🚐 Travelling from California to Alaska in DIY Camper Van 🚐

radhapatil (42)in #travel • 6 years ago (edited)

Hello Friends,

I am so excited to share with you my journey of making van into campervan. Reason making campervan because we wanted to visit Alaska and also I want to share my vanlife experience with you all. We have been planning for this trip from long time, Our initial plan was drive from west coast to east coast. later on we realized that central part not much to see. So started exploring more to see what are other options will work for us. Few of our friends recommended Canada and Alaska.. After lot of research we decided to go to Alaska.

We bought Chevorlet Express van. It is 15 seater van. I felt that it is big enough that fulfill our needs, then started looking that who can do upgrade for us, after inquiring many places we did not find one place that can do immediately, waiting period was 6-9 months. We decided to do it our self. first thing we did it was removed all seats and then floor, then sides and roof. Then on sides and on roof we put reflect ix. reflect ix is material which helps prevent outside heat or cold. After doing that we started working on floor, it took long er for us to put floor because we have to lay foam board and on foam board we put plywood. cutting it and fitting was exciting part. we have to measure carefully to fit.

Once this floor done we started working on bed. Made custom bed, because ready made was too big and not able to fit in. After that we started working on Sink, bought two six gallons of can for water. One of drinking water and another for waste water that fitted under sink. after this started working on kitchen. not much work to do here we already had propane tank, cooking burner from our previous tons of camping trip. only thing is we got old one drawer thingy that fits in as kitchen and we are set for kitchen work.

Then our research started for solar panels which can fulfill our need for charging phone, tablet, laptop, electricity. we got two 100 watt solar panels. also got exhaust fan. fitting exhaust fan was big thing because we have to cut metal roof and fit it. we made sure that exhaust and solar panel fitted properly and working.

Here are the few pics