Shainna Thompson next to her RV, Albany, OR.
Home on the road
Story by Ellie Graham
Photographed by Sophie Craft
A short-term fling for some and a locked-in commitment for others, living on the road can be a curse and a blessing.
Shainna Thompson relaxing in her RV, Albany, OR.
Issac Turner stand in front of his Toyota Tundra, Lowell, OR.
“I love being able to take an empty shell and, in my mind, build something,” he said, referring to the school buses. “I get to take those ideas in my head and use my hands as tools. It literally brings it to life.”
Van life presents some niche opportunities. For Turner, this looks like one of his school buses landing on the big screen for a 2019 Super Bowl commercial. Turner puts this down to his Instagram presence and previous school bus conversion efforts.
When he’s able to, Turner plans to return to full-time van life to work on his 50-state-traveled wish list. But today, he’s focusing on raising his two-year-old on solid ground. “I see everybody getting older. I see people dying younger than they want to die,” Turner said. “I just want to experience and see things that I haven't seen. I don't want to die and have been to only three states. I just want to have a little bit of life under my belt.”
That desire to experience life a little freer than most is what connects all members of the van life community. It's a magnetic idea but it comes with many challenges. Some will find a way to find their forever home while, for others, it's more of a long vacation.
In a gray and storming Albany RV Park, Shainna Thompson scrambles up a wet metal ladder connected to the roof of Winnifred Elvis Presley — her 2002 Winnebago Class-C RV. Her van, Winnie for short, is her full-time home. She demonstrates how she stargazes when she’s out in the desert. Rain begins to soak through her jacket and she ducks into the driver seat to ignite Winnie’s engine — she won’t be driving away though.
Mobile homes have been around since long before Thompson found Winnie. In 1920, the idea of living in a motorized vehicle was born. Car manufacturers converted automobiles into livable shells on wheels. By the 1960s, van-living gained traction as an emerging utopia. Think hippies smoking joints in tie-dye attire. Vans symbolized freedom. The free-spirit counterculture primed a retreatist legacy for van life today.
In 2020, van life swept the Pacific Northwest with a recharged urgency sparked by the pandemic and drove people to re-examine the way they lived. Remote work was the default, and after long periods of government-mandated lockdowns, people became restless. American van lifers increased by 63% over the next two years, taking the stats from 1.9 million in 2020 to about 3.1 million in 2022. Oregon, Washington and California are among the states with the highest van life populations.
“You can make it [your van] your own,” Thompson said. As a traveling nurse, she lives on the road in her van Winnie, and has no plans of returning to renting an apartment. She’s tired of the unhabitable renting conditions she often encounters, and prefers to make her own mark on her living situation. “I rented apartments for a long time, you can add your touches, but you never get to make it yours.”
At times, Thompson struggles with securing a vacant spot at RV parks. When a spot opens up, she doesn’t want to leave it.
“It's been a struggle just being stationary because I can't just on a whim go and hang out at a national park, I have to be here,” said Thompson. She parks in a month-by-month space leased in Albany. Rent at RV parks ranges from $450 to $1500 a month, according to Thompson. She notes that restrictions apply: some parks won’t admit an RV that’s over a decade old, which Thompson thinks is due to parks storing “visually pleasing” RVs rather than being a safety measure.
Thompson doesn’t love everything about living in her van. Meeting people is a challenge — as Thompson accepts. “I feel like on the road, it's a little tougher [to socialize] because people are protective of their own space. I haven't really met a lot of women on the road,” she said. “I keep to myself.”
“From The Van” podcast host and social activist, Marty Benson entered van-life to tackle the affordable housing crisis. Benson says the US is a car-reliant society and that's his reason for trying to live in a vehicle. Cars take up significant public space that Benson believes could be used for low-income housing. He said a van doesn’t fall into the car category because it is a habitable mobile home — a champion of affordable living.
“I've always been a bit of a minimalist,” Benson said. It’s one of the reasons he once enjoyed living in his Mercedes Metris van. “The idea of making everything [in the van] a Swiss Army knife was really interesting to me. Packing as much as you can get into as small of a space as possible.” Benson says people do van life as a stepping-stone to finding their forever spot — where they eventually settle into a home — like himself. Benson names Oregon, and Portland in particular, as more tolerant than other parts of the Pacific Northwest and beyond.
Van enthusiast Isaac Turner has one foot in van life and one foot in his rental house. During the week, he makes music and converts school buses into livable homes. On the weekends, he travels in his unnamed Toyota Tundra conversion to obscure forests along the Cascade Mountain range.
