When we started making our plans for traveling full time one of the first MAJOR decisions that we had to make was what vehicle we would take. To make this decision we considered everything that we wanted our vehicle to contain. The list was as follows:

We are going to start a new monthly post. It will be a summery of the previous month in photos. Being that we have never done this before this group covers the first three months of being on the road (April - July). We take more pictures then we know what to do with, so this feels like a nice home for them! If you ever want any additional info on any of the pictures, don't be shy we would love to pass the info along. Enjoy the ride my friends!

   Yup, you read that right... We each have just 1 cubic foot of space to store our clothes in the van. ONE. Buckle your seat belts people this is going to be a wild ride.

Let me back up and explain why we have such a small space to work with. When making the organizational plan for Stanley we decided pretty early on that our clothes were going to live under the back bench seat. It's perfect, there is plenty of space and it is easily accessible! It was not long that we realized that the space had to be shared by our two 6v batteries that control our aux power system...

There is not a more violating feeling than having your car broken into. To know that someone entered a space that you feel safe in, with no discretion for the things that are important to you will never feel good.

We were in downtown Miami and only away from Stanley 2 hours. He was parked in a public lot, sandwiched between two major roads, in broad daylight. As we walked up to the van I said, "I know I would have never parked in a spot with so much glass on the ground." I hardly made it through that sentence before I reached the passenger vent window to see glass all over the ground.

1. Watch you head...there is something to hit your head on everywhere
2. We could be 100% better at food planning. Going to the grocery store everyday is THE WORST
3. We need cooler weather then we thought we did. No AC has left us sweaty very sweaty

Planning
When planning our system we started with determining how much power we would need for three days without ANY sort of charge. No shore power, no solar, no alternator. This required lots of super fun research and math. Yay math! Ah(Amp Hours) is the unit that a deep cycle battery's capacity is measured in. To come up with the amount of Ah we needed for those three days without charge we took the items we use everyday and figured out their draw in Ah. This is where the math comes in.

Living in a van/traveling full time, though it’s becoming more common, is still a 180 degree turn from the way we are conditioned to live. As we prepare to leave, we understandably get a lot of questions about this. The most frequently asked are:  where are we going to first? There is no good answer to this question, but in all honesty, probably Target...because we always forget something!