advice for a novice, please

[New Adventure]

Hi. I am new to the forum and am thrilled to find so many intelligent and knowledgeable people who are willing to share what they know. I am thinking of retiring and living for an extended period of time (several months, more?) in a SMB van conversion, mostly solo but for short periods may take a friend or family member (2 at most) with me. I have a fair amount of experience camping, but none in van living. Is anyone doing this? If so, I would love to hear your suggestions and choices - van selection, layout, must haves, dos and don'ts - any information or cautionary tales you care to share would be greatly appreciated. Thank you.

DB

[GrumpyBadger]

Howdy!

Here's a link to start with... there are a zillion folks blogging all over the place; this guy's a bit of a happy hippy type, but that might be you soon too ... no worries!

Cheap RV Living.com-Home

Cheers!

[New Adventure]

Thank you so much Steve. Lot's of interesting ideas…

DB

[Pschitt]

Hi DB,

You can take a look to my several posts. I lived for almost three years full time in VivaLaVida.

Claude

[TomH]

Provan used to build motorhomes on Chevy Astro vans. (They now only build on pickups.) All their vehicles are called Tigers. The Tiger users forum includes a number of people who are full timers, quite a few of them live solo in the older Astro van Tigers. The users forum can be found here. There is a page that lists links for many Tiger owners who keep personal blogs that can be found here. I created much of this list (see the oldest pages). If the owners maintain a blog, I have indicated so in the topic heading. If you see GT or XL in the title, that means the vehicle is van based rather than pickup based. The GT has a high hardtop and the XL is a pop-top. You will have to join the group to access anything other than the home page.

[New Adventure]

Thank you again. this forum and the ones mentioned above are great resources.

[boywonder]

Do a search for van life or van living on YouTube......there are lots of folks living in vans.