or van works perfectly for these trips.

Gooseneck State Park on the San Juan River outside Mexican Hat, Utah. In December

Let’s get the cons out of the way right up front. First, it can be cold. That of course depends on where you are going and when. But if part of the goal is to avoid summer crowds it is likely that you have chosen to go to a location when the crowds haven’t figured out that the place has some off-season attractions. And that usually means that the place is considered a warm weather destination but you are there in the colder months.

But you can sleep in a cold car or van without an internal source of heat. This will be a topic for a separate post altogether. It deserves a lot of attention. I probably get the most surprised looks about my van travel when I tell people that I regularly sleep in there when outside temperatures are in the 20s, the teens or even less; and that I am quite comfortable when doing so. This is entirely possible. But to describe that takes more words than I want to put into this post.

But I promise, sleeping in an unheated car or van with low temperatures outside is both doable and can even be comfortable. My tolerance of cold when asleep isn’t much different than anyone else. But the space actually around me just outside my bag rarely gets below around 40 degrees even when outside it is in the teens. Sure, that is colder than your furnace heated house. But consider that even a cheap summer weight sleeping bag is probably rated for temperatures down to around 45 degrees. There is a reason for that. Even in summer the typical nighttime temperatures on the ground can get down to the forties out away from urban centers. And people deal with it fine. Frankly, 50 degrees inside the van right next to my body and sleeping bag is pretty common even in the middle of a northern winter. If you have ever slept out in a tent in the fall or spring, you will have more comfort inside the van or car than on those nights in that tent. And in my bag I am toasty warm either way. (It is not an expensive bag.) In the shoulder seasons, sleeping in my van can be a real pleasure; I usually open the doors.

Second, many places may be closed. Seasonally based restaurants in warm weather vacation destinations, some hotels, and even many State and some National Parks could be closed.. Importantly for Van Life travel, in the Mid and Northern latitudes almost every campground is closed from around October (or earlier at Labor Day in some cases) to sometime in May. For sleeping, this means that tent camping is usually not available unless boondocking out in the woods somewhere. You need to know how to find locations to stay overnight. And then be comfortable sleeping in a self-contained vehicle if not wanting to check into and pay for a hotel. But hotels might not be open as well, so there may be little choice but to plan to sleep in your car or van. Finding a location to park and sleep overnight is not a pursuit we normally undertake in life, so it takes practice and some skill. I will address that in a separate post as well since that is not a small topic. But, suffice to say here, with some experience and a few Apps, there will come the confidence to do this.

And some attractions also must be passed by. You might need to do a little advanced planning as to whether this place is even available. It does little good to travel to Yellowstone for instance in late fall or early spring just to find out that aside from some specialty tours to see wolves in the backcountry, the whole damned park is closed. Even in sunny Arizona, the higher north rim of the Grand Canyon is closed all winter.

Third, limited daylight hours. In terms of van life travel, this is a much bigger issue than it might seem. Especially if traveling alone. There isn’t a lot of daylight in a day in the North in winter. While 10 hours a day is enough to get a lot done while traveling, 14 hours of dark is hard to deal with when you don’t have lights, a house to walk around in, a TV to watch or a computer to stream content. Short days also impact travel times if you prefer to spend most of your time driving with the sun out.

You may end up finding a place to sleep around 5 or 6 pm when it has already been dark for an hour or more, and eat your evening meal within a short time thereafter. Your choice then is to go to bed right away or find new ways to occupy yourself until a normal bedtime rolls around. My suggestion is to go to bed early and plan to get up early. It is much easier for me to deal with a growing dawn than a long dark evening alone. On a positive note, if you want to photograph or simply enjoy sunsets and especially sunrises, these will occur at reasonable times of the day. You don’t have to get up at 430 am for a photo shoot.

Fourth, really bad weather, or bad enough to wreck havoc on a set itinerary. The main issue with a road trip outside the fine weather days of summer is that you have to accept that weather can destroy any set plans. To plan a trip across the country in seasons when a winter storm can occur may become both inconvenient and also dangerous. You have only one real tool to deal with this. You have to affirmatively plan to be flexible and build that into your schedule.

I can safely drive to the West for instance in the middle of the winter, and have done so many times, as long as I follow one simple rule. If the weather gets bad, I hole up somewhere safe until it gets better. Just waiting a day can mean the difference between a great travel day and a miserable or even a dangerous one. I do not let a preset plan get in the way of safety. I don’t go thinking that I need to be somewhere on schedule. That will lead to dangerous risks. But, also, because hotels are not usually crowded, I don’t actually need a preset itinerary. Because I don’t need advanced reservations along the way.

So try and avoid having to get to someplace on a fixed schedule. If there is a place you need to be at a given time, like a holiday dinner at a relative’s house or reservations to ski somewhere, then plan to get close by at least the day before. Then, if you get delayed you are still just fine. You will arrive less stressed anyway even if on time. And that will give you time to take a break from clenched-fists driving through a winter white-out and over ice slicked roads if those things happen.

And once there, consider having some extra time built in to your schedule. When I was at Arches National Park over December, the first day was neither cold nor snowy but the day before I arrived had been and the park was still closed unless you had snow tires with 4 wheel drive or could put on some chains. I had chains but decided I would just come back the next day since I had plenty of time built in for my visit. Instead, that day I drove up the gorge through which runs the Colorado upriver of Moab. I still visited Arches and other nearby areas many times over the next few days. But had I planned for one day and one day only, it would have been very disappointing.

Arches National Park with La Sal Mountains in background. In December

Fifth, the intimidation factor. This is a real thing. Don’t take your first off-season van venture in the middle of winter. And don’t make it that far from home or the safety of a friend’s or family’s driveway. In fact, that is a great place to start. It is unnerving to climb in back for a full night of unheated slumber when the snow is swirling outside, it is 15 degrees and the wind is buffeting the van about. This is not for everyone. Many simply don’t wish to head into a frozen-over area and depend on finding a place to park and sleep overnight in safety and comfort. So this is not something you should do the first time without alternatives and a back up plan. But with experience will come confidence. Once you do it, you will know that it isn’t that big a deal. The first time I did this, since those early day back when I had been in my twenties, I slept in my cousin’s front driveway in New Hampshire. No stress.

I suggest that the first time you sleep in the back of your car or van with night-time temperatures forecasted to be freezing or worse you also should be over prepared rather than under. Have one or two extra woolen blankets and other means to deal with the cold than just one sleeping bag, no matter how good a bag it is. If in the middle of the night a particular vulnerability to the cold emerges to disturb you - a draft sneaking into the door seems by your feet or on an exposed shoulder and a cold nose - you want to be able to simply throw a blanket at the problem.

And finally, many people simply don’t have this option in their busy lives. If they have school aged kids for instance, this sort of travel off-season may be very difficult. I accept that and have lived through those exact limitations myself. But I also think I may have succumbed to those restrictions a little too passively. There are plenty of times in a school year for taking long weekends away with a kid or two for an overnight adventure (one which they may never forget and will tell stories about to their kids). And usually also trips up to a full week can be squeezed in. A lot of great fun can be had over just a long weekend. We let other things crowd out our choices, it isn’t that they aren’t there at all. If this is something you want to do, there will be opportunities.

The pros are reasonably obvious. The number one advantage of off-season van travel is that you may find you are the only one out there. That is not quite as true now as it had been just a few years ago. And the “summer” travel season seems to be getting longer each year, with later March through early October being pretty busy now depending on the venue. (Though many players in the travel industry seem reluctant to understand this because they still close campgrounds and state parks for far too much of the year.) But it is still true enough that your experience in Fall, Winter and Spring will be vastly improved over waiting in lines, trying to find parking, dealing with crowds, negotiating at the front desks of full hotels, needing reservations for everything. and so on.

Swallowtail Lighthouse, Grand Manan Island, New Brunswick, Canada. In January

I have experienced places that in summer are so full of traffic there are backups along the open road. But in winter or near to it, I had the place so much to myself I could stand in the middle of the road with my tripod out and take an hour’s worth of photos without a single car passing by. I have pulled up to the main concession area of the Grand Canyon in winter and actually parked in the physically closest spot to the rim, which is about 50 feet away from the edge. I have made my way through Zion National Park without once having to queue up for a bus. I have driven the Park Loop Road in Acadia National Park, where in the summer now they will be requiring advanced reserved tickets, and was the only car to make tracks in the snow that day.

And, a lot of times the weather is just fine. I spent a January and February traveling up the Pacific coast and, until the very end in Seattle, I did not have a day under 50 degrees. The cover photo to this post was taken in Zion National Park in early Spring on a fine warm afternoon the very day that leaves popped out of their buds. It was probably around 55 degrees when I took this photo. It was chilly in Arches when I took the photo above in December, but the sun was warm and did the air not feel uncomfortable. I wore a light jacket, with no gloves or hat. The shot of the lighthouse on Grand Manan Island above was taken on a windy, blustery and chilly day out in the entrance to the Bay of Fundy, but i hiked out to the lighthouse and spent some time there (wholly alone) without needing to retreat due to cold. I expect it was around 30 degrees.

A fine mid-October day in Northern Michigan

But even if the temperatures remain high, the prices will still be low. Off-season hotels become attractive options. One can regularly find places around $50 to $60 a night, maybe not with the big chains but in the independent places still open. That rate makes nights inside a very affordable option. That is about the rate on which we should insist for just a basic night’s sleep, but usually only in the off-season can we find it in America. And you probably can just show up. You can get what we all want out of a road trip, whether sleeping in back of the van or in uncrowded and cheap hotels, you can have an open-ended, do-what-comes-along experience.

It may not be necessary to adopt the Van Life mode of travel when planning a road trip off-season. The availability of cheap hotel options can make a regular car trip very affordable. But sleeping in your car or van can give you more peace of mind that you are isolated from others in this covid world. And there are places where if you can’t sleep in your car or van you may not have anywhere else to go. That may be a fairly limited number of places, but they can be epic trips and it is nice to know that they aren’t ruled out. In my trip to Labrador, Newfoundland and Nova Scotia in late April and early May in 2019 (essentially still winter time there) there were many places where hotels and hostels were not yet open. It could be a hundred miles or more before the next place to sleep inside. And, with very limited exceptions, campgrounds were not open either. Either I arranged to and felt comfortable with sleeping in my car pulled off to the side of the road or I couldn’t go there at all. Without the Van Life option, I would have missed one of the great trips of my life, and a lot of icebergs as well.

Another advantage to off-season travel is the lack of brutal heat and stifling humidity. Personally, I find it a lot easier to deal with cold than with the heat and bugs of summer. In many places there are about two weeks of really awful temperatures each winter and each summer. Pick your fancy. In some places however, it is a lot better in the cold of winter than through the hot of summer. Southern Utah comes to mind for instance.

Andrew Yang Town Hall held outside in New Hampshire

And finally there are the things or events that simply cannot be done in summer. And by this I don’t mean skiing. Go to Vermont during sugaring season for instance. Or, a year ago I participated in New Hampshire’s “town hall” season, when hopeful presidential candidates stump for votes in small local venues leading up to the primary election. This only exists in wintertime, and only once every four years. I had a great time seeing candidate after candidate up close. I spent the nights in my van in empty, snow covered parking lots and showered in the local YMCAs. I don’t think I would have done this if it meant spending a fair amount of money on hotels. It was a lot of fun, but I had no desire to expend actual cash on it.

Altogether, I prefer to do my heavy travel from October to April. The summer is for relaxing. I may go somewhere, but it hopefully is where I don’t have to deal with all the crowds, traffic and chaos in my immediate vicinity. I settle in and rest and enjoy visiting family and friends. And I wait for summer to be over so I can hit the road in my van once again.