Tearing up the camper...

Seamus hijacking the old propane tank

The interior, before it was cleaned out. Yum!

The field-stripped camper with the liberated fridge in the doorway.

The next weekend I tore apart the camper. Lots of mold, spiders, dirt and other unknown muck. I took out the fridge, stovetop, stove hood, sink, water spigot w/ electrical switch, 12-gal water tank w/ electric pump, water hoses, furnace, deep-cycle marine battery (12v 80 amp-hours), leveling jacks, breaker box, 110 outlet, romex battery leads and cables, propane tank, propane box, copper propane lines, external vents (fridge, furnace, etc), windows and door, curtain rods and hardware, cup hooks, cupboard latches (the hinges were shit or I would have taken them too)-- basically everything that was and wasn't nailed down that was in decent shape. Dirty, hot work. Now I gotta get rid of it-- not sure if an RV salvage place will want it as there is nothing useful left.

First weekend in the truck

Truck from the front

Truck from the back

Interior, looking forward

Interior, looking backward

I decided to get the truck on Tuesday (7/3/07) and by Friday I had researched running it on solar. Make it as off-grid as possible. I kind of thought it was a completely ridiculous idea, but the more people I told, the more excited they got and that helped me to take on the project. Seamus and I had thought about converting it last year to use as a snowboarding vehicle so we already had a rough idea of how we wanted the interior to look.

That weekend I spent an afternoon in it-- measuring, photographing and generally sitting in it to get the feel. It's bigger than I remembered. The interior measures about 15' long, 7' wide and 6'9" high. Doable. The driver's area is nasty. Mildewed steering wheel, rotted seat, lots of glued-up garbage. I checked out the camper and it's pretty trashed as well. Yay.

Why convert a '78 Chevy P-30 stepvan into a moving home

I am going to The Evergreen State College in Olympia, WA this fall. This is my second time around and I am 39. I started looking for housing in Olympia at the beginning of the summer and have gotten no replies. I think that being 39 makes me sound over the hill and possibly a bore.

I started kind of freaking out-- I had no idea what to do. So I was talking to my boyfriend who runs a Tim's Chip route and I joked that I should buy his chip truck because it has a diesel engine (3.9 Cummins turbo-charged 4-cyl), then I could run it on biodiesel. By the end of the day, I decided to convert the bastard and live in it. Screw you guys, I'm going to go live in a chip truck. That night I bought his brother's old piggyback camper for $250 for the appliances which include a stovetop, 3-way fridge (12v, 110AC and propane), a propane furnace, sink and water tank.