Solo Woman's Truck Camper Tour 38-Year Journey of Life on the Road!

back to our next video today we're going to meet sharboo also known as charlotte and uh you are in a gorgeous gorgeous slide-in camper on a four-wheel drive truck yes uh and and you've been doing this a little while now haven't you i've been doing it over about 38 years 38 years that might be a record for me you think yeah off and on or off and on i have done it for jobs i've lived in class cs i had a job out of palo alto california working at a research institute and i traveled from palo alto to san diego to reno where they had facilities and i kind of judged it by the weather and would do my route and i did that for about a couple of years um sure you didn't have a permanent home you were a nomad i didn't care i didn't want one you know because i'd have to rent where i was and it was just too much of a hassle so i said hey go in an rv and i mean i've owned everything you can imagine this is my third truck camper pop-up and i've owned three hard sides i've owned three fifth wheels i just go on and on but i am quite an expert on an rv i can tell you everything you need to know but i was a backcountry horse rider my husband and i in idaho and we had did you do tours or guided oh no it was strictly just for you know our own pleasure yeah so we did that in the summers in idaho and we had a living quarters horse trailer that we set up to be totally off grid when off grid wasn't even heard of and then we started coming to wickenburg arizona because that's a big horse rider town oh so we sure you've got the cowboys all over wickenburg the yeah the mannequins yeah wickenburg is a beautiful place just beautiful i was there once when they had a a rodeo is that a pretty big rodeo there yes i bet it is yes you know it it really is and we stayed at a place called the hospitality rv park which you could bring your horses oh wow and you rented a stall so they had a place and then you had a place you know so it was fun it was a lot of fun there but now i'm kind of on my own alone my husband passed and i've started out again i just can't stop i don't know what it is you get the bug and it just you just love it i love it yeah and i'll keep going i started out last winter my first winter down here in the truck camper and i had a hard side with a full wall slide you know my truck can handle it it's rated for a payload of seven thousand pounds wow the camper dry weight was 3500. so of course i loaded it up yeah you load them up and i just didn't like it it was too top-heavy yes and i spend a lot of time i like to go in the mountains and i couldn't get there that thing stood up 13 feet in the air and i said now i'm going back to my pop-up campers because that's basically what i bought a pop-up camper for is to pull horse trailers up in the mountains right and this works great just put the top down you can go and i'm short enough i'm five foot two so i don't even have to pop it up when i'm traveling wow the height inside when that's down is about what is it it's about five foot four so it works great you know i can don't have to take all my stuff apart and pop it up because it is it's a little bit of work to put it back together but nothing complicated no and your truck is working so much less hard mm-hmm you're you're it'll probably pay off in the long run with longevity on the vehicle yes so after all these years and uh of doing this what's up the one thing you would you're kind of disappointed with about being a nomad it's the one thing you kind of it's not too bad but you don't like it anything i really can't think of anything i'm kind of a loner you know myself so i tend to just enjoy what i have you know i love to hike and i love to hike in the desert i'm a photographer so i love to take pictures and just spend quality time with myself yeah you know i i really enjoy that and there's really no part that i i dislike none i can't even think of one right well then what is your favorite thing about it what keeps you bringing you back to it it's hard to put that in it is and i've never thought of that but i don't know it's just the ability to go you know if you live in a sticks and bricks house you tend to vegetate you know you set in front of a television or you know some other thing and that's just it i can't do that i'm a wanderer and the ability to do this alone and have all everything taken care of i enjoy that and i like putting it all together i think i like that more than anything well with that can we take a look around and see what you've done yes you're sure welcome all right let's go check this out folks so we're inside and boy it's a lot bigger in here than you would think i think the feelings are uh 10 feet wow once it's popped up right and when it comes down you're just uh barely you can barely walk around well no i have about four inches above me the only thing is you have to step up to get in the bathroom and i have to kind of go like this you know to do that but that's no big deal when the top is down yeah when the top is down but just the fact that you can use the bathroom when the top is down is unusual it is and you know i have owned three of these and the first two that i owned you could not do that yeah for some reason they have raised the level here the hard side level on these things which is nice because they raise these up to put more storage in which is really nice right and then a larger refrigerator than most you know campers have yes that is for a pop-up that's an amazing yeah big refrigerator yeah that's what i thought and you have an awful lot of room up here you don't feel claustrophobic here at all oh no i don't at all and the neat thing the bed is fantastic this is a full queen size bed up here and those i put cushions you know to kind of surround me and it helps you know keep the heat in here it's not bad though all i'm heating with right now is just that olympian you know wave heater and i turn it's got two settings low and high and i run just on the low all night and it takes to chill off and you know does what it needs to do but the thing that is so fantastic about this is when you're up in bed and you've got all of these open you can see 360 degrees all around you it has these cabinets and i think since this one was built they have put in a cloth kind of hanger that you can hang stuff in because they're a little bit high for a short guy yeah i can't get in there i've got to step up on here and you know get in it or use a stool but i took and made these and so i can hang stuff in here and when i travel i have to take this section out but and one of the sections off of here but i thought that's a great way to kind of organize stuff and leave it in there now that right there bob is all the dishes i have wow that's pretty amazing i know i've whittled it down over the years and i i use everything that i bring you know maybe a little extra clothes of course i'm a woman you know well i think that's true of all of us yeah a little extra clothes and two mixing bowls and i always have to have a cast iron fry pan right you know that's about it yeah just save space well it looks like you set mostly your kitchen up outside yeah yeah i can i do outside with the go sun but this has remarkable yeah that's a lot of storage right there yeah i can put all of canned goods and whatever else in there and then what else oh i've got a charge controller so there's a 15 gallon water tank inside of here and then there's a battery and the thing i think the reason i bought this is that it had this l-shaped couch most campers just have kind of like a dinette set and you have to set up all the time but in this i put in a little backrest and then i can stretch out which is nice and uh you got your berkey oh yeah you gotta have a berkey and your nice big fridge yeah for uh for a pop-up truck camper that's a very large bridge yeah that's what i thought yeah and then the bathroom is kind of unique the bathroom is yeah i don't know i guess i'll go here behind yeah you can take a picture in there so it's just open from the top and then you have the shower curtains that just go around this rim here there's a track yeah and then you it becomes a wet bath it does then you got a four-wheel closet that's a big car kind of like that that's a lot of storage i thought so too and then you've got storage in here quite a bit and then storage in there gotta have all your odds and ends you know right and then there's a place down here more storage that's an amazing amount of storage yeah for a truck camper it sure is it is so you've gotta you you like to be outside quite a lot i do um i tried to this was an engineering project i have the electric bike and i had to have a swing away type of setup so that i could use the stairs when i was traveling or you know whatever so i came up with buying one of these trays and i think i saw it on one of your videos to begin with and so i bought the swing away but then i had to have a way to attach this bicycle and because the tires are so fat they wouldn't go on a regular bike rack so i came up with a motorcycle rack right that i attached on the inside and the front tire sets out here and then the back in here and and it's working good and so you use the shower inside or do you come and shower outside well um it just depends i use the shower like if i'm somewhere like up in the mountains or something like that i'll use the outside shower and i have a shower bag i love the shower bag it's just simple plain old solar heats up my water uh now that's just my bathroom i go you know i go in there this camper only has a seven gallon black water tank there's no way that you could you know go number two in there i have a five gallon bucket and line it and you know it's easy peasy it's i to me it's the easiest possible thing yeah i think so too uh people are a little hesitant in doing that but i don't know what's the difference if i do take a shower i'm responsible in that i only use organic shampoos and dishwashing soap that is plant-based i really believe people need to do that to our environment you know don't dump harsh chemicals especially when there's animals you know that could go and get sick from them so i try to be responsible in that regard very good and you're cooking right now i'm a cooking right now let's take a look at that so you've turned the ghost on out of the sun i did because i could tell by the smell it was getting cooked but i'll flip it up so that we can see it oh you can just turn it like that yeah that's amazing it just moves wherever you want to put it and you've been happy with it with how it works oh i love it it's so much fun to cook on this thing i cooked hot dogs and sauerkraut yesterday i was in a baking mood so i baked brownies oh my and blueberry muffins nice this is the eco flow delta and you have how much solar is this um the panels are 160 watt each for the the sections and the eco flow is 1800 watts of power wow there's only a 15 gallon water tank in this and so i have put two six gallon tanks that i carry in the back here and i had to try to figure out how am i going to get the water from that tank right way up there right and so i came up with an electric pump how nice and it just works so dandy it's been working really good for me i really like this setup yeah and then if i have to uh i can drop this right and just drive out from underneath right if you wanted to be in a campground for a while you could be yeah if you needed to be for some reason or the truck needs to be serviced or right whatever reason right you know so you have that capability and i also like the truck camper if you're coming to the desert and you want to bring your atv go this way right you know because you can pull it you can pull your boat right you know any kind of toys you got you can pull it and you still have your house and then you can drop it all if you want you know whatever you want to do it's very versatile and i like that you don't need a lot of room people think oh i need this fifth wheel you know 40 feet long yadda yadda you don't yeah you know you set in the same chair right you know you go eat at the table that's that's all you do you're not dancing in there right you know or have a whole bunch of people i don't know maybe some people do but not me i like i like my little space and it feels comfortable if you can move around you can cook your food you know you can take a shower hey that's it oh i'd like to mention security for a woman out here alone i take that serious i was a probation officer for a long time and i've worked with police extensively i was also a child abuse investigator so i have been around that element and i have a system where i have lights that come on they're motion censored so this whole thing lights up pretty good i also have motion detectors so you're not going to get 10 feet within this rig that i don't know and i thought well you know animals are going to run by and they're going to set it off all the time well they do but i figured out that animals are like drive-bys you know they're not sticking around but if some this keeps going off and off and off i know somebody's out here right you know then i can take appropriate action but i think it's important whoever is out here you know on their own is to be prepared be proactive not reactive you know don't be afraid it's not any fun when you're sitting in there afraid wondering what sound that was or is there somebody out there know what's going on you know take take a look and see what's going on well charlotte thank you so much for sharing your home and your life with us it's really wonderful you've done an amazing job here well thank you thank you appreciate it so folks i know you've got some really good information here if you did like us on youtube subscribe to the channel hit that thumbs up button

Channel: CheapRVliving

Views: 308,335

Keywords: car, van, RV, Full-time, nomad, camper, camp, boondock, travel, caravan, tiny, house, RTR, Bob Wells, Nomadland, CheapRVLiving, Cheap RV Living, vanlife, van life, how to live in a van, van dwelling, van tour, van conversion, living in a van, camper van, van build, diy van build, sprinter van, van living, #vanlife, van dweller, campervan, vandwelling, diy camper van, RV Life, Living in an RV, Class B, Class C, Truck Living, Living in a car, boondocking, Living in a RV

Id: QCfQMY0imdM

Length: 18min 0sec (1080 seconds)

Published: Sun Jul 03 2022