Trip Summary
So we drove 8,407 miles on this trip. It was an absolutely amazing experience. Many people have asked what my favorite part of the trip was. I’d have to say the best part of the trip was just being together as the four of us without a ton of distractions. Don’t get me wrong...the scenery was amazing, but we just really enjoyed the rhythm of traveling together with the camper. We were ready to keep going
. It’s good to be home too but we all agreed we were just as happy on the road living in our box.
So here are my lessons learned thoughts in no particular order. If you have any questions about the setup, trip, or anything really just ask here and I’ll give you my thoughts.
1. MPG’s...I only checked a couple times by hand to see how accurate my lie o meter on the dash was. It was within 10% it appeared and doing the conversion of liters in Canada got old. All that said I think I was around 10-10.5 mpg for the trip.
2. We were heavy. 15,400 with our gear fuel and kids. If wishes were fishes I’d like to be at 10,000. It would make rig design so much easier. This will be my goal for the next build. Light.
3. Slide. AWESOME! Our camper is huge inside with the slide out. Simply incredible. I know it’s not Siberia ready, but I’d trade the 5% of places I may not take it for the 100% more comfort for a family of 4 to travel in. Oh yeah...here’s a tour my kiddo did for those curious about the rig:
4. Composting toilets are awesome! No regrets on rolling my own crapper. Emptied the urine jug daily (super easy) and emptied the solids twice on the six week trip with four of us using it. We used sawdust and it worked great. No odor. Not gross to empty. I just dumped it in pit toilets along the way. See earlier in the thread for my version. For $50 vs $1000 you won’t see me ordering a factory built one anytime soon. Building a composting outhouse now for the farm.
5. People who boondock and travel are largely my kind of people. We met people from all over the world and had great impromptu fires to hang out at.
6. Run what ya brung. Don’t get sucked into making your rig perfect before you go. Just go. I love the design build phase, but that’s usually a somewhat solitary endeavor. Traveling gets you our engaged with creation and people. Just go.
7. We all over build. We could have gone everywhere we went on this trip in a normal camper and two wheel drive stock truck. We couldn’t have done it as fast and we wouldn’t have gotten to all the campsites we went to, but if it’s what ya got see number 6!
8. Do an alignment when you get new tires. I meant to and then forgot about it until my Tires started wearing funny. Checked the tow and it was way out of spec. I pretty much ruined a tire in about 10k miles.
9. Mpt81’s. I’d say they are fine. If I had unlimited dinero I’d get the Goodyear g275’s or whatever they are. I like driving fast and I’m constantly weighing whether to slow down to not wear them excessively fast or not. It appears my fears have about .4” of tread and the new spare has .55” of wear. I don’t think it’s fair to check the fronts as they weren’t aligned. Also, these got noiser as they broke in. They are still relatively quiet but I don’t need a mud tire 98% of the time so I’d be fine with a less aggressive tread. Oh my axle weights were 2730 kg front and 4270 kg rear roughly.
10. Super singles. They look awesome. I had zero issues with my wheel adapters. However, there are few setups that really maintain load ratings if you are as heavy as I ended up. If I can pull off a lighter rig next time that would open up a ton of wheel options. I wish there was a taller, more aggressive dually setup that could be put on these trucks with factory wheels. My setup worked well but it’s big. It’s not subtle.
11. I’d like more water capacity. We had 40 gallons, but room for another 60 gallon tank. For more rural camping I’d want an additional 60 for our family.
12. Propane in North America is easy, cheap and makes building a camper a lot more affordable. We loved our propane fridge and on demand hot water heater. For us propane was easy.
13. My inverter is too small. I bought a magnum 600w off Craigslist right before we left. Worked fine but wife wanted to run an instant pot which would have been slick...so I should get a bigger one next time.
14. The simple plans for isolating and charging the house batteries using a solenoid that are outlined here work great. We never had issues with our batteries.
15. Take a nice camera...but not too nice. I bought a $600 Sony A6000 with two lenses before we left. It was awesome. It takes decent pictures and videos and isn’t so large as to be obnoxious or obtrusive.
Those are the lessons that come to mind at the moment. I’m sure I’ve forgotten many others but as they come to me I’ll post.
I’m ready to start another build
. It’s good to be home too but we all agreed we were just as happy on the road living in our box. 
