Converting Vincent

Today we are in Iowa, heading for Indiana. We have been doing a good amount of driving this week, starting from Oregon on Wednesday afternoon, but we are nearly to the destination and can relax now that we are cloes and take our time, which is nice!

Vincent has been doing great, our months and years of planning and prep have paid off! Most things are working how we planned for them to, and the things that aren't... well, that is life. Our plan to live in a van started in early 2020 when we were reviewing where we were in life and considering our options. We lived at a youth camp in the Cascade Mountains (Big Lake Youth Camp) which was a great place to live and work for me, but it was more difficult to Julie. In the winter she had to ride a snowmobile out to the car at 5:30 a.m. and dig it out if it had snowed, then drive an hour to work. A very long commute. Because of the camp schedule it was difficult for us to go on adventures, which is something we both want to do, so we were drawn to van life.

The first challenge was to find a van for sale that would work for us. We settled on the transit van because it has a slightly higher ceiling and I (at 6'7") can stand up in it, and I couldn't in the high roof Sprinters. The search was on, but they were definitely not readily available. Finally we found one in New York and snatched it up, then drove it back across the country to Oregon!

We started the conversion right away, but progress was SLOW. In the summer we were both very busy with work, and in the winter Vincent was parked out at the snow park, and we had to snowmobile out to get stuff done. We slowly made progress, and did a trial trip in December 2021 to Ohio to see family! There was a floor and a bed, but not much else at that time, but we made it work!

We built our own cabinets with the help of some family who are professional cabinet makers, got those installed, and started on the details. We also moved to my parents tiny house in central Oregon around May 2022, which made it much easier to make progress as we could just walk outside and start working, or just run over to the hardware store for parts!

Finally, in May 2023, we were able to declare Vincent ready! There are some pictures of the process below. Tune in next time to see where will Vincent Van Go!