Category VanLife

Oct 6 2025

🚐🔥 Amazon Prime Deal Days: Van Life Edition!

It’s that magical time of year again—Amazon Prime Deal Days are here! 🎉 Starting tomorrow, October 7th and 8th, the deals are rolling in hot, and we’ve rounded up our favorite van and bike camping essentials that are tried, tested, and totally loved. Whether you’re gearing up for winter camping or getting a jump on Christmas gifts (yes, it’s already that time), we’ve got you covered.

After fully transitioning from our trusty truck camper to our beloved Storyteller Mode LT Transit van—aka Goldilocks—we’ve spent a full year chasing seasons and soaking up the van life. Spoiler alert: she’s just right. We’ll gush about her in another blog, but today, let’s talk gear.

🧺 Van Life = Organized Life

When you’re living in a tiny space for months at a time, organization isn’t just helpful—it’s survival. We’ve tested everything from clunky plastic bins to heavy metal cabinets, and finally found our groove with these soft trunk organizers. They’re lightweight, easy to move, and roomy enough for everything from packaged food to our Berkey water filter.

These felt containers are our go-to for sundries, first aid, cooking gear, and snacks. They keep everything snug and rattle-free in the cabinets. And don’t get us started on these cabinet hooks—they’re the unsung heroes of van organization.

This paper towel rack is a van essential. Pro tip: add a clothespin to the end so your roll doesn’t unravel while driving. Trust us, it works.

We tag our bikes, bags, and anything we can’t afford to lose with Apple Airtags. Peace of mind, always. And when winter rolls in, this compact space heater keeps us cozy without overworking the van’s heating system.  The first one we saw that has many great reviews and wish we got, the second we have its trusty, dependable and pretty inexpensive. 

If you are like us and just not ready to pay for Starlink, we find our t-mobile with the Weboost we get reception in almost everywhere. A also nice for winter camping is this Southwest sherpa blanket it brightens up the space and is a nice snuggle for your bed. So you’re not fighting over it we like the 60×80 size and have twin Pendleton blankets with duvets on them.

🚲 Bike Touring Must-Haves

We’ve been pedaling through some epic bike tours lately, and these storage organizers are a game-changer. They fit perfectly in panniers and your van cabinets, keeping clothes and gear neat and accessible.  These are our favorite panniers waterproof, durable and on sale! Navigate trails and snap pics on the go with this sturdy bike phone holder. It’s a small upgrade that makes a big difference.  If bike camping or in the van, that late night relief you need to see, these rechargeables are great head lamps.

We’ve included some shots of us using these items in action—because nothing beats gear that’s been road-tested by real vanlifers. Hope these picks help you save a few bucks and make your adventures smoother, warmer, and more organized.  Happy Deal Days and even happier trails! We will be back for Christmas must haves soon. 🏕️🚴‍♂️🎁

  • Panniers
  • Hooks, Towel Rack
  • storage containers
  • Trunk Organizer
  • camp towels for drying dishes, hands and body.
  • We boost
  • inside organizer
May 6 2021

On the Road Again…

It’s nice to have the stress of the last two months behind us and to be back on the road again. It’s a little different from life in the Boldt. After a long day of driving you can’t just turn your seats around and relax. There are a few more steps such as one must put up the tent and set up camp. We do miss some of the Boldt creature comforts but now we can off road and go where there are fewer people just coyotes, owls, hawks, bunnies and road runners. This week we are going to share with you a few of our favorite affordable and free campgrounds!

Our first stop was Fall River Campground outside Sunriver, OR. Greg still had his 2nd vaccination in Bend to receive so we stayed a few days at this campground which is only $14/$7 a night. There are 12 camp spots on the Fall River with picnic tables, fire pits, and a pit toilet. We were surprised that almost all the spots were open and only three other spots were taken when we were there. If you have a Berkey filter this is a great spot for unlimited water, the river water is super clear and cold! There is a hiking trail up and down the Fall River that is a few miles long and if you are a fly fisherman this is your paradise! Our neighbor caught two rainbow trout and were super nice and offered us one but with the 30 mph winds we couldn’t get our stove to stay lit, so we had to pass (boo-hoo)! After two days of beautiful weather, the weather changed on our last night to 24 degrees Fahrenheit, and the next day was forecast to have snow and sleet, we decided it was time to head South!

  • View from the tent
  • Love the Costco Hammock
  • Lots of fly fishermen
  • Fall River Campground #6
  • Fall River Hiking Trail

We were planning on staying, at one of our favorite spots, at the Lava Bed National Monument Indian Wells Campground which is awesome and only $10/$5 a night but the weather stated snow, so we went further South to Eagle Lake Campground in California. This is a great boondocking location but make sure you have plenty of water and you are packing in and packing out, there are no amenities during the off season. It is a beautiful location at Rocky Point and free. During the Summer and Fall the North Eagle Lake Campground is open $14/$7 but this time of year it is still closed. We had planned to stay here for three days but the wind was 25-40mph and was impossible to keep our Eureka Camp Stove lit. We highly recommend do not get this camp stove at REI, we are returning it and sticking with the Camp Chef it has better sides and back to keep the wind out. In addition, you can use a converter and use a real propane tank and not ruin the environment with the tiny unrecyclable propane bottles the Eureka uses. After one night, we headed out to go further South to Walker Lake in Nevada where the wind was supposed to be only 15 mph. But of course, we got to Walker Lake and visited the 6 different camping areas where prices range from free to $6/$3 a night. Once again we ran into crazy wind, we tried to put up the tent at 7pm when the wind was supposed to calm down but it kept blowing over the tent poles and we gave up and slept in the truck for the night.

  • Closed during Winter
  • Rocky Point BLM Camping
  • Eagle Lake
  • Walker Lake
  • Area Below and South of Sportsman Beach Campground
  • Entrance Sportsman Beach

As a result, instead of a couple days at Walker Lake we bolted’ to our good old standby Pahranagat National Wildlife Refuge, that is a beautiful location and free. We enjoy watching and hearing hummingbirds, hawks, owls, flickers, cranes, ducks, geese and great blue herons. The Campground host is wonderful! He is super friendly and cleans every camp spot by clearing the firepit, rakes the camp area and even cleans the picnic table with disinfectant. He maintains the cleanest vault toilets I have ever seen or smelled! We were able to get our tent up before the 50 mph wind gusts. We had the tent poles hit my head a few times during the night. The next day, we got to enjoy a 4 mile walk around the lake and have a few hours of sunshine and a fire before the winds came back in with a thunder and rainstorm for good measure. It rained all night, and coming from Oregon we know rain.

We woke up to seeing our breath and snow on the nearby hills. We decided we had enough, packed-up our wet gear and raced to Marana and a nice queen bed at Greg’s parents. We would have stopped at Burro Creek Campground (only $14/$7) near Wickieup, AZ but it was pouring down rain and you all know how fun it is to put up a tent in the rain. It has potable water, flush toilets, picnic tables with covers and firepits. There is a group camp area if you are coming with a group. We believe with climate change all the meteorology algorithms must be off as none of the weather predictions were correct. That is one thing we do miss from our van is pulling up and relaxing inside and not having to set-up camp. Only a few more months and our Overland Explorer Camp-M will be ready and we’ll be back in business.

  • Pahranagat National Wildlife Refuge
  • Our view from the tent window to the lake
  • Burro Creek Campground

One last addition, last night we went to Madera Canyon in Arizona. The Bog Springs Campground is an excellent stop for only $20/$10 a night with water at each camp spot, picnic tables, fire rings, bear box and a vault toilet. It was very quiet and very few other campers. From the campground there are a number of trails up the Madera Canyon. The area is known for its birding and did we see lots of birds: wild turkeys, hummingbirds, acorn woodpecker, warblers, trogons, flycatchers, Mexican blue jays, eagles and bats. In the evening we were infiltrated by a gang of 5 wild turkeys, two squirrels, 4 blue jays and 2 deer. They stared me down and were like–“hey woman give us food or else!” It was quite the sight to see them all together.

  • Bog Springs Campsite
  • Dutch John Springs Trail
  • Blooming Teddy Bear Cholla
  • Wilderness Boundry
  • Santa Rita Mountain Range
  • The view at the top of the 6,000 ft ridge
  • Greg found a little water
  • The Spring is no longer there
  • Watch out for the Wild Turkey’s

In our next post, we will share suggestions in organizing your toys in a cargo trailer and how to pack for overlanding adventures as we head to California, Nevada, Idaho and Montana for our next road trip. Thanks Mom and Dad for letting us crash for 10 days!

Apr 30 2021

A Fresh Start

Sorry we have been very quiet for the last several weeks. There have been a lot of changes for us. First off, after 15 months on the road we have learned that we enjoy life on the road, even with its challenges. We have really enjoyed the Van Life and traveling all over the USA exploring mother nature’s great outdoor spaces, so we decided it’s time to go all the way in. We returned to Bend, Oregon on February 25th to sell our home and all our possessions and become full-time Nomads! If you haven’t seen the news Bend is the number one remote working city on the West Coast and is growing like crazy! There is more demand than there are homes for sale. So in less than 8 days we decluttered, staged and sold our house. Then in another 8 days, we sold all our possession and packed- up a few items to store at our vacation rental. Thanks to my brother, David who did a few truck load round trips to help us move the few things we decided to keep. Of course, no sale is easy and to make a long story short we did a hurry up and wait and after 35 days it finally closed.

If that wasn’t enough work, we got the bright idea we are ready to try overlanding. For those who do not know what overlanding is, Wikipedia has a great definition (I typically am not a huge Wikipedia fan but will give this exception…) “Overlanding is self-reliant overland travel to remote destinations where the journey is the principal goal. Typically, but not exclusively, it is accomplished with mechanized off-road-capable transport (from bicycles to trucks) where the principal form of lodging is camping, often lasting for extended lengths of time (months to years) and spanning international boundaries.” Overlanding has been around since the 1900s where it started in Australia traveling across their continent delivering live stock. In the 1940’s it became more of an outdoorsmen activity. usually involves long-distance travel to remote locations that are under-documented and where little prior exploration has occurred. Other characteristics that define overlanding include, but are not limited to, self-reliance, adventure, survival, and discovery. Overlanding can involve a variety of elements such as crawling on massive boulders, wading in deep waters, slogging through mud, driving through sand and sprinting across a dry lakebed. It is minimalistic living and also with a focus of leaving no trace! Making sure we keep mother nature as is as much as possible for future generations to explore!

  • Bye Bye Boldt we are not going to miss you!

We loved our Boldt but even though it is 4X4 it is a very heavy vehicle, making it difficult to venture into sand or roads that are super rutted with lots of big rocks. What we loved the most this last year was exploring BLM and Forest Service roads that are off the beaten path and staying in places where there was no one around but coyotes, eagles and owls. Per our many stories, we were disappointed with the Mercedes Chasis, it just isn’t the quality you are paying for and after having it at the Mercedes dealer 8 times and unable to use our vehicle for about 2 months while living full-time (very inconvenient). We placed Our Boldt on Vanviewer, Facebook Marketplace, and a reached out to a few dealers. At the same time, Greg loves his YouTube Research and we spent a few days watching the most reliable off-roading vehicles and truck toppers that are durable, 4-season and as light as possible but with enough amenities we could live full-time (since we no longer have a full time home). So we then took the next 5 days to sell our Boldt! We bought a Toyota Tacoma Double Cab 6′ bed. Note to those who may want to copy us, the Tacoma is in high demand and we spent 6 hours talking to 8 dealerships across Oregon, Washington, Idaho and Montana to find one. It will take time, many dealerships told us we would have a month wait or longer! So we decided on the Overland Explorer Camp-M truck topper! It was a close back in forth between the Four Wheel Camper Fleet Model (most people have heard of the Hawk but its made for full size trucks and not mid-size) and the Scout Yoho, Kimbo and Carbou Lite 6.5 all not available until January 2022. Since we no longer have a home we were hoping for a truck topper we could get right away, we were surprised it was pretty impossible to find a used one from one of these companies available anywhere in this country. So we decided to go back old school tent camp until end of June when we could get at 2021 Camp M from Big Sky RV in Montana. Note, I have no idea how they sell tent so cheap and make any money but Costco sells a huge 6 person tent with a sunscreen room (great to avoid the mosquitoes this time of year) for only $129.00!

  • All our possessions for the next year
  • Our new truck loving the sunroof on a truck!

Images below of what our new set-up will look like in a few months and us at our campground as we wait for Greg’s second Covid19 shot. So I took all of our Van life possession and cut them in half to fit in our new truck topper setup. It is amazing how little we really need to live very comfortably! I was able to get everything into 4- 14 gallon bins that will be stored in the double cab once we have the topper. We are going to toughen up and no longer enjoy a wet bath but an outdoor shower and our little 2.5 gallon Thetford Porta Potty. Now I will know how Bode feels! Good thing Greg and I have gotten into the Wim Hof Method! It is a breathing technique and cold showers that change your body’s biochemistry and help strength your immune system, better your energy and sleep.

So of course nothing goes as planned. As we were selling our home and preparing to hit the road again, our little buddy Bode started deteriating at a rapid pace. After 12 fun and crazy years we had to let Bode go.

  • Our new Camp M and Tacoma set-up.
  • The outside of the new Camp M
  • Bode trying the new truck setup
  • Bode saying good-bye to the Boldt.

So our next post will be about our old school camping on the Oregon Coast, Sunriver then on to Arizona and San Diego. Then if all goes well we will report on our new Overlanding adventures across the USA, and why we purchased which overlanding stove, awning and cooler/refrigerator and all the cool gear to choose from. All I can say I love the Tacoma Crawl feature and the smooth ride is so much quieter and nicer than the Mercedes. Come back for more crazy adventures. We will end this post with our last shot with our crazy doodle Bode.