A House With No Name

With Apologies to Dewey Bunnell and America

The other day my co-worker Dave asked me what was new? "Well", I said, "Angelika and I bought an ambulance". "Huh...", he replied, "didn't see THAT coming".

Actually, Angelika and I have been scheming about the best way to get ourselves into some kind of mobile camper outfit for many months now. This is a means to an end. We each have a long term bucket list goal in mind: I intend to through hike the Appalachian Trail, and Angelika is going to ride her bike across the country. When I hike the AT, Angelika is going to shadow me in the camper and then I'll do the same for her when she does her cross country bike ride. This is just the first step in what we intend to be an adventurous life in retirement, which will be good fodder for more blog articles in the future.

We started out down a more conventional path last Mother's Day by going to the local RV dealer to see what they had to offer. We had no idea what to expect. To cut a long story short we were underwhelmed.

RVs are super expensive (even used), have lots of amenities we didn't care about, tend to be HUGE (even the small ones) and of generally poor construction. Angelika has particular needs because of her 6'1" stature, and found she couldn't fit in either the driver's seat or the shower of any of these overpriced behemoths. 

Undaunted, Angelika spent many months looking at all manner of used recreational vehicles, but nothing she found really rang the bell for both of us.

We spent untold hours watching YouTube videos about van conversions. This path seemed promising since we could model the van to our liking with just the features we cared about. It would be a huge project, but that's not something we're afraid to take on. More months looking at used vans with a roof high enough to accommodate Angelika uncovered that even used vans are not very cheap. By the time we paid for the van, getting it into good shape mechanically, and then investing the time and money in the camper conversion would end up costing us as much as one of these fancy RVs.

We were coming to the conclusion that for the money we'd have to invest in one of these vehicles, we could stay in a hotel almost every night for nearly the same amount of money. The next plan of attack was to just do classic car camping. We could take our old Forester and just pack it up with all the camping gear we'd need to sleep out. If the weather was awful, we could opt to stay in a hotel, otherwise we'd save some money and stay at a campsite. We decided to put this plan into action!

Angelika got a big cabin tent at Walmart on sale. When I sleep out, I'm accustomed to backpacking with a hammock that weighs less than a pound as my shelter since every ounce counts when you carry it on your back. This thing was huge. Not only that but it came with built in LED lighting that fully illuminates the interior AND a built in blue tooth speaker for streaming audio from your favorite audio device. This was a new style of camping, to say the least.

But that was just the beginning. A double sized cot with inflatable mattress, a portable Weber grill, folding tables, various containers to serve as chuck boxes, a solar shower setup, a gerry can, and an old Colman stove we kept on hand for power outages rounded out the kit. We did a dry run in the back yard with the grandkids to test it all out with a reasonable degree of success.

The next test was to pack it all up into the back of the Forester and try it out for a week of camping out in Vermont. Angelika has a keen eye for efficient packing, but even so we barely got everything in with the back seat folded down. Undaunted, we set out for Woodford State Park.

It took at least an hour to get our tent site set up with tent, dining fly, and kitchen. I expect this would take less time once we got more experience with the new gear.

The timing for our trip was impeccable. The week we camped the remnants of Hurricane Ida came through and dumped 1-2" of rain with high winds. What a great test of our new camping outfit! Amazingly, we got only a little water in the tent through the floor. Sealing the seams when we got home should solve that problem. 

Our first outing was successful, but we had our doubts this would work for our long term plan. We'd be on the move constantly, so did we really want to spend hours unpacking and packing every time we needed to relocate? Probably not. There would probably be long days when you get to your destination all you'd want to do is crawl into bed and sleep. This wasn't the optimal solution, so back to research.

After a couple more months, Angelika started showing me rescue vehicles for sale (apparently you can buy most anything on Facebook). We went to look at a rescue truck in nearby Peterborough, but it ended up being way too huge for our purposes. It was able to transport a crew of 17 and required a ladder to get into the driver's seat. It was really cool, but not for our purposes.

We test drove an ambulance in Leominster, which was pretty tired and worn. The description said it had 17K miles on it, but the odometer told us it was 170K miles. This probably wasn't what we were looking for, but it seemed like we were on the right track. These vehicles were typically selling for less than $10K, were built like a tank, had rear insulated interior, lots of travel safe storage, and came already wired with extra power, generators, and inverters.

Soon after we followed up on a used ambulance in Bow. This one looked in great shape, but needed a transmission. Since it was already sitting at the truck repair shop, this was easily accomplished. The guy selling it was also the guy who serviced it, so he had all the history and knew the condition of the vehicle. We couldn't drive it, but we both thought this was the one. We took a chance and went for it.

Finding the right vehicle to start with is probably the easiest part of this project. Now we have a lot to do to get it converted into a suitable camper. 

First step is to decommission it as an ambulance. We have to disable all the emergency lights and sirens and remove all the ambulance markings. Hopefully this amounts to just pulling some fuses and a few hours with a heat gun and scraper to get the decals off. We're excited to get started, and share our progress here on the blog.

Photo courtesy of John Poltrack

We also want to give it a name (hence the title of this article). We're looking for suggestions, so send them to us for consideration.

Angelika favors Kranky, short for Krankenwagen, which is one of the German words for ambulance. Krank is the German word for sick or ill, and in America Kranky (cranky) has negative connotations. German emergency vehicles have those great sirens that sound like someone singing "Too Late...Too Late...Too Late" as they race by.  Neither of us is totally sold on this, but Angelika prefers it.

I favor Juggernaut which refers to an irresistible force. In England, a juggernaut can also be a really big truck. Finally, there's a great Marvel comic character with this name, although he is a bad guy and the name is a bit of a mouthful. Angelika is not in favor of this option.

I think he'd look cool on the side of the ambulance.

Please share your thoughts and suggestions.