About a year ago we bought our oldskool ’87 beast. After searching on several websites and reading a whole lot about RVs, we decided on a camper. A trailer or fifth wheel needed a big ass truck to tow it,  which we didn’t have and also didn’t plan on buying. OK so decision one was made. But how to check out motor homes when you don’t know anything about them ( we are dutchies who are used to tents, not motor homes )? Dirk is definitely the google master and together with some help of Canadian friends, we ended up ( after checking out this rig 3 times) buying a well maintained 36ft HMC. We fell in love with this beast right away, but of course we played poker face with the seller.

Part two was the whole ‘ how are we going to renovate it and where are we going to do that? ‘ YES you read it right, we didn’t really like the ’87 wood and carpet interior style, so the plan was to renovate it within 2 months, in our free time. And the WHERE was a miracle, as a friend of us just bought a property outside Vancouver BC on which he was building a giant house. We made a great deal to stay on his property for free , guard it with our lives, help him out with building his house and in exchange we could use his wood workshop with all his tools. Awesome right?  With the help of our amazing friends and long days of hard work we manage to kind of finish the renos before moving in. Check out our renovation sections if you are interested in the process.

After the move, we still hadn’t figured out where to park our beast next. RV parks were not really an options because they are way too expensive, especially when you just moved into a camper to safe costs like rent. On Craigslist we could barely find any rv parking ads and we didn’t really know people downtown Vancouver with big properties who wanted to have two hippies with their two cats living next door. Thank god our super generous friend offered to stay as long as we want on his property, on the condition we would help him once in a while with the built of his house. Until today we are still very grateful for that opportunity. Without him ( and his family) we couldn’t make this dream come true.

In the beginning of this year we decided that not only we wanna live in a tiny house, but we also wanna travel with it.  We worked our butts off and tried to live as efficient as possible ( read: don’t eat out or do anything that cost lots of money, dumpster dive to safe money on food and just do a lot of free things like hiking). Oh yeah and of course we made a budget. What would we do without budgets?

A couple of times we postponed our departure date, which was never a specific date but more like a roughly ‘ around that time we want to leave’ date. Suddenly everything went very fast from unemployment, to driving the beast for the first time, to repairing some last things and saying goodbye… The decision to leave May 4th came 5 days before, when we figured that a real departure date would make sense.

It was a gorgeous sunny day that Thursday. Taking it slow and easy was our vibe. Why being in a hurry and super stressed when we have all the time in the world? After a last BBQ and losing the one and only rv key ( yes yes we don’t have a copy and yes we know that’s stupid and we were definitely stressed for a moment) we left our friends property around 6pm. Our only plan was to cross the border to the USA without trouble and head south to the sun.

Follow our travel stories here…..soon there will be more. Fo real.

ciao,

Dirk & Eelke