We arrived back home safely on Monday, without any incident, after ten nights of camping with perfectly sunny and cool weather the entire time. Yes, we were truly blessed on this trip. It was a fairly simple vacation this time, with less driving, and I am still physically tired from the trip, and still recovering, but I am happy to say that everything went off without a hitch on this trip. The best thing was we never had to discover what it would be like to have to bide our time inside the camper and wait for the rain to quit!


This will be a multiple day post, so today, I will just share some photos explaining how we do our homemade Sprinter van camping conversion. Our van is simple, allowing us mainly to sleep, store our things fairly neatly, and cook inside in a toaster oven, but that's it. But we try to stay at state parks that are reputed to have nice bathrooms, so we don't really need the bathroom facilities to be in the van. And the sleeping is quite comfortable, too.


The weekend before the trip, we remove the back two rows of seats from the van. They are extremely heavy and difficult to handle, so that is why we always do that part on a separate day from actually packing. This leaves the back of the van large and open for our "conversion". First, we move in a small wood cabinet with drawer, where we store our permanent camping supplies. Then we move in the portable a/c unit, and tie it down securely for the trip. Then comes the futon that is a double bed. After that, comes DH's nifty storage trunk that converts into a sleeping surface for one child. The other child sleeps on the floor in the front of the futon by the cabinet.


This photo is looking inside the back of the van after it has been fully packed. We back the van right up to the front door of our house! (we can do this in our neighborhood). Note the full trunk. The bottom part of the trunk is full of things we need for the trip, and the top section is full of mostly non perishable foods, and a few things that wouldn't fit in the bottom part. Including, of course, the all important violins.















Then, we place our cold foods cooler adjacent to this box, allowing us to walk in and out of the van from the back door. When it is sleep time, the end of the box pivots up on a set of hinges, and locks in place to make a flat sleeping surface that crosses the entire back of the van. Definitely long enough for any child, or shorter adult, to sleep.


Here is a photo of the futon that we use for DH and myself to sleep. We did not skimp here. We are using a good futon mattress with 10 layers that rivals the comfort of our bed at home. It is important, for if I can't sleep while camping, then camping isn't gonna' last very long in this family!

You can see in this photo that underneath the futon we store all the blankets, sleeping bags, linens and pillows, a camp chair, and the self inflating mattresses for the kids to sleep on. With the wheel well under the futon, this pretty much takes up the full space under there.
Oh, and notice the wooden "feet" that DH made for the futon. This raises it up some to facilitate a person, even an adult being able to sleep comfortably with a portion of their body underneath it. In this case, Baby Girl sleeps on the floor, but her feet are partially underneath the futon.

This next photo shows the portable a/c unit when it is tied up for travel in front of the cabinet. In the cabinet, we store things like flashlights, reusable dinnerware, paper towels, tablecloth, cooking spoons, ladle, spatula, oven mitts, trivets, and various things we always need and keep in the cabinet year round for our camping trips. We always know these things are in the drawer, or on the shelves, and they are easy to retrieve when we need them.






DH has mounted two fluorescent lights at the ceiling that can be plugged into shore power at the campsite. They provide great lighting inside. Can you tell I am really proud of my husband's ingenuity?














The next photos show the van when it is in use for sleeping. This first photo shows Little Son all set up in his sleeping area, at the foot of the futon, and directly across the back of the van, over the storage locker that DH constructed. Complete privacy is assured by the attaching of many sunshades to all the windows. They are secured by strong magnets, and go up pretty easily. Nevertheless, setting up in camp involves many little steps, but none of them are too difficult, and we are all set up in half an hour. We just have to carefully coordinate everybody's parts, locations, and sequence of steps to make it smooth. By the end of the trip, we were doing okay with this. It did take some patience, though!




This is Baby Girl all snuggly cuddly at the foot of the storage cabinet. She turns out to be the best sleeper of all. She crashes immediately, sleeps soundly all night, and is the last person to be aroused every morning. Of course, Bear Blanket might have something to do with that.












This next photo shows the kids romping with daddy in the morning. The window shades black out everything so well, that it isn't always easy to tell when morning has arrived. Doesn't Daddy look comfortable there?














Now at this point, you may wonder how the van is kept cool and comfortable. We were concerned that it would be stuffy and damp or humid. Not so with DH's handy dandy shore power HVAC system. (actually the heating part is handled by separate portable electric heaters, and work pretty well, at least when the van gets down into the upper 40s at night. We haven't tested when it gets colder yet).

This is the portable air conditioner when it is all hooked up between the driver and passenger seat. This air conditioner works extremely well during sleep. It can't handle the heat when the full sun is on the van, though. But then, we never will be sleeping then. We will only need to be in the van at camp when the sun is down, or when it is raining. In either case, the a/c should work fine. We will have to seek out shady campsites when we can. The air conditioner also functions as a vent fan when no cooling is needed. There is an exhaust tube that is connected to the driver's side window.





Note how DH has rigged this one up. He constructed a vent opening out of plexiglass that fits neatly in the driver's side window when it is down. It also permits the electrical connection to enter the van here.
Our goal was to modify the van to camp without defacing the van in any way. Notice the way DH has designed the interface to keep rain from entering the duct.



And that concludes today's post about our van conversion. For anyone interested in converting a Sprinter van for camping, this is the way one family of four has done it. The cost of the conversion, as you can see, was under $1000. And this vehicle still gets 23 mpg diesel, even when converted for camping, since the weight doesn't really increase during the conversion (once we take those heavy seats out).

The next post will talk about some of the things we saw and did on our trip. Thanks for reading this far. Hope you'll stay tuned!