It was time to embark on an actual campervan trip and an initiation into van life. If you haven’t read Part 1 of this Fit Test series (a four part series), it can be found here.
So there we sat 6 months prior to a proposed trip, every keyboard in our house called into action and at the ready for the appointed hour -11am EST – I think it was…Anyway we were ready to pounce on potential Yosemite campsites the moment they were available. Much to our amazement, we landed three sites and after a brief moment of mutual consideration fine-tuned our selections and let one go immediately. YES! Just like that all the sites were taken. No worries. We were going to go to Yosemite and stay in the Lower Pines Campground a few nights and then head higher to Crane Flat for an evening before heading to the coast! Woohoo! Locked down a Hymer Aktiv rental from the campervanguy.com and off we went!
Fast forward to the start of the trip, lugging large duffle bags through LAX to grabbing a LYFT to our hotel where we would stay one night prior to being met by Jody Rath, AKA campervan guy. We checked in, chucked our stuff into the elevator and as we shuffled along with our duffels got an eyepopping LA welcome as we passed by the wide open picture window of a room featuring a naked middle aged man, front and center, staring, unflinching out of the window, directly at us. We did our best to keep cool, avert our eyes, and duck around the next corner. Finding our room, we barely could control our laughter as we heaved our belongings into it. Not even out of the city and already we were seeing the unexpected.
Our intrepid rental van owner, Jody Rath, picked us up the next morning and reviewed the workings of his Hymer Aktiv campervan and sent us on our way. Three stops later – grocery, Target, and REI – and we were on our way to our first night of camping at a BLM primitive campground, Tuttle Creek. Getting out of LA and moving away from the coast, the driving lanes opened up as did the geology.
We arrived and settled in along with a heavy bank of smoke from Yosemite’s forest fires. While it was making for a stunning sunset, we worried about it obliterating the views and more fundamentally its potential to erase our trip. As we jumped out of the van to pay our fee, a strong wind kicked up. We were being sand blasted as we walked to the fee container.
Just as quickly as the winds had kicked up, they abated. We realized the smoke had been dispersed and the skies cleared on our walk back. We slept with the back door open and the back screen on. I could watch the stars as the nearby Tuttle Creek played out its bubbling babbling water-flowing melody and in the middle of the night, the coyotes began to howl.
Primitive toilets – check.
Bees invading our morning bacon on the camp stove – check.
Betsy hooked on van life – check.
OOPS maybe don’t let Rob know just yet, but his wife just went off the rails with him…And there I was after one night, thinking, “If we get one of these van deals and we do this a lot, will we even need a house?”
I will let Rob pick up on our Yosemite and coastal adventures because he is the planner in chief of the two of us. And this trip was end to end great! I highly recommend it no matter your mode of transportation – just do it.
After this first great night of sleep in the Hymer Aktiv I was a convert. But some other details emerged as we lived out of the van for the next two weeks that made aware that there must be something else out there that might work better for me and for us. Campervans are nimble exploring vehicles but there are compromises you need to consider especially if you think exploring is a life you want to lead as opposed to a trip you want to take.
Back to the Hymer Aktiv experience and what I learned.
As I said I was a large woman at that juncture and my husband is tall. In this van, even if you were child-sized, you would need to do the van shuffle in the heart of the van. The central hall was flanked by the bath and kitchen. Its width required one occupant to exit the hall so that another could enter it and make use of any of the facilities located mid-house. Not a deal breaker – but I could see that getting old or becoming a source of conflict some days in a tiny space.
The bath was a phone booth style square with a swiveling toilet and slightly bowed door for more knee and elbow room. It was tight. I honestly marveled at how Rob’s long legs folded into the cramped space. We opted not to shower in it, preferring bathhouses that we found were clean, spacious, and plentiful all along the route. Further the toilet’s proximity to the kitchen was off-putting to us – we barely used it other than for the occasional middle of the night necessity – when it was handy and also meant we avoided slamming the big sliding door. The drop down bathroom sink was slightly awkward and standing over the toilet was slightly cumbersome, so we found ourselves using the more convenient kitchen sink when honestly, ideally I would prefer a bath sink be used for some of those personal hygiene cleaning functions, but for a trip, it was fine. We made good use of that bath for a closet, airing out clothing and towels and storing dirty laundry.
I really liked and disliked the kitchen. I found the drawer and pantry setup to be sensible and just enough to meet our needs and keep things in good, logical order. The kitchen faucet was attractive and a solid, attractive, residential style. I only turned it on once accidentally when the sink cover was still on. I have since seen some use it as an outdoor shower with a suction hook – clever! The two-burner propane cooktop was typical and fine. It was located more interior than the sink, with a microwave above and a deep dorm style frig with freezer shelf below. Having the microwave and stove cooktop made for a nice compact cooking center but I wondered at the time if it did not serve to hold more cooking odors in than if the sink and stove had been reversed. The overhead fan functioned well to keep that concern at bay, and we did most of the stove top cooking outside on a Coleman stove, using the various campsite picnic tables. The deep dorm style frig located on the floor level below the cooktop was the bane of my existence. I was battling some manner of a sinus irritation/headache after our long plane flight and became painfully aware of this every time I had to duck down and retrieve something from the refrigerator. And when ducking down was too uncomfortable, there I was squatting, kneeling, and nearly lying down on the floor to undo the jigsaw puzzle of our chilled items to get what was needed. It was impressive with how much it could and did hold! Further, the freezer was much smaller than I would want to own – fine for a trip, but just barely adequate. I disliked the idea that to open the freezer you must open the frig. I loved the counter section that extended into the sliding door area and enabled me to prep items and set them out for pick up by Rob, our master Coleman chef IMHO.
I had mixed feelings about the lounge area. The concept was good, but the implementation needed refining. It was great to have an interior active area separate from a relaxation spot when we wanted to hang out indoors (rain, bugs, noisy neighbors, etc.) We loved the large skylight that could open and let out the hot air, but the process of opening and closing it was difficult and the parts seemed fragile and not likely to last long. Still, we will never forget watching an afternoon thunderstorm roll into Yosemite Valley with all its fury while safely inside our van, viewing it all through that skylight. It lacked a proper interior cover, but the campervan guy had constructed one to limit road noise. The bench seat was a bit high for my short legs and the table was a bit low – I felt like I was eating out of my lap and it made sitting on the bench uncomfortably snug as the table rested on the tops of my legs as my feet dangled. We enjoyed spinning the seats to watch an occasional movie, but again the floor fell away behind the passenger seat, so my legs were left swinging in midair and it was a stretch to reach the bench to put them up.
The bed and garage storage were generous for a campervan and we slept well indeed. I did have to climb over Rob which was not a deal breaker and it only got awkward once or twice. He is an early to bed early to rise (as in before the sun) kind of person. I am more of an evening person and wake up around 6:30-7 and more rarely get up in the night. What we really wished for was a lift system for the bed because the only access to the lower storage was to climb under the made bed in order to open the drawers or else completely unmake the bed. We kept our most needed items up top, but still, that last day when we packed our duffels and unmade the bed, we realized that we would have loved to have had better access to the lower storage.
Returning the Hymer van was bittersweet. I had really felt at home with the layout but had a nagging feeling that while it was great for a trip, it was not what I wanted for the long haul. There were too many little things on this low mileage well-maintained rental that simply were not holding up well or that annoyed me just enough that my overall impression was one of that I loved the campervan lifestyle but the devil was in the details that failed to impress me enough to want to own this particular vehicle. Rob and I were on the same page on that.
So now what?
The FIT Test continues at another trip to an RV Show!
Seeking more? Fit Test, Part 3 is found here.
