Left the Big City to Live in Military Travel Trailer
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Nives was working as a makeup artist in the fashion and beauty industry and Mark was working as a commercial TV director, mostly for the NFL so they were living pretty urbanized lifestyles. They lived in in Philadelphia in a nice loft building right in the heart of downtown, so when Nives and Mark started realizing that they were really into hiking, climbing, and seeing the great outdoors, they realized that it was gonna be impossible to really get to experience those places without really getting to spend lots of time there. And the only way they could really spend time in the place that they wanted to be was to have a mobile living situation.
They first thought they’re gonna have the camper be more of a gear holder, but it evolved into them also being able to sleep inside. That's why it's not really even all that tall, because initially they were just gonna put a roof top tent on top and sleep up there. They realized that it had to be a off-road trailer, and that led them to an ad on Craigslist where a guy was selling an old Humvee trailer from the Army. They bought it for 800 bucks, which was a steal because it was in pretty good condition. They started sketching out some ideas and then one day they literally went to the store, bought some wood, and started framing it out.
The first part of the equation of their mobile living situation is Chevy Silverado. It ends up being really great for them because not only is it really solid on the road, off the road, the truck bed gives them enough room to store all the camera gear and camping gear that they need. And then the other great thing about the truck is that it's like the perfect mobile office for them. they have a cell phone booster in there, so a lot of their work requires them to kind of go back and forth emails, take phone calls, talk to clients. Downside of the truck is the mileage, they only get about 15 miles to the gallon when they’re not towing. When they are towing that goes down to about 11.
The coolest thing about the tongue part of this camper is it's got one of these big pintle hooks on it, which is big. No matter how much the trailer is articulating up, down, left, right, there's no way it can pop off. For power they have a battery bank made up of two 6v 235ah golf cart batteries that they have wired in series for 12v appliances. Those are charged by a 200 watt solar panel that's located on the roof. As part of one of their secondary additions to the camper, this whole nose area where you see these goal zero boulder 30 solar panels gives them another 120 watts of solar panels. This bank of panels feeds a bank of Goal Zero Yeti 400s that mostly charge their computers. They can lift them out so if they need power for a shoot or just something else that can't necessarily be right at the camper they can easily pull those out.
It also allows them to store some of the common camp tools that they use all the time. So there's a shovel, which is pretty much how you go number two, and then this block right there it's just kind of a homemade leveling block. That's been another unexpected beauty of having the campers that there's only three points of contact so it's easy for them to level it. This aluminum channel is covered with stickers that are part of their rainwater collection system. Another reason why they really wanted to build something is there's sustainability aspects that you really can't find on mass-produced models. Adding the rainwater collection system being able to collect all the water that comes off the roof for them is huge. They can either turn this valve and collect rainwater and it'll just go through this tiny little particulate filter just to take out any like sand or leaves and then that comes across over there and fills their 35 gallon tank. So 35 gallons of water in this tank that they use strictly for washing dishes, for taking showers, anything that doesn't involve drinking or eating that water.
When you're not camping at a campground like you don't have a table most the time so they really wanted to have as much table space as they could to get stuff off the ground and they decided to build these doors so that the bottom section would open up kind of like one of those old Boy Scout Chuck boxes. They kind of scissor open and you have a little bit of protection from the elements if it's raining outside. They really put an emphasis on food, cooking on the road, and Nives is really able to create anything you'd be able to create at home. There's a lot of nesting things. they kind of figured out a good series of bins to hold their food. Organization is kind of one of those evolving things so they eventually built this custom pantry system that can hold anything from oils to vinegars. They lined a lot of the things with foam so a lot of the compartments have foam bottoms so none of these glass jars ever have a problem breaking and some of the bigger containers like the oil and vinegar they store in these bigger stainless steel containers. They use an ARB 50 quart 12-volt fridge. They have a couple cast-iron pots and pans.
They have an ARB 8x8 foot awning and the nice thing about this not only does it define the kitchen space, but they have an entire screen room too that can enclose this so at the height of the mosquito hatch season in the summertime when it would be impossible to cook outside any other way, they zip on the mosquito room and they can keep rolling. This is just a really simple gravity feed so if you need to wash hands or anything this comes straight out of the 35 gallon tank and then this year they've been dabbling with a hot water system which is pressurized. Essentially they have a pump mounted inside the camper. It takes a feed off of that 35 gallon tank and it'll pump it through there, propane heats it up, and it comes out pressurized. So they use that for washing dishes or taking a shower. When you fire it up it gets hot really fast.
On the inside they have their little cozy sleeping station. Nives mostly appreciated the skylights in there which at first they didn't have and it felt like they were kind of in a wooden box or a coffin. They have a way of putting little shades that just velcro on and then they're all set. If they want to stargaze when they're right about to fall asleep they can totally do that. They have a little storage on the sides for a slot where you can slide in their computers or books. A really neat thing that a lot of people appreciate is they figured out that if they use a magnet they put a little holder right on the ceiling and have a movie night by just popping on the iPad.
They have mosquito nets that roll down when the bugs are bad so they can still have good airflow.It's really minimalistic. To make it sustainable they decided to take their trades which was making films, taking photographs and just pivot them towards the outdoor industry and the outdoor lifestyle which they were jumping in head first. And so they started a company called Camp Trend, which is a media production company. A lot of people always wonder how to do this, how to make it sustainable. Mark thinks it comes down to money, which is he feels the same stress, but he doesn't think it's a good enough excuse to stop you. He think wasted time is way worse than wasted money, you have a lifetime to make money and the money just kind of rolls through. Sometimes you have a lot of it, sometimes you have even less than none of it, but your time is just ticking away. No one really knows how they’re gonna die or when they’re gonna die, and so your time is still the most valuable resource you have. Every day that passes is one day less that you have. He thinks if you're really serious about trying to change your lifestyle, if something in the alternate lifestyle the mobile lifestyle really speaks to you, it's just a matter of being brave and jumping right in.
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