How We Started Our Version of #Vanlife
It all started with our friends ruining us…
Our close friends bought a Travato K in February of 2020 and soon my friend invited me on a “girl’s trip” in the van. I was absolutely blown away by how fun, convenient, and easy the experience was. I came home and told Ethan we NEEDED a van. Keep in mind the timeline of this happening. The world was quite literally shutting down around us. We were cancelling trip after trip with no idea of what the future would hold. A van seemed like a life raft to get us out of feeling so trapped.
A van seemed like a good idea, but Ethan and I honestly didn’t even know if we liked camping together because we had never really done it as a couple. We knew our emotions were a little bit out of whack with the state of the world, so we decided to slow down a bit and try out tent camping for a while before we made such an important decision. If we still felt like it was a genius idea in a year or so, then we could revisit the idea.
Researching
We slowed down on the actual purchase of a van, but we definitely didn’t have it off our minds. We increased our research of vans that would best fit our needs. One of the first things we figured out were our priorities of what we wanted in a van. This is different for everyone, but ours happened to be:
Storage/Organization- I really like everything to have a place and some builds have better options than others.
Bathroom- We decided having a bathroom was nonnegotiable. We also really leaned towards having a cassette toilet because we liked the idea of not having a whole sewage system in the van.
Layout- The layout was very important to us. We wanted to have the bed in the back part of the van, and we needed a layout that would be comfortable for our animals.
Air Conditioning- A majority of our camping is done in Texas, so an AC that can run off electricity or a generator was essential.
As we researched, we narrowed our search to the Hymer Aktiv, the Revel, and the Travato 59G. We found pros and cons for all those builds. We loved the Hymer Aktiv. The floorplan was great, we loved the pop-top option, and it had a cassette toilet. The downside of the Hymer was availability. There just didn’t seem to be many around and the ones with the pop-top were very limited. We liked the Revel too. It had a garage area in the back that was great for storage, it had all wheel drive, and it’s considered and “all season” RV. However, it was way out of our price range. Last, we had the Travato G. This seemed like the most available option, but we just weren’t in love with the layout. The bathroom in the back corner next to the bed wasn’t quite the concept we were looking for in a floor plan. We were a little discouraged of our options because we felt like we were going to have to compromise on our priorities list. We even started to consider getting a trailer that could be pulled with my SUV or even upgrading to a truck. We didn’t like the idea of giving up the mobility of a van. Plus, calculating the cost of a truck, a new trailer, and paying for storage just didn’t make sense to us.
Then our friends brought up a van we hadn’t even heard of before: the Solis 59PX. It had not been around for very long, so it had limited video walk throughs and reviews. However, we could see enough from the floor plan and pictures of the inside on Winnebago’s website that we knew it checked all of our boxes. We knew the Solis was what we wanted, and we weren’t going to have to compromise!
If you are looking into vans or even just curious, YouTube , RV Trader, and Facebook pages for each type of van are very helpful.
Now What?
Okay, so now we knew we wanted the Solis. But now what? What steps do we take? Where do we get it? How much time will we wait for it to be available? How do we finance it?
What Steps Do We Take?
First of all, we knew we should probably see one in person before making any decisions. We drove down to a Winnebago dealer about an hour and a half from where we live to check it out. We closed all the doors, played with all the systems, and opened and closed every cabinet to see if everything made sense to us. After our tour, we were sure that the Solis was exactly what we wanted.
Where Do We Get It?
We were lucky to live only an hour and a half from Stahmann RV. They specialize in vans and have been around for a long time. We didn’t want to buy from an RV dealership because vans are so complicated. We wanted someone who knows how the systems work to be doing our maintenance. Our friends also purchased from them, so we knew they were fair and professional. To top it all off, when we were ready, they happened to have the exact model that we wanted, a Solis 59PX with a pop-top, coming in the next month.
How Much Time Will We Wait?
Everybody on the Facebook pages we followed were saying that they were waiting months for delivery and sometimes deliveries were getting pushed back. Once we were ready, we thought we might be waiting a while for our van, but we put a deposit down in July for an August delivery and nothing was delayed. I really think we just got lucky on this one.
How Do We Finance It?
We definitely made some moves to adjust things in our lives to make “room” for the van. We made plans to sell one of our cars and use the van as a daily driver. We saved, saved, and saved some more for our down payment. I see questions about financing on the Solis Facebook page a lot. People say to “never finance a want.” They say that “you have no business buying a van if you can’t afford to pay cash for it.” A lot of people shame people for even asking the questions because clearly that means “you aren’t ready to buy a van if you’re asking.” But we ignored all those posts and comments. We were in our twenties. We don’t have generational wealth. We haven’t been saving for 40 years. We weren’t about to retire and blow our load on an RV. We are just normal people, so yeah we took on a loan. We made sure we weren’t stretching ourselves too thin, and we made adjustments, but if you’re always waiting for the perfect time for something, you might just always be waiting.
To be transparent, we do both have good credit, stable jobs, and were able to save a 10% down payment. I’m also a budgeting queen, so I crunched all the numbers 1,000 times to make sure it made sense for us.
Pick Up Day
It was the last Friday of August 2021, and the day was finally here! After a year and a half of researching and planning, it was finally time to pick up OUR van. We grew a lot in that year and a half. We were positive that we loved camping. We had some crazy tent camping stories under our belt, but we were ready to add some with a van and make it easier for our animals to travel with us.
We both took off work to drive up early on that Friday. When we pulled up, we pointed to every van jokingly saying, “You think that one is ours?” We started our walk through by 9 AM, and I was trying hard to remember all the tips I had learned about trying everything and opening everything before you drive off, but I was so excited that I couldn’t remember much. Luckily, Stahmann RV did a great job with our walk through and made sure we tried everything and opened everything before we concluded. We were finished with our walkthrough, financing, and paperwork by lunch time, and it was officially ours! Coming home with it felt like a dream.
No Regrets
We’ve had the van for almost a year now, and it has been everything we hoped it would be. Camping with our animals is so much easier. We can camp all year long even in the heat of a Texas summer. It takes minutes for us to set up and take down which allows us more time to enjoy our surroundings. It’s taken us on some incredible road trips too! There are no regrets and this version of #vanlife is a perfect fit for us.
If you’re considering buying a van, it’s important to remember that everybody does things differently. However you do it is the “right” way. Some people research for a few months while others research for years, read every book, and watch every video. Some people know everything about their van’s systems before they buy while others just have general knowledge, common sense, and a willingness to learn. Some people pay cash for theirs while others have to finance. Some people can build out a van themselves while others decide to purchase one that’s already built out. At the end of the day, however you make it happen, you’re on the road too. If it’s something that will make you happy, go there and do that.
