While We Waited...

Some time around August 2020 we realized two things.  The first was that the pandemic wasn’t going to be over quickly, and most likely the world as we knew it when we made our original travel plans wasn’t going to exist anymore.  The second was that making plans over the next couple of years was going to be impossible.  We are both planners, to the point where we sometimes annoy even ourselves, so this second realization was by far the most difficult to accept.  

Knowing that the plan that was in place when the pandemic hit wasn’t going to work, we went back over some of the plans we’d discussed before deciding to get the flatbed truck and a slide-in truck camper.  

We bought a truck that can take us anywhere!

We had talked about getting a Class C motor home (the small to medium sized all-in-one units), but had decided we needed a vehicle with more flexibility to carry stuff, more ability to boondock and spend extended time off grid, and more flexibility should there be a problem with either the truck part or the camper part since we would be living in the thing and couldn’t just send it to a mechanic and go home.  

This is an example of a Class C motor home.

We also talked about getting a light tow-behind camper, but rejected that idea mostly because we’d driven through Mexico with a tow-behind when we moved to Belize, and Tom wasn’t nuts about the idea of driving through Mexico and Central America with a trailer.  Some of the road conditions make for difficult driving (like when we took out our black water tank on a tope in Cancun), and, in some of the places where we’ve camped, we would sleep better if we had the option of getting in the driver’s seat from our bed without having to go outside.

We’d also considered the Skoolie route.  Belize has plenty of used school buses, so we could have found a bus and built our own custom overlander vehicle.  We put a fair amount of thought into this project, and at one point were even getting a little excited about this option since we could fix it up to carry whatever we wanted to carry, and make it into a mobile tiny home that could function off grid just about anywhere.  

A Facebook post of a beautiful Skoolie.
You can see why this idea was attractive. 

However, this plan had the same problem as the Class C camper, in that when the bus broke down, which is even more inevitable in a very used school bus than in a new to new-ish Class C, we would be homeless.  Tom, after a day of tough driving on the Western Highway construction zone with buses, also had some reservations about driving a bus on roads in Mexico and Central America, and we recognized that there would be places where a bus either wouldn’t fit or would just be extremely difficult to drive.  Also, we wanted 4WD, which is not a feature on school buses.  Finally, we were doing our research, and found that there can be a bit of a stigma about Skoolies in the USA, and they aren’t allowed in all campgrounds and many municipalities have strict rules about where they can be parked.  

That was how we got to the slide-in truck camper concept, and why we had gone ahead and bought a truck that would be suitable for a truck camper.  But, as the pandemic dragged on, and we realized our property wasn’t going to sell in the near future, we came to terms with the fact that we wouldn’t be heading north to buy a truck camper any time soon.  We started thinking about how to turn the wait into a positive thing.  

The first positive thing was that the property sale hadn’t happened, so we were still in a place we love. The timing of the pandemic also turned out to be fortuitous for us.  The project to pave and improve our road had started just before the pandemic hit, and the electric company had installed poles to bring electricity to our neighborhood.  When the road is paved and the electricity is in, our property value will rise appreciably, and keeping the tourists and expats likely to be interested in this type of property out of the country while the dirty work for these improvements happens has really worked in our favor.  

Current state of the road.  Getting there!

We are hoping (although not planning) that by the end of the year the construction will be done, and the noise and dust and heavy machinery will be gone.  We are also hoping (and also again not planning) that our electricity will be hooked up, so we will be selling a more valuable, more accessible property that is on the grid.

Current state of our electricity...ready and waiting!

The second positive thing is just knowing we have time to do what we want.  While we had decided that the slide-in truck camper was the best of our options, we recognized that we would have to make compromises and do some customization. Realizing we had the time, we thought back to ideas we had come up with about the Skoolie concept, and started thinking about building some sort of camper from scratch to go on the flatbed.  What started as a “what if?” discussion over drinks one night has turned into dream that is about to turn into reality, and we are now well down the path to creating our own overlander vehicle that will meet all of our requirements and become our home for an extended time while we travel.