#10 Van Tour: high-top no-build van. Solo senior woman full time for 13 years,

hi my name is jan welcome to butterfly tracks i was in a park filming my kitchen tour and this wonderful lady came up to me i asked her if i could do a van tour she said sure come on over she didn't say wait i gotta fix my hair she didn't say i gotta straighten up a little she just said come on over the cottonwood trees were shedding their snow dogs were barking kids were playing cars were going by it was just me and my little cell phone no microphone i think you can forgive that for sherry i'm sherry in some some places online i go by grandma hug baby i retired in 2008 and just sat around and did nothing until july of 2009 and at that time we had an old yahoo forum it was called van dweller's two and um so i i was acquainted with on there with bob whales and suanne carlson and two knives katie and a bunch of people so uh 2009 in july i took off in my little dodge caravan and spent like at least three months i went over to yellowstone i drove if it said scenic highway that was the way i went didn't matter where it was going um and then i got down here to my son's house and this was on craigslist and i snagged it quick it's it was exactly what i wanted it was exact it was exactly it had nothing in there it had um some ripped up uh old rubber mats but it was insulated and it was covered with that gray industrial strength gray color uh stuff upholstery-ish type stuff but it was just open i've managed to fill it really well it stopped and and um would you stop doing this how do you feel about this as a lifestyle for you and for older people older women are really interested in this i can't even imagine being trapped in one place anymore i am when i have medical problems i'm down on my sons last summer i spent all summer at my daughter's up in oregon because my granddaughter and my great-grandson came down from alaska we had family and it was fun but there's no way i have people who all feel so sorry for me because i live in a van and they want to help me get into section 8 housing that's a death sentence for me that's not what i want this is what i want look at the trees look at the sky look at it's i can go any place i want to yeah i can't even imagine now i'm 77 years old so there's going to come a time when i won't be able to do this i in fact i just started seeing a cardiologist and he's frowning about this but um he can frown all he wants to but this is what i want to do and i've never in my life had such good friends as the ones i've met on the road bob wells suen charlene swanky wheels uh did you ever see the movie no mad land okay i got two most of it hit the cutting room floor there's two little spots at the at the fire where swanky wheels character dies and we have a memorial service well swanky and i've been friends since i very first started doing this and um still how many people get to be in a in an award-winning movie even if it's just a flash as camera goes past but it's got a good picture of my little dog sitting on my lap and and that was with people that live this way um the gal that that wrote the book that that movie was loosely based on um is a friend to all of us jessica brooder she's awesome she's amazing she even bought a van and came lived with us for a while while she was writing it and and interviewing our people and stuff um she's amazing but how many people if i was living in an apartment would i have ever known these people never never in a million years so you're a movie star i got to interview a movie star three seconds here and maybe four seconds there i i do have six or seven words in it though i i get up off the my chair we're sitting around the fire and because it's because swanky wheels character had died this is our memorial service and i stand up off the chair and i'm holding my dog and i walk over to the fire they had us each take a rock and toss it into the fire well charlene swanky is notorious for loving rocks there's whole stories about her and her rocks um so that was appropriate and and it makes the sparks that go up and make the film look good and i walk over and toss the rock in and tell tony actually the only part that hit the movie was i when i said because she loves bra she loved rocks so much well actually what i had said that didn't make the movie was oh she loved you so much tony because she does she was she was we were camped above corrupt when i brought him up from the shelter and she was the first one that saw him as i drove into camp she's got the first pictures of him above from when i came into camp with him so yeah it was it was special so you've got those um that memory for you and it also has your little dog in it so how perfect is that oh yeah and it's just you know three or four seconds doesn't matter it doesn't matter i looked on craigslist and he was right there waiting for me it was meant to be this is my van i bought him in 2000 the end of 2009 and um for very little he was just a big open cargo van his name is hulk and he took takes good care of me um a lot of people feel they have to do a build out um you don't have to uh let me open it up and you can see what's in there and there's a lot of stuff in there because i live in there that's right okay my build out consists of this desk and another desk back there and this one was ten dollars and that one was fifteen dollars up in oregon at a at a thrift store called thugs off drugs they brought them out put them in here for me this was just a big empty place there was nothing in here i bungee corded him to the wall and when i got down to arizona bob wells attached them to the floor for me and that was in i think that was early 2010 probably and they've been attached to the floor ever since then and this actually was new and i got to put it together and bob attached that to the floor he just got these l brackets and and put it on the floor my bed i needed a bed and i i don't know how to do anything like that so it's three ikea end tables that i put together you know you buy ikea stuff in a box three ikea end tables and home depot cut me a piece of plywood and that's what my bed is it goes across the back back by the doors uh the rest of it there's the two desks this thing with the drawers with all my spices and stuff in and then there's there's three totes back there that are just bungee corded to the wall they've got my clothes and all kinds of miscellaneous junk in them up here my only real storage if something falls out of here it definitely could but this is all storage up underneath here and it goes clear to the back okay so that's deep yes that's it's pretty deep and uh there is room up there for stuff and uh that little door was already there and i just i just padded it and put some material on it and then put all my kids pictures up there i have lots of these pillows they're zippered they come from goodwill or other thrift stores and they have my clothes and my coats and everything in them there's a couple of small ones back there with all my underwear and socks and washcloths and stuff just looks like i have something pretty okay um i have reflectix there's reflectix cut for every window in here some of it has been cut for every window since 2010. uh but across each uh across this front dividing the the passenger area and stuff from the back there these are light blocking curtains like cut apart and you don't have to sew there's this stuff you can buy that it's a glue from any craft or fabric store it's called okay to wash it these have been holding up with that since 2009 or early 2010. that's how it works so it goes across here there's one that goes across there and there's one it grows across the back and since it was on a i had it on like a curtain rod but everybody that walked through would catch on that curtain rod so what that is is a bungee cord all right it goes on the bungee cord so nobody pulls it apart anymore okay potty oh when we get band dwellers together we gotta talk potty um lots of van dwellers do the five gallon bucket thing and stuff but i have a potty you have a real putty and this is actually this one's a brand new one this is the third one i've had in what 11 years they stand up really good i just got this one it works really well it comes part easy to dump i can dump in any place where rvers dump in an rv dump or i can dump in any toilet okay i'd like to ask you a question about that because that was something that i had considered i don't have room for it now i got too much stuff in there but if people are considering that i think what i would have wanted to know is how heavy is it to dump you know i don't dare let it get i'm not very strong i'm old um i don't let it get all that full about two-thirds full is all and i don't know how heavy it is but my old arthritic hands can do it real easy and they have these are set up so that in theory you fill the top thing with water and then you flush like it's a toilet well that looked that's silly i have inside there i have a little plastic bowl i pee in that little plastic bowl and if i'm if i'm some place where i can't dump it comfortably then it goes in the bottom like the rest of them but if i'm out on the desert i'm in in the forest someplace i can take that little bowl dump my pee and that thing doesn't get full as fast and i never put water in the top of it so he just goes out wherever guys pee behind the trees why can't we yes that's right yes except i can't squat anymore but um the rest of it i empty into an rv dump or into a toilet do you use chemicals i do i use the chemicals that are are recommended for it works wonderfully this whole put together thing was just like things were made to be i mean okay i walked into the the thugs off drugs thrift store and they had this one and that one go back comes up to my wheel well my wheel wells are 36 inches long and 12 inches deep so i had to have some that one back there is a desk that doesn't have anything in the bottom on the back so i bought that one because it was it was wide enough to go over my wheel well between underneath that one is some plastic drawers and things like that back in 2010 i made those out of a cracker box i um used on the front that's kind of padded looking looks kind of cool that's nothing but a chunk of this reflectix and and spray glued on there with some gray glue of the the material beautiful it's a cracker but they're all there's four of them they're all the this piece of this cracker box and put together with spray glue and a perfect fit perfect fit this little piece up here looks like wrought iron it's plastic it's a yard little yard fence that i cut the the fence the doohickeys that go down in the ground off and screwed it up there and that holds some stuff this is my kitchen um and it was really good because i traveled with a five pound yorkie tony moroney and he could get any place in this van except because of the way this is built he couldn't get up here so that's what i cook on that is a combination butane or propane this is a wave three because they're supposed to be really good and i knew i was going to be up in oregon for a while when my great grandson was born and it's wet and cold up there so a friend installed that for me and it's propane down underneath the desk is a little tiny propane tank and this part here this part here was an old street sign my friend is he was very very creative so he put it in here for me so that's what that is it's just a wave three because i don't have enough solar to bother with a a refrigerator and i i do this class thing usually at the women's rtr's and stuff called safe food storage with little or no refrigeration i have a ice chest back there this one just holds water it was just i had it extra and it it holds three gallons of water so it makes it convenient but that one i don't really need refrigeration most of the time but if i go to the grocery store and this is part of my spiel is i go to the grocery store you know and i'm walking along and one of those damn rotisserie chickens jumps off the table into my cart then i have to buy a block of ice to keep it because i can't eat it all at once but that's probably the only time i buy ice anymore when i had my little dog i had ice all the time because he had he had digestion problems he had a lot of problems and his diet was boneless skinless chicken breast and cooked vegetables and so he and i ate a lot of boneless skinless chicken breast so i always had ice to keep his but now it's just me i i don't mind peanut butter sandwiches i like peanut butter sandwich or whatever so i don't if i go to the grocery store sometimes i get a block of ice but i don't buy more than what i can eat before that block melts i don't feel the need for a lot how many gallons of water do you carry okay um i have two of these i have one up front and what is that is that yes six gallons six gallons i think the other one might be a five gallon and then i'm not sure this holds three gallons and i have one three four i just filled these i'm not sure i usually have that many because hulk is fairly high my only real low pot part are my running boards but the rest of him is fairly high i can go out on the on blm land forest service roads uh hulk's been in some pretty strange places when you're a woman alone your best defense that you have and i've been saying this forever your best defense is are they are the hairs on your arms sticking up does back your neck feel then you are in a vehicle you can turn the key and drive away don't stay any place you're not comfortable you'll find someplace um i just came back down from from the north oregon coast and i i wasn't looking to i just was stopping at night i love truck stops and part of the reason i love truck stops is i used to drive the long haul i love the sound of the trucks but i also stay in in rest areas i've got no problems but if you pull into a rest area and there's some sketchy looking people like they're gonna come and ask you for money or something keep the wheels running there's another spot down the road always you

Channel: Butterfly Tracks

Views: 99,794

Keywords: van tour, no-build, high top van, solo senior woman, solo female nomad, fulltime female nomad, women's rtr, wrtr, nomadland, rtr, van life, vanlife

Id: 0uS3Niv58h4

Length: 20min 26sec (1226 seconds)

Published: Fri Apr 29 2022