By the Numbers
Next Chapter's vital statistics
For the gear geeks out there, here are some of the details on our camper van.
· Make/Model: 2019 Mercedes Sprinter 2500.
· Water: 18-gallon potable tank.
· Heat: Espar hydronic diesel water heating system, Webasto Air Top EVO 40 diesel cabin heating system (both run off the van’s fuel tank).
· Waste: Thetford cassette toilet (although primary is this portable toilet and disposable waste bags).
· Drive train: 4WD, 7-speed automatic, 3.0L V6 turbo diesel.
· Power: 130W rooftop solar panel, three 100Ah lithium batteries, 2000 watt Magnum inverter, dedicated auxiliary alternator to recharge battery system when the engine is running.
· Galley: Isotherm 4.6 cu. ft. stainless steel refrigerator, sink, portable induction cooktop.
· Upgrades: Replaced stock wheels/tires with Method R301 17x7.5 wheels and B.F. Goodrich K02 265/70/R17 tires; beefed up suspension with Ride Improvement Kit from Agile Off Road; replaced 24-gallon stock fuel tank with 48-gallon ACGB tank.
· Miles driven since September 2020: 20,000.
· States camped in so far: California, Oregon, Washington, Idaho, Wyoming, South Dakota, Utah, Colorado, Arizona, Nevada.
· Nearest campsite to home: San Simeon Creek Campground, Hearst San Simeon State Park, California; 166 miles.
· Farthest from home: Sage Creek Campground, Badlands National Park, South Dakota; 1,418 miles.
Although we sleep in the van, we set up our camp kitchen outside whenever possible, and do our cooking and eating there. We create a living area using a large sand mat to reduce the amount of sand/mud/dust/cowshit we track inside, and we cook on a propane camp stove. The induction cooktop we keep in the galley is handy for those times when the weather makes outdoor meal prep inconvenient (or for morning coffee when we’re feeling too lazy to walk more than 2 feet from bed to boil water).
There’s a 10-foot retractable awning mounted to the roof rack; we use it for shade on sunny days and protection from the rain during wetter conditions. It’s kind of sensitive to wind, so there have been times when we would have liked some protection but didn’t want to chance an expensive aerial mishap.
Next Chapter’s water system includes a connection port at the rear of the van that enables us to plug in a hand-held shower attachment for outdoor bathing. A hot shower sounds great after a few days of camping and hiking, but so far we have found few opportunities to use it. It’s been either too cold or our campsite too exposed. We’re hopeful about this summer, though.
We also had after-market screen doors installed in the rear and slider openings, allowing us to remain bug-free while providing great air flow, and easy entry and exit.
All those systems — cabin heater, water heater, solar-charged battery-powered lighting and outlets, sound (did I mention Next Chapter is equipped with a great stereo system?) — make the van considerably more complicated to operate than the average motor vehicle. It took a few trips, and some back-and-forth emailing and phone calls with Outside Van’s service team, for us to master everything.
Although we sometimes camp in developed campgrounds, our preference is what federal land-management agencies call “dispersed camping” and what some of those in the off-grid camping community refer to as “boondocking” (hence Next Chapter’s BNDOCKR license plates).
Areas managed by the National Park Service generally allow camping only in developed campgrounds — those places with picnic tables, steel fire rings, restrooms, pavement, running water (sometimes, anyway), trash bins, lots of neighbors, and fees. But in the West, vast areas of public land are administered by the U.S. Forest Service (193 million acres) and the U.S. Bureau of Land Management (245 million acres), both of which allow dispersed camping in much of their domain. It’s free, generally uncrowded, and requires only that you be self-sufficient and practice leave-no-trace camping.
There’s a vast network of unpaved roads out there on BLM and USFS land, and we rely on a combination of old-fashioned paper maps and smartphone apps with access to satellite imagery to find our campsites. (Current favorite is Gaia GPS.) We are careful to camp only in places that have been used before, as evidenced by dirt roads and unvegetated parking areas with rock fire rings. And we make sure we leave nothing behind when we depart. (Note to those rude campers who have gone before us and decided that leaving shit and toilet paper behind boulders and under trees is acceptable: Please, either get yourself a solid-waste setup like ours or stay the hell home.)
We’ve often used Hipcamp, one of several Airbnb-like platforms for renting campsites on private property. This has been particularly handy for those times when our destination is an area without much public land, such as a rural ranching community.
We often encounter cows.
