We, Arthur and Bonnie Joyce, began our retirement February 4, 2013 with the agenda that was to be a “no-agenda” plan. Our son, Bryan, encouraged us to simply take a year to refresh ourselves in the Lord and to renew our spirits by drawing closer to Jesus and simply enjoying His creation created especially for His people.
So, that was the “no-agenda” plan. There were some specifics that we wanted to accomplish as we traveled across the United States. God has created many amazing and awesome wonders that we wanted to see. And there were friends and family that we wanted to stop in and say, "Hi!" to as we passed through their areas.
We invited friends and family to take the tour of this wonderful country with us, to check in often and read our blog entries. We did a lot of traveling the first few years, then took some time off to care for our moms until their graduation to be with Jesus. If you're interested, click on TRAVEL to see some of those adventures.
As the years went by and we traveled less, we also added our Christmas letters and other family history, as well as our thoughts on various topics. Click on JOURNAL to see those. A PHOTO section includes family photos and Bonnie's quilts. We hope to add more photos as time goes by. The MINISTRIES section contains sermons, devotionals, and radio broadcasts from our years at Johnson City Alliance Church and in the MUSIC section you can listen to choir, solo, and ensemble selections from those years. Our son, David, spent considerable time reworking our website and making it easy for us to update as well as easy for you to navigate and read the various entries. Check the Travel Map and note where we've been by the blog entry markers scattered on the map (and accumulating with each new entry). We really are grateful for his assistance. He has done a superb job.
About Our Setup
We meet many people along the way who seem to be fascinated with our lifestyle. They usually will say something like, "Oh, that's what I would like to do!" Some are honest and say, "I like what you're doing, but I don't think I could to do it myself. I need a real bed to sleep in and a place where I can actually stand up to get dressed." And we can appreciate their thinking. What we are doing is not for everyone, but if you want to see the country and all that God has created for us to enjoy, this is one affordable way to do it. So if you're interested in trying van life, read on!
Our van is a 2008 Chevy Express van. We purchased it used in the Fall of 2012 and as of 2026 we have had no major problems with it. It had previously been used as a truck for dental supplies. But it had all the qualities that we were looking for in a van: openable windows on a sliding side door and openable windows in the back doors. We specifically did not want the barn doors in the side as the sliding door took up much less space when parked in a tight parking place.
We received much of our inspiration for the van setup from an ebook that we purchased online from vanabode.com. You can find it on Amazon and it's called: "Vanabode: travel and live forever on $20 a day" . The book was written by Jason Odom and you can check out that website if you're interested. Jason, his wife, and even their pet rabbit, have been traveling this way for many years.
We followed the instructions given in the Vanabode book and made modifications along the way. This little article will show and tell you what we did to make our van a home away from home.
We began by removing the shelving units, except for the black lockable box between the front seats, which is a nice place to keep our travel books and important papers file. We removed the gate behind the front seats. We chose to build a platform, double bed sized, that goes from side to side, since the van measures six-feet across, which allows us to easily lay stretched out and comfortable. The bed height was determined by the height of the plastic bins that we wanted to keep under the bed. We're able to store six bins in that usable space. It puts us a little closer to the ceiling than the Vanabode ebook suggests, but we can still sit on the edge of the bed and our heads don't touch the roof.
Since our lifestyle doesn't really involve t-shirts, we wanted to have space for hanging clothes rather than keep all of our things in bins. We installed a wire cable between two of the support struts of the van. A small dresser fit well into a space between our bed and the front seat. We also use part of that space to store a heavy quilt made from a winter weight sleeping bag. When the temperatures drop down to about 50 or below to about 35 degrees, we unroll the quilt and are as snug as bugs in a rug throughout the night. Our van doesn't have heating or cooling when the motor isn't running, but since we try to follow the seasons, we haven't experienced any major problems in sleeping through the nights. Because we're a little older, we do have a need for nature calls during the night. And for that we have a small port-a-potty that works perfectly well for us. We generally use it just for liquids and try to utilize public restrooms for other more solid times (sorry if that's TMI). A wheelchair cushion on top turns the unit into a seat to use while we cook or eat in the van.
One happy serendipity that came was that our anti-gravity lawn chairs fit perfectly between the back doors and the bed. It makes it a little more difficult to get at the bins under the bed from the back doors, but it's really not too difficult. We sometimes cook in the van, but we eat about two meals a day (breakfast and supper) in local parks. If it's raining or too cold, we'll get something from the value menu at McDonalds or other place. It's not a huge drain on the budget if you're preparing most meals yourself. Occasionally we like to have a special meal at a restaurant.
In 2013, we created a video of our van setup, with the help of our son, David. Take a few minutes and enjoy it. At the end, David put in an "out-take" that you'll probably enjoy as well.