I've visualized my perfect home on wheels about a hundred different ways over a hundred different weeks. My pages of electronic notes on the subject [Evernote - my weapon of choice] hold plans from the high-end build of a mid-90s import commercial Defender 110 with rooftop tent to simply throwing a blow-up mattress in the back of a rusted-out Craigslist find. Perhaps even rescuing a used Gelandewagen from the valet life to bring it back to its roots could be the best blend of city comforts and off-road potential? Saying I'd been thinking about it for years might be a hackneyed old saying, but it would also be true.
Finally deciding to dip my toes, I blocked off a week early in the summer and booked a 1987 Vanagon Weekender to rip about the Olympic Peninsula. I used up all of my bargaining chips to convince three of my best friends to cram into the seats and effectively swear off showers for a week - one of which was my wife-to-be. She's not an avid camper, so I essentially put my wedding on the line for this.
A few weeks later, we were gliding through the waters of Elliot Bay en route to the Olympic Peninsula with our adopted VW on the deck below. Photographing ferry rides is dangerously approaching cliché status - if it hasn't already dove over the edge - but I lined up my rangefinder patch and clicked happily without restraint. Nothing can touch the ineffable feeling shared on the first day of the trip.
Over the next week, we tackled a loop from Dungeness - to Kalaloch - to watching our last sunset in Mt. Rainier National Park. We quite literally cruised between campsites with the gas pedal to the chassis. The old Vanagons don't have much get-up-and-go, but I'm not sure we even noticed.
We met strangers - like Gary at the diner on Clallam Bay. He's the kind of man who shares his stories to everyone within an earshot at once - and just about the whole room ends up listening intently. In between chatting up patrons just passing through town, he might step around the counter and take refilling his coffee cup into his own hands. We listened to Gary flow through chronicles from his time running fishing charters in the Puget Sound - to serving our country in Vietnam - to the issue of one of the largest stockpiles of nuclear weapons in our country, which are deployed just a short cruise from where we sat. That last one seemed to make my coffee jitters hit even harder. I had to ask for a portrait.
The rest of our days were crammed with morning dips, climbs to higher ground, and hikes through rainforests to the sand. Evenings were crammed with moonlight swims, elevated camp meals, and beers cooled by flowing water - when we could find it. The van, of course, was crammed with all four of us - and I'd have had it no other way.
Take it from a real "Vanlifer" if you want to know what it's really like living on the road in a vintage van. For me, though, I can say that my first taste was sublime - some of the most special times in recent memory. The days I spent dreaming of the perfect rig should’ve instead been me getting out there in anything that drove. Even a bicycle would've done the trick.
Author: Matt Ripple
Photographer: Matt Ripple
Camera: Leica M6J
Film: Various Kodak Film Stocks