Challenges of Full Time Camping in a Four Wheel Camper
We are coming up on our three month anniversary of living in full time our Four Wheel Camper. Over the course of those three months, we’ve had some incredibly beautiful adventures and some difficult challenges. There are things I thought would be hard about this lifestyle that aren’t and unexpected challenges that are pushing me to grow.
I am a highly sensitive person. Being “sensitive” has all sorts of conations, often negative, but I describe it like this: I am able to sense physical, social, and emotional subtleties with very little stimulus. I feel deeply & it makes living, especially in a camper, kind of exhausting sometimes. I can narrow down the biggest challenges for me into these four categories: comfort, convenience, space, & relationships.
Comfort
Before moving into the camper, I was anxious that I’d never feel that “homey” feeling on the road. Then I hung a couple pictures that are precious to me, got some comfortable sheets, & now I can light a candle and feel perfectly at home in our space. I’ve always loved small spaces. As a kid, I’d crawl under my bed to read and, like most kids, I dreamed of having an epic treehouse. Now, when I’m laying in our lofted bed above the cab of our truck, our home feels like the coolest, coziest fort ever!
However, I’m finding that it is uncomfortable to me in other ways. In the camper it feels like we are at home everywhere and nowhere. If we’re out to dinner & I get cold I can easily “run home” to grab a sweater. But, we can also have a stranger poke their head into our kitchen to ask us how much our house costs when we’re parked in public. It would seem that living in a camper would mean more solitude, which I crave, & that is true when we’re out on forest roads. However, tasks normally done at home - like washing clothes or taking a shower - require us to go to town and navigate this awkward somewhat public/somewhat private space of being at home in a shopping mall parking lot. That’s the kind of discomfort I’m not used to yet - and I’m learning how to navigate.
Convenience
Today was the perfect example of how inconvenient and annoying living off grid can be. In a typical home, you can turn on the sink, water comes out, & you can have no awareness of how many gallons you’re using or how it got there. You can turn on a light without a single thought about where the energy to power that light comes from. In a camper, modern conveniences, like heating/cooling, water, and electricity require some forethought and work to acquire. This afternoon all I wanted to do was write this blog & instead, I drove around for over an hour looking for a place to plug in our camper. It’s cloudy today & our solar panels are not getting enough energy to keep the food in our fridge cold, requiring us to charge our batteries using a standard electrical plug-in.
Getting water can also be a nuisance. We typically fill our 20 gallon tank for free at gas stations, but 20 gallons runs out quickly if we’re not conscious of our usage. There have been some instances where we didn’t keep track of how much water we had & ended up far away from a water source without any water for a day or two.
There are solutions to some of the inconveniences, like the power issues, but we’re super new at this & have so much to learn! I hate reading forums & doing research online… So by default, I tend to learn through trial & error, which takes time.
Space
It probably comes as no surprise that living in the bed of a pickup truck has led to some issues of space. Before moving into the camper, I was anxious for weeks stressing over what things to keep, what things to give away, what to store at my mom’s house, & wondering if we would be able to fit everything we needed into the camper.
After three months in the camper, I see that we have everything we need and more. It feels like our home is filled to the brim. When something new enters our space, it will float from countertop to countertop before finding a new nook to cram it into.
My mood is greatly impacted by the state of the space I’m occupying. When my space is cluttered, my brain gets overwhelmed and shuts down. So even before moving into the camper, I began adopting minimalist values. I enjoy having very few high quality things that I love. Living in a small space is pushing me to be even more cutthroat with the things we have. If it isn’t beautiful, functional, & durable - I will be getting rid of it in the next couple months! It is time for another downsize!
Relationships
Speaking of space, Jered takes up a lot. Jeez that man is huge! No, but seriously - he is 6’4”. I am 5’4”. He takes up an entire foot more space than I do - just by living & breathing! When we first moved into the camper I made a rule that only one of us could be standing at a time, which really meant that if I was standing, Jered needed to stay seated until I sat down. (This was absolutely ridiculous and unreasonable and did not last for more than a day.) Still, if we are both standing, I often feel overpowered, small, out-of-control, and frustrated. Which leads me to my next area of camper challenges - relationships!
Living in a camper with a significant other is not always a walk in a national park (heh heh). We are two individuals who value our independence. We often have very different needs and only one mode of transportation & one very small home. Living in a camper makes it difficult to create space between us & easy to blame the other person for your uncomfortable feelings. We are both learning how to own our own feelings & needs and express them honestly, without blame or aggravation… It’s very hard. But we’re both learning & growing so much together & as individuals.
Beyond my relationship with Jered, living in a camper has been challenging on all my other relationships as well. I am living further away from friends and family than I’ve ever lived & often with very little cell service or access to wi-fi. I am learning how to stay connected with the people I love from a distance.
Overall
Living on the road is often romanticized & I can see why. It’s easy to idealize this lifestyle because it truly is a beautiful way of living 60% of the time. The other 40% of the time, your feet are filthy, you’re navigating annoying logistics, & your tea kettle is falling out of the cabinet. Choosing this lifestyle is a trade off. We traded a very comfortable life full of convenience for a beautiful life full of adventure and freedom. & we are adjusting.
Before choosing to live on the road, when something hard came up, I always wanted to run away. I’d dream of being on a beach or cruising through the Tuscan countryside. That feeling of wanting to escape my life has not gone away as a full time traveller. Today, while driving aimlessly looking for power I found myself dreaming of being in Maui. So I pulled over, breathed in the muggy August summer air, ate some Maui onion potato chips & went on about my day. Knowing I have the freedom to leave, somehow makes it easier to stay. Staying means saying, “This too,” and finding a creative way to overcome discomfort.
One Maya Angelou quote has always stuck with me & has led me to an interesting revelation recently. When asked about her travels & the price she’s payed for her freedom, Maya responded, “You only are free when, at some point, you realize you belong no place. You belong every place. & no place at all. The price is high, the reward is great.”
Through feeling at home everywhere and nowhere, I am learning how to feel at home in my highly sensitive body. No matter how uncomfortable, overwhelmed, annoyed, anxious, sad, or disconnected from others I feel - I am learning how to always be at home with myself. & I wonder if that’s why I was pulled so strongly to make take this massive leap in my life.
It’s not always easy, but that’s ok. Sometimes hard is good. & I know this is the good kind of hard.
Kindly,
Marissa