One of my favorite aspects of living in Northeast Oklahoma and Tahlequah in general are the outdoor activities that are still generally well-kept secrets in the area. These are well-kept locations mostly due to the lack of an active population, lack of awareness, and lack of access to these areas. These factors, in addition to conservation efforts by The Nature Conservancy, the Oklahoma Scenic Rivers Commission, and Oklahoma Department of Wildlife have helped to preserve some of these areas from over use, vandalism, and littering.
The bathtub rocks are just a few miles northeast of Tahlequah and border the Nickle Preserve, run by the Nature Conservancy. The bathtub rocks are technically a part of D4569 RD (Oakdale DR) and a car with decent clearance is suggested if you plan on continuing down the road to either HWY 62 or HWY 10(my Honda Accord made it across with minimal undercarriage scraping). This destination also makes for a great gravel bike ride out of town and can be linked with several different loops around the nature preserve.
If continuing to HWY 10, you will pass by the previous location of historic Combs Bridge. The remains of the old bridge can still be seen on either shore of the Illinois River.
Video courtesy of Wright Real Estate
The bathtub rocks have been carved by a creek flowing over them for centuries and the result is smooth slides and tubs that make for perfect swimming and summer lounging. The local crowd can fill up the tubs on the weekends so plan to arrive early and enjoy the sounds of the water and the nature of nearby Nickle Preserve in solitude. My travel companion and I spent a little over an hour at “The Tubs” and saw nearly 15 people who stayed an average of roughly 10 minutes each.
When flowing, the creek meanders to the Illinois River and provides several deep pools deeper into the woods. I advise bringing along some water shoes to enjoy the creek further into the woods. Large boulders and over-hanging trees make for a scenic walk along/through the water.
Although the tubs do not provide a full day of activity, it is an excellent stop on a series of dirt roads that meander through the foothills of the Ozarks that surround the Illinois River. Sites such as the Nickel Preserve and Goat’s Bluff are scattered along the riverside and provide several opportunities for stopping and enjoying the beauty of the Illinois River Basin whether on foot, by bike, or in a vehicle. Please research private property boundaries, I am not responsible for you breaking the law.
The bathtub rocks area is one of my favorites in Tahlequah for it’s pure, natural beauty and the evidence left behind of thousands of years of weathering from the flowing water.
This post is a classic from the archives of the Okienomad’s travels. It was originally posted to a different blog, but has been updated here with more complete information. If you enjoyed our post, please look around the rest of the website. We have images and stories from Oklahoma as well as all over the United States and Canada. We are on social media as well @okienomads on Facebook and Instagram. Thanks for reading and God bless!
The house electrical system of any conversion or RV is a pretty daunting and scary adventure for a first timer. To get the right system, a user has to know their current needs for electricity and how those needs will change when they are on the road. The best way to figure out how much electricity generation and storage a particular system will need to generate is to invest in a small device called a Kill-a-Watt. This device plugs into a standard 110V home outlet and has a female plug for the appliance that you seek to understand.
By keeping a spreadsheet of all of the appliances that you wish to use on the road, the amount of time you plan to use them and their perspective amps drawn, you can get an idea of how much storage (battery) and generation (solar or generator) you will need.
Our needs were simple and below is a table of the regular appliances that we use with our system:
Appliance
Amps
Whynter 62 Qt Refrigerator
4.5*.25 hours * 20 hours=22.5A
Fantastic Fan
2*8 hours= 16A
Sureflo Water Pump
<1A
LED Puck Lights
<1A
Macbook Air
4.3A*2 hours= 8.6A
Cell/Cam Batteries
1A*2 hours= 2A
Total
~51.1 A
A second consideration when designing an electrical system is knowing how you are going to utilize the system. For example, if you planned to spend the entire Fall in the Pacific Northwest as a camp host in a campground, you wouldn’t want to rely on a solar system that needs 4-8 hours of direct sun per day. Likewise, if you plan to park in Quartzite, AZ for the Winter, it would be silly to not take advantage of all of the direct sunlight.
Solar panels in full shade
We landed somewhere in the middle and knew there would be days that we would be tucked back in the woods and weeks at a time would be spent in the desert. We needed the ability to store some juice for the day or so that we wouldn’t have sunshine, but also be able to use the vehicle alternator to charge the house batteries in a pinch if needed.
Okienomads Solar Electrical System
300 watts pre install
Below is a diagram of our electric system. All components are listed below with links to where we purchased them. If you have any questions about why we chose a particular part over another, e-mail us at okienomads@gmail.com and we will answer in the best way we can.
We wanted as many options for power generation as possible in case our situation changed or if we needed to hunker down somewhere for the winter and wanted to add a generator to the system or utilize shore power (power sources are shaded in yellow). If we needed to add a generator, all we have to do is plug into the shore plug on the side of the bus.
Solar Panels
We were extremely green to solar systems (see what I did there?) when we started and opted to purchase a kit from Renogy Solar as opposed to piecing our system together and potentially missing something or purchasing incongruent parts. This kit included (3) 100-watt panels, a 40A charge controller, and most of the wiring needed to hook up the panels to the controller. We wired our solar panels in a series (see diagram above) to be able to pull solar even if the panels weren’t seeing a full 12 volts. This also allowed us the ability to run longer cable at smaller sizes than if we wired in parallel. Renogy Solar has an excellent page describing the different setups available.
Our panels are mounted directly to the roof using rivets and the Renogy Z-brackets that came with out kit. If we had to do this over again, we would have continued our roof rack to the front of the bus and attached the panels to the rack, less permanently.
Charge Controller
We opted for the Renogy Rover 40A MPPT controller for the option of wiring our panels in series and harvesting solar all day instead of waiting on 12 volts to hit the panels.
Charge Controller
A smaller PMW charge controller would have worked for our needs, but would have limited the amount of solar we can grab and the options for expanding our system later if our bus turns into a more stationary fixture (think tiny cabin).
Batteries
We searched for a cheap and easily expandable battery for our bank and landed on the Duracell GC-2, 6-volt golf cart battery wired in a series to create a 12v battery with 200 amp hours. These batteries are flooded, lead acid batteries that require checking the water levels from time to time. Although AGM gel batteries, common in cars and trucks, are sealed and require less maintenance, they are not made to be discharged heavily over and over like the golf-cart batteries.
Inverter Charger
Like with the rest of our system, we wanted to select an inverter that would grow with our needs. As of right now, the only appliances that we are running is a MacBook Air and the occasional food processor (in direct sunlight). We wanted to have an inverter that would be sufficient if we needed to run a couple of appliances down the road as we transition the bus to a tiny house and less of an adventure mobile.
Inverter/Charger
The AIMS 1500-Watt (2000 peak) Pure Sine Inverter and Charger fit the bill perfectly. The built-in battery charger not only allows us to plug in to shore power, but it also charges our batteries at the same time. The pure-sine wave that our inverter uses is also safe for charging the more sensitive electronics like lithium-ion laptop batteries.
Manual Solenoid
This inexpensive fixture is meant for use in mobile audio applications, but works perfectly for what we needed. The solenoid allows us to utilize the current from the starting batteries to supplement our house battery bank when we park in the trees or on cloudy days. At the flip of switch, our bus alternator churns out enough energy to top off our house batteries. We rarely use this feature, but for the price it is good insurance. Plus, in a pinch, you could jump start you starting batteries from your house batteries if needed.
We have linked the product that we use above, but if you wanted a more advanced fixture, you could opt for the more expensive Automatic Charging Relay (ACR) from Blue Sea Systems. This piece will remove the switch from our setup and automatically send current to your house battery bank.
Miscellaneous Fixtures
On the graphic above there are a few fixtures that make the system work that are mostly replaceable with most other brands and the only thing you should ensure is that your breakers, bus bars, and other electrical components are rated for the amount of current you are sending through them. Below is a list of the components that we used and we have had good luck with them. There are obviously always better components, but these fit our budget and system needs well.
Always disconnect your batteries and/or cover your solar panels before doing any work on your system. Electrical fires are a real possibility when working with these systems and you should have your setup inspected by an electrician before going live. After inspected, remember to keep a fire extinguisher handy. When living in a van, Skoolie or truck you never really know what could happen. Be prepared.
As we always strive for transparency when displaying aspects of our nomadic lifestyle you should know that all of the links included in this article are affiliate links through Amazon.com. For every purchase that you make from one of these links, we receive a small amount and you don’t pay any extra. These links are one way that stay on the road longer, so thank you for your support of our adventures!
We painted our bus in a hurry and ended up with a really good looking paintjob thanks to help from my grandparents, parents and Rachael’s parents. It was a team effort and it transformed the bus from a creepy former school bus to a shiny adventuremobile.
Before
After
Unfortunately, we left without finishing the paint job on the bus and left the front grill ugly and grey. We found a little time to repaint the grill and we posted a video showing you how we did it. This process will work for most plastics on cars, trucks, and RV’s. Check out the video below!
If you enjoyed our video, please subscribe to our channel, it means a lot and the subscriptions help us stay on the road longer. Be on the lookout for more videos soon!
When we purchased our bus and began to build it into a tiny home on wheels we were overwhelmed with the options of accessories and parts that were available and being shoved down our throats every time we opened Instagram. We sifted through the BS and did our own research and have built a bus that fits our needs very well. Below are the gadgets and modifications that we added to our bus that have genuinely enhanced our experience traveling the country in our skoolie.
There were a few items that we bought in the beginning of our build that I thought would get stuffed into a cubby in the back of the bus and reappear when we cleaned it out months later. The solar shower was one of those items. It seemed to good to be true that one could harness the sun into a warm shower after a mountain bike ride. Boy was I wrong!
The Advanced Elements Solar Shower has been used and abused during our travels and is still holding up great! The bag is tough, puncture resistant, and holds 5 gallons of water. We have found that we can both take a shower and still have water left over after we are done. The built in mirror is a little cheezy and the nozzle is a little hard to operate if you have soap on your hands, but for the price it is EXCELLENT! Couple this product with a cheap pop-up shelter, INSTANT PRIVATE SHOWER!
Our first addition and maybe the most practical for traveling in the summer time has been our Fantastic Fan. We have the 1250 model which is the most basic and uncomplicated model that Fan-Tastic Vent makes. It has 3 speeds, ranging from “Is this thing even on” to “blow your cheeks off of your teeth”. We use our fan almost every night while sleeping as the gentle hum tends to drown out passing cars when urban camping and it blocks out most rowdy street-youths when we are on public land with others.
A cool feature of the Fan-Tastic Fan is the reverse mode which allows you to run the fan in “exhaust” mode and hypothetically you could suck out all of the smoke from when you over cooked the bacon.
One thing to consider when purchasing a roof vent fan is to purchase a cover/shield for the lid so that you can operate the fan in the rain as well. It also adds an element of protection to your fan lid in case of a stray limb or a stumbling significant other while on the rooftop deck. We installed our Fan-Tastic Vent Ultra Breeze Vent Cover after we had a slight leak due to installer error. You can see that whole story here where I installed a vent cover in the middle of the Moab, UT desert with great success:
The backbone of our entire electrical system is our pure-sine inverter. We use the inverter to charge our cameras and laptops as well as operate some of our more “luxurious” items like a food processor and our super trendy rope lights. We have found that 1500 watts has been more than enough and we bought this big of a unit to grow into it in case we wanted to add some extra power hungry appliances later. The pure-sine wave protects our computers and cameras and was well worth the investment over the modified wave.
A really cool feature of this particular inverter is the 50-amp battery charger and transfer switch that allows you to charge your house batteries and run a “shore” line if you ever need to plug in for any reason. We have only used these extra features a few times during our travels, but we suspect that when we settle in for the winter, we will utilize the shore line quite a bit.
Is it a lot of money? Yes. Is it worth it to protect your electronics and batteries of your rig? Also yes!
Talk about a game changer! The Clenna USB Charging Port was a fantastic addition to how we charge our devices. We added one outlet to the driver’s area of the bus and have been blown away by how much we use it. We have yet to permanently install it as I haven’t found the perfect place for it, but I will update photos when I get it secured to the dash. This port would be perfect for those that run a full-time GPS or phone on the dash for navigation.
The wiring is a simple 2-wire hot and cold setup that we ran back to our AUX fuse box and grounded to the dash area. The outlet has a rubber plug that fits into the USB ports perfectly and blocks the light from the outlets as well. The USB ports emit a blue light that can be extremely bright, so I would suggest wiring a switch to your port so that you can turn it off and on. Ours is installed in the dash, so the light simply shines behind our curtains and hopefully eludes to would-be criminals that we have a stellar alarm system installed.
Finally, the best enhancement that we have made to our skoolie has been the addition of our Whynter 65-quart refrigerator. The FM-65G 12 volt compressor refrigerator has been a god-send while traveling through the remote public lands of Southern Utah and Central Washington where temps can be quite high and ice can be very scarce. Our Whynter can hold enough food for Rachael and I for around seven days and even more if we ate less fresh fruit and vegetables.
The Whynter FM-65G is extremely efficient, only drawing 3-5 amps while connected to 12V. This draw is only present when the compressor is on and I was pleasantly surprised by how quiet the compressor is and when comparing it to $1000+ units from ARB, I find that this unit is only slightly louder.
The fit and finish of the 65G is exceptional and the latches/seal work perfectly for when we buy just a little too much food and need to cram it in there. We have used the handles to secure the fridge to the cabinet below it and have been really happy with it not moving around. The black feet on the bottom are very sturdy and almost suction cup to the cabinet. The fridge can also operate at up to a 30 degree angle, much steeper than anything our bus has seen or will see.
What have you added to make your van, bus, or camper more comfortable or more accommodating to your style of travel? We would like to hear from you, shoot us an e-mail at okienomads@gmail.com. If you enjoyed our post, maybe you will like our Instagram or Facebook pages.
As we always strive for transparency when displaying aspects of our nomadic lifestyle you should know that all of the links included in this article are affiliate links through Amazon.com. For every purchase that you make from one of these links, we receive a small amount and you don’t pay any extra. These links are one way that stay on the road longer, so thank you for your support of our adventures!
I hope you have had a chance to read Part 1 of this article before reading this one. In the first article on this topic we cover some of the negative aspects of living in a Skoolie-conversion, a lot of which we did not expect before leaving for a period of extended travel across the United States.
Firstly, when living in a school bus conversion, there is enough room to bring anything you would need for an adventure. We have a very small bus and are still able to cram in a queen-sized bed, a big refrigerator, all of the camera equipment we could need, 4 bicycles, 2 kayaks, and more books than we will be able to read through the course of the summer.
Our school bus is around 75 square-feet of living space and that is A LOT compared to conversion vans and truck campers. We have friends that travel in off-road trucks with slide-ins or roof top tents and the first thing they comment on is the space. “There is so much room for activities!” All Will Ferrell quotes aside, when it rains, snows, or drops below freezing, we are warm and dry inside. Rachael’s yoga practice can still carry on even if there is a torrential downpour outside.
Custom cabinets that need bungees to stay shut
Another aspect of traveling in a Skoolie is that the design is 100% customizable! The builder can customize the design and layout however they see fit. Once the seats and the floor are yanked out, the bus can be built to include anything that you can fit in the space. Cruise the interwebs for a bit and you will find Skoolies with 2000+ watt solar systems, full-size bathtubs, mobile workstations, the opportunities inside are endless. The biggest challenge is making the decision on toilet vs. no toilet.
We built a simple interior using remedial carpentry skills and equipment, but it has served us really well so far. You can see the inside of our bus on our video tour below:
An aspect of Skoolie ownership that we did not expect is that Skoolies, especially short Skoolies, are surprisingly capable off-road. No, we are not seeking out off-road opportunities to test the flex of our suspension or drive through 4-foot deep mud holes, but to get to more remote campsites we have endured some off-camber and sketchy situations.
Smaller busses are built on similar chassis to full-size trucks, so in general, there shouldn’t be much difference between taking a Chevy 3500 Silverado and the Okienomad’s Skoolie down a Forest Service road. The motor in our bus is shared with the military Humvee and a lot of farm trucks and Suburban’s of the past 25 years, so it is no surprise that when geared right, out bus will climb up and over some stuff.
Below is a photo of a campsite that we were rewarded with after an arduous climb up a rutted Forest Service road near Anza, CA. Worth it!
As mentioned in Part 1 of this article, one of our favorite and least favorite parts of Skoolie overland travel is that Skoolies are slow! How slow you ask? We got passed by a full-size pickup hauling a trailer that had to have been 12,000 pounds or more like we were standing still. I couldn’t even recognize the make of the truck it was moving so fast, or err, we were moving so slowly. The slow speed of the Skoolie up mountain passes, around turns, and over washboard roads makes it the perfect overlanding vehicle, you simply see more than if you were flying by at 75 miles per hour in a new sprinter van.
If we had to choose, we would travel slow every day of the year and not miss a minute of it.
One of my favorite aspects of bus travel is that Skoolie conversions do less damage to the environment. Keep in mind that traveling a ton of miles on a less-than-efficient diesel engine through beautiful forests and deserts is not exactly healthy for the environment, however, keeping a big hunk of metal out of a scrap yard and in use is a win for the environment when you consider the alternative of buying a newer vehicle such as an RV or full-size truck camper. We have recycled our bus from its previous life of shuttling kids to a new life of seeing beautiful things every day.
Once we are done with our travels in the bus we will likely park the bus somewhere nice and quiet and use it as a cabin in the woods or a suite for the visiting in-laws or parents. We will only need to add a composting toilet or outhouse and a small shower area to make the Skoolie 100% livable off-grid, reducing the need to use a ton of new material to build a new house someday.
A Skoolie for sale now!
Lastly in our list of reasons why a Skoolie is a great overlanding vehicle is that Skoolies are cheap! School districts, churches, and metropolitan transit companies are constantly shuttling out (pun intended) gently used, fleet-maintained vehicle for rock-bottom prices. Most of these vehicles have been maintained since day-one by competent mechanics and are usually on the auction block with less than 200,000 miles on them, a considerably small amount in regards to the life of a well-maintained diesel engine.
Our bus came to us with 107,000 miles on it and other than some neglected maintenance issues by the second owner of the bus, we have had 13,000+ trouble-free miles out of it.
Not only are skoolies cheap to buy, they are cheap to build. You don’t have to have an Insta-famous porcelain tub or a teak-wood deck on the roof of your bus. You can build a bus that is simple 2×4 and plywood construction, slap on a little paint and you are good to hit the road. Our bus was built with materials that are cheap and available at any hardware store with tools that most people already own.
If you are still hanging on through all of that negative, I hope you have had the chances to read Part 2 of this article, Skoolie Overland Travel Part 2: Why a Skoolie-Conversion Makes a Bad Travel Rig. We are really happy with our choice to hit the road in our Skoolie and we wouldn’t trade the experience for anything.
If you have enjoyed our article, please explore the blog some more as there are tons of stories, write-ups, and photos from our travels around the country. If you want a more streamlined media feed, check out our Instagram and Facebook pages, thanks for stopping by!
I need to clear this up before we get to the good stuff: My wife and I live in a school bus conversion, by choice. We love the freedom and simplicity that comes from a life with 78 square-feet of living space and having the whole world as our playground. That being said, there are aspects of skooliedom that we did not expect. We met several travelers on the road that shared some of these sentiments about their school buses too, so we knew we were not alone. There is a companion article to this one about why skoolies are great for travel, in case this one drags you down too much.
First, Skoolies are BIG! Even if you purchase the smallest modern school bus (which we did) it is still 20-22 feet long, 8 feet wide, and over 9 feet tall. After we gutted the interior, built out a home inside, and filled up our water and fuel tanks, our bus weighs just under 10,000 pounds! The size of these metal behemoths makes them difficult to navigate down narrow 4-wheel-drive trails and some forest service roads. The height and width can also make traveling through some tunnels equally as difficult. The tunnel entering Zion National Park from the East was going to charge us $20 to pass through their tunnel, luckily, we had time to spare and drove around the southern end of the park to enjoy Pink Sand Dunes State Park instead.
Imagine wanting to take that iconic Instagram shot on the beach with your skoolie looking all accomplished on the sand? Think again. Unless you have 4-wheel-drive (pretty rare), reliable recovery gear, and some know-how, you are going to get stuck. Expect to need a fairly large truck or tractor to pull your 10,000+ pound butt out of the sand.
Some skoolies can reach Class-A RV size and at that point, forget about leaving the pavement, passing through most tunnels, and parking in any parking lot other than a Wal-Mart.
Skoolies are SLOW!
While we are on the topic of driving slowly, expect to drive slowly…very slowly. Unless you commit significant amounts of money to increase your busses horsepower and torque, your bus will probably be underpowered. Expect to travel at speeds much slower than traffic around you and commit a lot of time to making the extremely coveted left turn or to pass a Volkswagen van travelling slower than even you are traveling.
If you read Part 2 of this post, you will see that this point also shows up as a positive of traveling via school bus conversion. Hop on over to that article to find out why.
Skoolies are built to haul kids around cities, not haul your stuff through mountain trails.
Think back to when you were a child and you rode the bus to school, if you were one of those important kids whose mothers coddled you, just imagine with me. You are engaged in conversation or a game of M.A.S.H (don’t lie, you know you did) and all of a sudden you hear a noise and a split second later you are catapulted several feet in the air and you are quickly joined by everyone else on the bus, except the driver, she has a seatbelt.
I can remember riding the bus back from high school basketball games as a student and after exhausting myself on the court, seeking refuge in the plush pleather seats of the school bus and drifting into a restful nap just in time for the bus to catch a small pothole and lift me several inches in the air and drop my face back on the seat with exceptional force. Riding in the passenger area of a school bus is not pleasant.
Now imagine that most of your belongings, your computer and camera, maybe even your dog is somewhere in the rear of your Skoolie conversion and you are driving through San Diego on your way to the Sierras. You hit an unavoidable pothole and now your belongings, passengers, and tastefully hand-crafted cabinet doors are at the mercy of your top-heavy, overweight school bus.
Some modern-day school buses now come equipped with air-ride suspension, air brakes, and sometimes even seatbelts for children. Ours, however, didn’t even come with a rear sway bar. Therefore, we roll over obstacles with the front wheel fine and feel the wrath of the rear axle as the bus topples side to side. Cornering with no rear sway bar is interesting as well as the risk of roll-over is greatly increased. We solve these problems by traveling very slowly, even through traffic. Yes, we could add a sway bar, and probably will. But, the added cost associated with making a Skoolie road-worthy pushes the budget too far. With a couple more thousand-dollar upgrades, we could have afforded a full-size truck with a slide-in camper and been able to travel much farther and as comfortably as we could in a Skoolie, for the same price.
You see a juicy snack, vehicle dwellers see a sharp or blunt object poised to attack.
If there isn’t a secure home for every item in your bus, it becomes a projectile.
This is more of a common issue with living in a vehicle in general, but when we first laid out our plans for the interior of the bus we never knew that we would need and want so many cubbies, shelves, drawers, and hiding places for the miscellaneous junk that finds its way onto the bed every couple of days.
Who knew that sitting 4 or 5 Nalgenes under the kitchen table and driving down a twisting mountain road would cause a ruckus like you have never heard as the bottle tip, tumble, and fly around the cozy passenger compartment?
Since moving into our bus full-time we have added shelves, baskets, nets, and a bunch of other containment solutions to keep our at-hand items from hitting us in the head on the freeway. When you see the #vanlifer on the grams with pictures hanging on the wall and glass mason jars on the counter with fresh flowers in them, understand that the scene before you is carefully crafted and in the event that the Skoolie in question is actually driven, those items are stowed somewhere or they are stowed everywhere.
When something breaks (and it will break), Skoolie parts are not easy to come by, especially on the road. We will use our bus as an example. Our bus is technically a 2000 Chevrolet 139 Cutaway with a 6.5L Turbo-charged diesel engine. This means we share a motor with a lot of different Chevy trucks, busses, vans, and even a few military and civilian HMMVV’s, and not much else.
So, when we need an air filter, we can just order one for the 6.5L and be done with it. Easy, peasy. However, when we need to buy a trailer hitch in Concrete, WA because ours is bending and dangling our precious bikes and new bike rack within inches of the asphalt, which vehicle model do we use? If we use the 2000 Chevy Express Van, which works with other parts, we will soon find out that the frame widths and construction were completely different between the two models and that our bus more closely resembles a full-size, heavy duty Chevy Pickup truck. The only challenge now is to find the model of Silverado with the same frame width as the bus, then order that model online, ship it general delivery to Concrete, WA, and install it in the post office parking lot with a cordless drill and hand tools.
Homework assignment: Go to your nearest parts store, tell the chap behind the counter that you need a driver’s door handle for a 2000 Chevy 139 Cutaway. Wait patiently, you will be there for a while.
Shade Tree Mechanic in Oregon
Lastly, when you break down and the repair is above your skill level, finding a mechanic to work on a Skoolie is not easy. For some reason, a lot of shops that we have spoken with won’t even touch our rig because it is an 8-lug chassis and therefore bigger than they want to mess with or bigger than they are capable of messing with.
In Oakhurst, CA we needed a simple brake job done and didn’t feel comfortable replacing pads and shoes on a dirt forest service road. We contacted 6 shops and not a single one would even consider looking at our brakes. One even went as far as to tell us that the only way they would work on it is if they replaced the rotors too, at $215 a piece. We finally found a shop that had a cancellation and would fit us in, but it wasn’t cheap.
If you have enjoyed our article, please explore the blog some more as there are tons of stories, write-ups, and photos from our travels around the country. If you want a more streamlined media feed, check out our Instagram and Facebook pages, thanks for stopping by!
If your social media feeds are like mine, they are littered with #vanlifers that are sprawled out in their sprinter conversions, physically exquisite companion half naked lying next to them and they all have the same thing wrong with them: they are clean!
When we travel, we like to stay active. It helps to break up the long periods of driving or flying with as rigorous an activity as we can manage. With these rigorous activities, one develops a type of musk that tends to only be noticeable to everyone else but you. Some people have varying levels of stank when they are outdoors and others just go straight to “Level 4: Do not, under any circumstances lift your arms or open your legs” type of stank.
Fear not, we have a few solutions that we think might be helpful to you if you are approaching a dangerous level of outdoorsy musk. Most of these methods have been tested by the two of us at some point in our travels and we have first hand experience with them. Others, like the bear canister washing machine, we have not tried yet. But for the sake of science, we will probably give it a go when we have the chance.
Take a Shower- This one seems obvious, but some people really need this tip. Yes, your hippy dreads look much better when your hair hasn’t seen shampoo in weeks. But your B-O is still a problem and those of us trying to steal the same coffee shop WiFi as you, don’t want to smell you.
Our skoolie is equipped with a “bag” style solar shower much like this one:
We have used this shower all summer and it has worked really well. It’s as simple as filling the bag with water from the tap or the nearby stream and sitting the bag in the sun, black side up. That’s it! Now just wait for the water inside to reach an acceptable level of hot and voila! You have a warm shower!
BUSLIFE TIP: Shop around for a pop-up tent shelter. You can bathe in privacy, even in the middle of the Utah desert!
If you are parking in town or in an area where you can’t setup your shower, consider a gym or public pool. This summer, while passing through Omak, Washington, we stopped at their pool because an all-day pool admission with showers cost us $3/each. We got to beat the 100+ degree temps and take a proper shower!
Wash Your Clothes- This one should be a no-brainer too, but it must be said. If your clothes stink, you stink. We have utilized the small area at the foot of our bed as a his and hers laundry hamper. This way, after Rachael wears the same sports bra three days in a row, we don’t have to smell it as much as if it were just piled in the corner.
Laundromats are everywhere! Most campgrounds have laundry washing machines that are coin operated just like a laundromat. For Christmas this year, Rachael’s sister gave us a mason jar full of quarters for potential laundry stops. Rebecca, we are eternally grateful. On days that the temperature is unbearable or we need to catch up on blog posts or computer work, we will start some laundry and enjoy AC and WiFi.
Clean Your Rig- Each week there are areas that need to be cleaned and picked up just like living in a brick and mortar home. Tasks like keeping the food organized, sweeping, taking the garbage out, and keeping clothes where they belong. Similarly, every month there are other items like cleaning the solar panels, topping off batteries, and checking the fluids that are vital to staying efficient in our travels.
If your skoolie/van/truck camper/car smells, you will smell. What this means when building your vehicle is to make sure and vacuum, bleach, and wipe down every nook and cranny that you can. Traveling in a 1984 camper van? Make sure the shag carpet doesn’t smell like 1984.
Maintain Clean Gear
The last area that we notice the most stench is with our gear. The smells that are generated from two humans riding bicycles through gravel and mud for 50 miles are impressive. It is important to wash or clean your gear as soon as you can. Obviously if you just got out of The Grand Canyon on a 5-day backpacking trip (SPOILER: you will stink!) your gear is going to smell bad. However, use a rest day to recharge and wipe down your gear with either soap and water or a lot of Clorox wipes.
BUSLIFE TIP: Check with the manufacturer of your clothing or gear before using harsh cleaners or even some high-DEET bug sprays. Certain chemicals can stain or damage waterproofing on some gear.
We avoid a lot of smells by keeping our shoes in a separate “cubby” area, keeping our hydration packs and backpacks in the under-bed storage area and washing our clothes every 3 weeks or so ;).
How do you stay clean on the road? What glaring tips have we missed? We would love to hear about your tips and tricks for staying clean and fresh while living a nomadic lifestyle! E-mail us at okienomads@gmail.com.
