Jim_Oker

Regarding the microwave - we have a simple little one in our camper van and have used it a fair bit - especially on long travel days or big outdoor adventure days when it is SUPER handy to be able to just quickly nuke leftovers for dinner or a hot lunch while on a break during long drives. We of course are sparing in our use of it given the battery drain but even that limited use has been well worth the space it takes up for us. Could we live without it? Of course but it doesn't seem worth the tradeoff for us. Given that, we are opting not to delete the oven from the trailer we have currently being built. I assume if our habits and needs change and we decide the space would be more valuable than the oven, we could remove it and get a door and shelving for the space it will occupy.

Yeah, I can totally see doing that while boondocking in decent weather in a sufficiently private spot. But I like your shutoff idea

FWIW OneNote plays quite well with Excel, as you might hope and expect. E.g. by letting you paste in sheets into a notes page but then you can also paste in clipped photos or free form notes that often don't fit the very structured rows and columns of Excel.

I vote for antimatter!

hours not days

minus the additional loss for the inverter, which is needed to keep this running - not sure what the drain is for that

At home (when I'm banished to the bedroom as a quiet place from which to attend Zoom board meeting calls, or for quiet reading time) and in our camper van, I just pile enough pillows behind me and another under my knees to get a poor person's version of that Advanced RV bed/recliner. It's not quite the same as reclining with legs still lower than hips but it has been working well for me in any case. I must admit that one of the appeals of the Oliver for me versus other 4-season capable campers was that all the others were heavy on dark "pleather" style bulky recliners combined with stained wood cabinets. But I'll admit that I do enjoy reclining in the shade of our backyard with a book while sitting in a recliner that looks much like the one John brought into his trailer.

Such a great place - it's one of the places I miss from New England despite having the amazing Cascade and Olympic mountain ranges very near my current home of WA.

In a similar vein there's also OneNote, which I think fills a similar niche as Evernote.

On a separate note, I agree with some of the comments above about starting out relatively light and adding as you go and find out what else you might need. Most of what I've wished for while out on the road has been readily available at places like Wally World, Home Depot, or various sporting goods stores that are scattered throughout the nation.

Here are a few shots of the dog connection I described in that last reply. Here's an example of a similar carabiner to what I'm using (i.e. one tested and certified for climbing use, thus assured not to be cheesy soft metal etc.). Non locking would be fine also - it's unlikely the dog would somehow maneuver the carabiner into a position where the gate would accidentally open. But since I have some of both types in my climbing gear kit, I grabbed this type. And this is the harness we use - this also helps a LOT with control of the dog while walking, is super adjustable so doesn't interfere with the dog's gait if adjusted properly, and much better distributes any load that comes when the dog might dart after a critter while on a fixed line, springy or not, versus attaching to the collar.

We use one of those plastic coated wire lines attached to a Balance brand harness on our dog (attached to the front, not the top). BUT we anchor the line to something like a picnic table or whatever is handy using one of those ultra  beefy rubber  bungies that people use to  hold down  truck  bed covers and such. I've used channel lock pliers to bend the hooks on each end to be closed, and I wrap the bungie around the anchor point and use a climbing locking carabiner (i.e. one that's been tested for relatively high tension loads, unlike the cheaper "carabiners") to clip the two hook/loops together along with the anchor end of the plastic coated wire line. The rubber provides a nice dynamic spring if the dog darts off after a squirrel or some such. A good dynamic load rope (i.e. a 9 or 10 mm dynamic climbing rope) would give some degree of spring but the rubber bungie is even more forgiving for the dog than a relatively short length of dynamic load rope (you do NOT want to use "static load" rope which has little to no give!). This has worked well for us for two dogs and well over a decade of use while van camping.

BTW if you like rock features like those concrections, also check out Salt Point SP along the NorCal coast - it has some fantastic rock features.

Thanks - yes I've walked that coastal trail from Sunset Bay - it's a gem for sure.

I would actually like to be down there (with my camera gear of course!) during some more challenging weather when the wave heights are also up there. I hear Shore Acres and thereabouts can be quite impressive during high waves. But that will be more fun in the travel trailer than in our converted standard size van. I endured a brutal day or two on that holiday trip on which I took the Harris Beach photo, but if it were more extended I would have grown weary of dodging my hanging wet outdoor gear in the camper van!

Yes, I've been learning to hop on that when it's in the forecast and I have the time open. When I took that photo at Cape Ferrelo, friends back up here in the Puget Sound area were telling tales of wet murk.

Seems like a great notion in any case to experiment from your current home and learn more about how you really like to roll as you spend more time out camping and exploring etc. There are so many different takes on the possible answers to your opening question depending on who's answering, and you'll learn more about YOUR answers by just getting out there from where you live now.

I haven't gotten my Oliver yet so can't comment beyond what we can both find here on the forums on this topic. But I have talked to folks who have 4x4 camper vans and my take is that they do have their limits. So their usefulness depends a lot on where you want to go. They're not really what you want for instance if you hope to get out on a lot of the sandy 4x4 roads in the southwest for instance. The folks I know who travel at will around there are all in 4x4 trucks (or jeeps or land cruisers etc.) and ideally in one with modern computerized "crawl control" for helping get out of deep sand (one photographer I know down there who heavily travels in AZ and UT swears by the Toyota Tacoma's crawl control and he has a Four Wheel Camper brand slide-in camper on his - I know a handful of folks with these campers and who use them on very rough roads, all of whom are quite happy with them btw). I have another friend with a 4x4 converted van who, though he can access some places down there that I can't reach in my RWD camper van, has discussed sharing a jeep rental with me to get to some places such as White Pocket which involve a lot of sandy road travel.

Here's a photo from Harris Beach State Park in Brookings during a warm stretch between Xmas and new years a few years ago - so many nice little islands and sea stacks! And one from just north of there by Cape Ferello (this is from last week)

Also look up the "Chetco effect (aka "The Brookings effect"). I've had some lovely winter days down there. The wind can for sure be quite strong. Folks flock to Boice Cope park to kiteboard on Lake Floras just a little north of Gold Beach (south of Bandon) due to the strong and consistent winds. If I were happier with the mountain access (for both skiing and hiking/backpacking) I'd move down there in a hearbeat. The coastline from Brookings up to Cape Blanco is just amazing. Stunning.

Yes, I have it in a can. I recently restored some otherwise still decent water shoes for sea kayaking whose soles had pulled away from the shoes. So far the bond with the shoe's leather (which was primed on the sole contact surface when they were originally made) has held quite well - I'm impressed. These shoes have a lot of flex and as you might expect get wet each time they're used (during launch and landing of the kayaks). I also have used the cement to recover orthotics, which saved a TON of money as well and let me use the exact sort of covering material I wanted for them. Those have also held up super well even when soaked in not really waterproof hiking boots in PNW wet weather. I have a friend who uses it to cement rubber rands of "supergaiters" to mountaineering boot sole edges to create boots that stay dry in wet mushy spring snow.

Shoe goo is great for in the field repairs. For home, barge cement works super well for soles that are delaminating. But carrying some shoe goo on the road is easier than carrying barge cement thinner (for cleaning old glue off before regluing) as well as the barge cement, and a little less nasty to deal with as well. And it also helps with filling torn holes etc. I have both on hand at home and have used each in the last year for sure.

I look forward to reading the answer. I pick up on the 18th, a bit over a week after you so I have a keen interest in being prepared for getting caught in a snow squall =8-O

Just picture the captain of the starship Enterprise asking the computer for "tea, earl grey, hot" and getting a plate of succotash from the food machine.

Hmm. That's a good point to raise. "Socks" would potentially be another option - they're for sure better than nothing and also generally tend to be acceptable in "chains required" situations on passes. There are various makes and while I have a pair in the trunk of our VW Jetta I have yet to have had the need to deploy them.