RV Camping in a Simple Van Build | 4-Days in Colorado in a Wayfarer Vans

This week we're exploring Colorado in one of the most minimalist camper van buildouts we've ever traveled in and share what it's like living out of this modular van conversion by Wayfairer Vans. Kate and I met Ian, the chief van operator of Wayfairer Vans at their headquarters in Colorado Springs where each of their builds come to life. He gave us a two-hour factory tour walking us through the materials they use and sharing the inspiration behind the company's mission to build simple high-quality camper vans. Learning about the process that goes into each conversion gave us a whole new appreciation for the simplicity we were about to experience. Ian also gave us a detailed walkthrough of the Wilford model. The transit-based camper van will be calling home for the next four days. Built with affordability, usability, and quality in mind, it's designed to give you just what you need and nothing you don't. Now it's our turn to find out if that's enough for our life on the road. With a lingering thunderstorm in the area, we decided to head to a nearby campground for the night and take some time to get familiar with the features of the camper van build. While Kate and I have spent a lot of time exploring Colorado over the past decade, there are still plenty of places we haven't seen. For this trip, we decided to visit a few of the smaller mountain towns that have been on our radar for a while. It has been a long travel day for us. When we arrived at camp, I just felt like sitting down enjoying a cup of coffee and relaxing and not doing anything else. I'm very curious to see what this camper van is going to be like over the next few days because this is by far the most simple build that we've used before. But I do have to say, with the little time we've spent in it so far, it's actually very functional and I'm curious to see how comfortable the bed is going to be, what it's like getting up in the morning making breakfast, and things like that. So stay tuned for our few days in the Wayfarer Vans van. I really love this partition. I kind of wish we had it in our van. It's a very nice and easy way to separate the driving compartment from the living compartment, especially at night time. Okay, all the shades are down. Well, good morning. We had a lovely night in the van. The bed was extremely comfortable and it got nice and cold, so I always sleep well when that happens. But as always, when I first get up in the morning, it is time for coffee. Now, they have a little gas stove in here for us, so we can heat up water in that. This does have a battery system, so we can use that for different things, but I'm going to use this to make my coffee. While we wait for that to boil, let me give you a quick introduction to the Wilford. So this is a pretty simple build. Sink, fridge, battery system. There is a propane heater and we had that on, so it was working well. Plenty of storage and a huge garage space. Oh, and there is a small portable toilet, so it has pretty much everything you need. I think the only thing it doesn't have that we would need to go to the gym or that for is a shower. So, so far, so good. This is where the toilet lives. We found it's easier if you take the toilet out to use it, but it clips in here and stores when you're not using it. Now, I'm ready to start my day. First stop was the Royal Gorge Bridge Park in Canyon City. Spanning nearly a thousand feet above the Arkansas River, it's home to one of the highest suspension bridges in the United States. Built in 1929, the bridge still attracts visitors today with its sweeping canyon views, gondola rides, and the zip line across the gorge. Now, just watching the gondola cross the gorge was more than enough of a thrill for Kate. The second stop of the day was Salida, Colorado. By the way, Kate loves the backup camera feature on the new Ford Transit vans. A good portion of the drive from Canyon City to Salida follows the Arkansas River, twisting through the canyons and rolling foothills. It's one of those drives where you keep wanting to pull over and just take it all in. Salida itself has this laid-back mountain town vibe that makes you want to stay just a little bit longer than you'd planned. We enjoyed walking around the downtown area and checking out the sandwich shop that was recommended by the nice folks inside the visitor center. After enjoying a nice afternoon pick-me-up at one of the coffee shops in town, we got back on the road to find our camping spot for the night. We had a lovely afternoon in Salida, Colorado and we are just north of the city out in BLM land. Found a beautiful camping spot and I think we're just going to hang out here for the night, enjoy the peace and quiet, and really enjoy getting to know and use this van. Now I noticed that when we drive and the solar, the battery's been doing a great job of charging up. So the battery system is under here and it's one of those power cubes. Right now we're at 95 percent state of charge. It has four outlets and then USB charging. So we've been charging our laptops, our phones, and all of our devices. Plus it's running the 12-volt refrigerator. If you wanted to you could run the AC. We haven't needed the AC. We've actually needed the heat and we were able to run the heat all night long on this thing and still have plenty of battery left in the morning. I'm really digging the layout of this van because most of the pieces in here are modular. Meaning you can take them out, you can move them around. All you need is a crescent wrench and a screwdriver and you can take pretty much everything in here out. Now this cabinet here is fixed because you have the gas system in there. But this whole area is completely open and I was actually thinking that when you're not using this as a camper you can use it as a cargo van because you can take the bed platform out. You can take this out. I could fit my motorcycle in here. I could do, you know, lumber runs to Home Depot or whatever it is. That really increases the utility of this van as more than a camper. You can use it as a cargo van. A really unique thing that I love about Wayfair vans is they have an app where Wayfarians can log on and share camping spots that they've found throughout the country. So Joe and I have been using this app to find places to camp on our trip exploring Colorado. Well I'm starting to get hungry so I'm gonna make dinner. Tonight it's chorizo and eggs. I do love breakfast for dinner. Camping trickery. What are you? What do you work? Oh okay there we go. Well I was hoping to cook outside but there's just too much wind and this thing was not heating up because it just couldn't get hot. So I had to bring it inside. But there is plenty of counter space for me to cook in here so that's not too bad. And if I need more space I can actually flip this over here. We've got all that. So during our last trip cross-country we stopped in at a pistachio farm and got these green chili pistachios. And a lot of the green chili seasoning they put on has gotten to the bottom so we saved the bag and I'm gonna dump the seasoning in here. I mean why waste it? It's so delicious. It'll add some nice kick. Okay I think the eggs are about ready to go in. Carefully. This smells incredible. I'm going in with the sriracha. Let's see. That's tasty. You want some? My van life tip of the day is be careful of how much spicy you have because the next morning you may have to deal with it out on the trail. Dishes with a beat. There's a five gallon freshwater tank in here and a five gallon gray water tank. So this hand pump is pumping from that freshwater. The nice thing is assuming you start with an empty gray and a full fresh you can't overfill or overflow I should say your gray tank. All right dishes are done let's go for a walk. I'm not a big walking on dirt guy but it is gorgeous out here. It's getting a little chilly in here. I'm gonna turn the heat on. All right time for bed. We woke up to another beautiful sunny morning in the Colorado mountains. The insulated shades inside the camper have been doing a great job of keeping the light out and managing the heat and cold coming through the windows. First stop on today's adventure is Buena Vista Colorado. This small town is known as one of the top whitewater rafting destinations in the country thanks to the Arkansas river running right through it. The downtown has a mix of old-school charm and chill vibes with historic buildings, boutique shops, art galleries and plenty of spots to grab a coffee or a local brew. It's small and has a nice walkable area with beautiful views. It was a beautiful drive back to Colorado Springs and reminded us of the summer road trip a few years ago where we camped along this route with mom and her pup Charlie. As we pulled into the city we were treated to a procession of the local sheriffs on horseback. While this campervan build has pretty much everything you need to camp it is missing a shower. So we are going to Planet Fitness, we're going to get a shower and just freshen up for the evening before our next stop. I know not having a shower in a camper is a point of contention with a lot of people but I will say when we first started vanlifing it, the two years we were on the road with that thing we never showered in it at all, well maybe once. We had a fixed bathroom, we used the toilet but the shower was just too small for us. Now since then we've showered in our other vans, our truck camper and that and it works out great. So I see the argument both ways. The nice thing with the modularity and the way this van is set up is that you could come up with all sorts of different options for a shower in here. You could use one of those portable showers, you could even get something that runs off the propane and eats the water for you. The nice thing with this van, it's easy, it's simple and you're only paying for the things you want inside of it and anything else beyond that you can do on your own. Well now that we're so fresh and so clean we can head to our next destination. Kate and I decided on our last night of camping we'd do some urban camping in this to see how well it did and she's going in to check into our harvest host for the night. So it's a brewery, we're gonna go inside, maybe grab something to drink, have some food and then we have a parking lot for the night. We are in the middle of Colorado Spring so it might be a bit noisy but I think that'll be okay for a night. Dinner was fantastic. We went to a brewery, didn't get any beer but we got a lot of food and I have to say fries, cheese sauce, pulled pork with Alabama white sauce is an awesome combination. With that said, I want to talk a little bit more about the van. Now one thing we really haven't discussed yet is the actual construction of one of these. So the way this works is when you put it in order with Wayfarer Vans you have to source your own Transit or Promaster because they build on both platforms. They do have dealers that they work with that can get you a new one but you can also bring in a used Transit or Promaster as long as it's 2015 or newer and what they do is they take your van and within one to three days they have the whole interior built out and you're ready to go camping in it. It is a breath of fresh air to be in here and see how simple and easy to work on things is. You don't have a lot of complex systems, a lot of stuff to go wrong. If you do have something go wrong they could always ship you a part out of that. I mean really it's the fridge, the electrical system and the heater. Those are all really the mechanical parts of this. Everything else is manual so it makes life a lot easier when you're camping and less stuff to worry about when you're out in the middle of nowhere. Kane and I have been really enjoying this floor plan with its simplicity and usability and everything else. One thing I did notice which was a huge surprise that I didn't even think about was this van is the same van that we have our build on and it's a lot lighter with such a minimalist build out and we were getting almost 17 miles per gallon when we typically get about 12 in hours. Now ours is raised, it has larger tires, roof rack, ladder, all that stuff which contribute to that but you can tell how much lighter this is over some of the other build outs. So that means you have more capacity to bring cargo with you to tow something if you want to so it gives you a lot of options. This is also very easy to winterize because as I'll show you tomorrow when we go to dump you have a five gallon plastic water tank for your fresh water and a five gallon gray water tank and you can leave those in there as long as you're keeping the interior heated or just pull those out and leave them at home or leave them empty so when you you know get to a place that's warmer you can fill up with water again. So it makes it very easy and I will say from what we've seen so far overall build quality seems to be very good. We have only used this for four or five days so it's hard to tell just in that amount of time but from what we can see everything seems pretty solid. Well all that being said I think I'm starting to go into a food coma so Kate's going to make us some tea. I think I'm going to read my book and call it a night. We have to take this thing back tomorrow which I'm kind of sad about. You know we might have to look to see if they'll let us do some more trips and some of their other floor plans and that but we'll see you tomorrow morning. Well you can probably guess where we're headed this morning to find a spot to dump the tanks. So the gray tank is in here along with the fresh water tank and all you have to do is pull this out and I'll walk this over to the porta potty and dump it. We've been in here for four days four nights and we used about two and a half maybe three gallons of fresh water while we were in here so the system for what this is is just right. The tanks are dumped which means that's the end of this video. Thank you all so much for watching. I would love to know down in the comments below what you think about this layout and whether or not you could survive in a camper without the shower. If you're interested in a full walkthrough of this camper van check out our YouTube channel We're the Russos. But that is it we'll see you next time. Thank you again for watching. Bye. This video is sponsored by Wayfarer Vans.