After more than two decades, Gary and Laura Johnson are trading their 2,150-square-foot home in Shorewood Hills for a space about the size of their walk-in closet.
The recently retired couple sold their home and most of their belongings and hit the road with their dogs Rhada and Kali in a customized Winnebago Revel van that will be their home for the foreseeable future.
The only thing on the itinerary is adventure.
Gary, 62, is looking forward to overnight hiking and backpacking trips. Laura, 61, prefers the security and comfort of having a van as a home base.
“I’m not the RV crowd, but it’s hard to do a tent,” Laura said. “With the van I feel like I’m home.”
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The Johnsons are joining a small but growing American subculture known alternately as nomads or by the social media hashtag #vanlife.
Smaller and easier to drive than a traditional recreational vehicle, customized camper vans are like tiny homes — some with four-wheel-drive — that can go just about anywhere, bringing the comforts of home to the wilderness or easily navigating city streets. And with the increasing prevalence of remote white-collar jobs, it’s become feasible for even working people to be what’s known as “digital nomads.”
“Freedom is a very big theme,” said Allison Formanack, an assistant professor of anthropology at the University of Southern Mississippi who studies nontraditional housing. “Just the ability to leave if you want, be where you want, not be tied down to a mortgage or a lease.”
Formanack said the movement has grown in recent years as the pandemic offered increased opportunities for remote work at the same time as rents and home prices soared. Meanwhile people stuck inside were spending more time on social media, where lifestyle influencers have posted millions of images of beautifully decorated vans in idyllic locations.
“For a lot of people I've spoken with there’s a desire to be more minimalist or to be more economic,” Formanack said. “Whether or not they’re actually more economic.”
Though they make up a small share of overall RV sales, camper vans are the fastest-growing segment in an industry that has experienced rapid growth during the past decade, especially since the pandemic.
“If you wanted to go on vacation in the summer of 2020, RVing was it,” said Monika Geraci, a spokesperson for the RV Industry Association. And even as airlines and hotels reopened, RVs remained popular thanks to a rediscovered love of the outdoors and workplace flexibility.
Hard to measure
It’s unclear exactly how many people live in vans. The U.S. Census Bureau estimates there were about 96,000 people whose primary residence was a recreational vehicle, van or boat in 2019, nearly 30% more than in 2017.
“It’s almost impossible to measure because so many of these people still have a permanent address,” Formanack said. “The majority are part-timers. It could be millions. But I don’t think anyone’s done a count yet.”
While their 32-year-old son and 29-year-old daughter aren’t so enthusiastic about their parents’ nomadic lifestyle, the Johnsons say they won’t miss the house or the upkeep, though Laura worries about finding places to swim and leaving behind the hairdresser she has seen for the past two decades.
Though a fraction of the size of their home, the van, built on a Mercedes Sprinter chassis, has most of the comforts: heat and air conditioning, a kitchenette, a toilet and even a shower with hot water. The bed descends from the ceiling with the push of a button.
Solar panels and four lithium batteries provide electricity virtually anywhere, while cellular and satellite communications ensure an internet connection so Laura can continue seeing her speech clients over Zoom. Gary is thinking of doing a podcast about retirement.
Combining simplicity and freedom, the vanlife movement has blurred the line between people on opposite ends of the economic spectrum, Formanack said.
A spot in film
“As within any subsection of society you’re going to have people with means and people in need,” said Suanne Carlson, a retired college administrator who started traveling the country in her Toyota Prius in 2008 as she mourned the death of her daughter and played herself in "Nomadland," Chloe Zhao’s award-winning film about aging post-recession itinerants crisscrossing the nation in search of work and freedom.
“There are people who are forced into this lifestyle ... who come to grow to love it,” she said.
Carlson, who has been a fulltime nomad since 2016, is the executive director of the Homes on Wheels Alliance, a nonprofit organization that provides people on the verge of homelessness with secure homes on wheels and the skills to live on the road.
She’s also part of a national movement seeking to unite and support people living in vehicles, from quarter-million dollar rigs to broken-down RVs parked on city streets, who face similar challenges, such as accessing services while away from home and navigating a growing number of anti-camping laws that criminalize homelessness.
“We’re all vehicle residents,” Carlson said. “We definitely have things in common.”
And even for those with amenities, van life isn’t all glamorous, according to Christian Schaffer, a freelance outdoor photographer who has lived out of her vehicle for the past four years.
In a YouTube video titled “10 reasons why van life SUCKS,” Schaffer details some of the hassles of living in a 60-square-foot Dodge Promaster — such as finding places to shower and use the toilet, finding safe and legal places to park, and the lack of privacy.
“Imagine in your house if every time you walk outside and someone’s walking by on the sidewalk and they say, ‘Wow, your house is really cool. Can I come inside?’” she said. “That’s the kind of thing you’re really opening yourself up to if you live on the road.”
'Why do we have a house?'
With multiple monthlong trips under their belts, the Johnsons know what they’re in for. And this is not their first adventure.
The couple met in Nepal while serving in the Peace Corps. Gary later joined the Navy, which took them to South Korea, California and Seattle before they settled in Madison in 1993.
In 2020, Gary retired from UW Health, where he was director of human resources, and Laura left her job as a speech therapist with the Madison Metropolitan School District to start a private practice.
They ordered a van and started exploring. Gary spent two months hiking the Pacific Crest Trail while Laura meandered back to Wisconsin.
Earlier this year, Laura was camping on the Mississippi River and talking to Gary, who was doing a bike race in Italy, when it occurred to her: “We’re never home. Why do we have a house?”
From there it was baby steps — talking to a real estate agent; having a yard sale; putting the house on the market to “see what happens.”
They sold the house, along with most of their stuff.
Last week movers hauled what remained of their belongings to a storage locker, where it will stay until they get tired of the van, which Laura points out is just a base.
“You’re not living in a van,” Laura said. “You’re living out of a van.”
“There are people who are forced into this lifestyle ... who come to grow to love it."
Suanne Carlson, a retired college administrator who played herself in "Nomadland"