Sometime in January 2016 we had a realisation about Daisy and our planned trip to Canada and the USA. The realisation was that she would not be the right vehicle for our adventures. The fact was she would end up being the perfect vehicle to take away on weekends and tour Europe, but with her brand new interior, shiny paint and alloy wheels we couldn’t imagine taking her on a 12 month adventure on crazy roads in Mexico.

Rather than leave her in a lockup or in storage for 12 months,we took the hard decision to sell her to people that would use her as we had originally intended. After 6 months of hard work finishing her, too many late nights and hardly seeing our friends, family or each other she was sold to a lovely couple who couldn’t wait to get out in her. It was all worth it and we know she went to a good home.

So what next……well we learnt a lot with Daisy and exactly what we wanted out of a camper. As our trip got closer we considered getting a camper in the USA. The upside would be that its technically more cost effective to buy in the USA as campers are not as sought after as in the UK. The two big drawbacks are import duty if we were to bring it home and that we’d be jumping in to a van that was unknown.

So it’s long overdue…….say hi to Rocky!!!

He was built in Germany in 1969 and shipped to the USA where he was first registered in 1970. He spent most of his life in the Rocky Mountains Colorado. 6 years ago he was imported in to the UK and registered, he was rust free and spend his life with the Kerr family who travelled him well and installed the perfect functional interior in our opinion complete with fridge freezer, heating and mustard yellow upholstery!

So what have we done to make Rocky super functional and a space we can live in long term?

6 things that were super important to us were;

A comfortable and easy-foldaway bed (Original and reupholstered by the previous owner)

A leak free canvas (Top quality replaced by the PO)

Twin gas hob (Smev hob / sink combo)

Stationary heating system (Propex gas heater)

Lots of well thought out storage (The PO installed a later Berlin interior which is super functional)

Leisure battery system with electrical hookup (installed by PO)

What else have we done to ready the van for our trip?

Plumbed in sink outlet

Added loads of storage nets

Reupholstered drivers seat

Added bus-box and buddy seat

Added usb and 12v charge points

Reworked the leisure battery system to include a 125ah battery, a 100w solar panel that will run the fridge continuously and a leisure battery cutoff inside the vehicle.

Changed the lighting to LED bulbs to save power

Wired in a bluetooth amp so we can play our tunes from our phones to the speakers in the van

Sound deadened and insulated.

We also did lots of mechanical work which Michael will cover in another post as he loves that stuff!

We love our home on wheels and we look forward to Roadtripping through Canada, The USA and Mexico.