Last year we finally decided to take our first hiking trip to the Pacific North West! We have done a lot of hiking in Utah, Arizona and Colorado but wanted to check some more things off of our travel bucket list. I have been dreaming of a PNW trip for YEARS, but living on the East coast made this feel like a huge undertaking. Just deciding where to go in our limited time was mentally exhausting.

We have friends in Bend Oregon so we wanted to plan a trip to visit them and this was the perfect excuse to combine the two trips. When we travel we usually rent a car so I started looking up places we wanted to visit, car prices and Air BnB prices. When I tell you this trip got expensive fast, I mean FAST. Flights and the car alone were several thousand dollars. We talked about just going to Bend, but ultimately decided we wanted to do a longer trip incase we couldn’t make it back out there for a while.

After FINALLY deciding on which National Parks, towns and sights we wanted to include on this trip we threw around the idea of renting an RV or borrowing our friends once we got to Bend. There are a few different sites you can rent RVs or Camper Vans from but our friends recently had an incredible experience renting from Outdoorsy so I started looking into renting from them. We decided against renting a truck to tow an RV immediately, so a Camper Van was the perfect option.

We were flying into Seattle so I filtered the vans by location and started looking into what each one included or did not include, how big they were and where the pick up location was in proximity to the airport. We are flying from the Philadelphia airport and already have a very long travel day so we didn’t want to choose a van that was hours away from the airport.

Ultimately we chose a Van by Maker Vans that was in Bremerton, WA. The owner of the van offered the option ($$) to pick you up at the airport which took out the need to find transportation to his house. I am all about convenience so I will happily pay to make our trip easier. The owner picked us up at the airport and we headed back to his house to learn all about the van before heading out.

The first day of our vacation is usually a long travel day, but this turned into the longest travel day of our lives. After flying for 6 hours, we drove an hour or so to the owners house and had to do a 2 hour orientation on the van. I completely understand why this is required and would not have felt comfortable taking this camper without doing it, but OMG was it painful after traveling for so long. We also had a 3 hour drive to our campsite after this. But after the orientation we were off on our EPIC roadtrip!

Lets talk about the important things to consider when choosing a vehicle or RV from Outdoorsy. Do you want to rent a truck to haul an RV? Or do you want a self contained camper van? Are you going to be paying for campsites? Do you need a shower? How many people need to fit in the camper?

Choosing the Van

We had no experience towing an RV and did not want to start learning with someone else’s very expensive camper. Billy has experience driving large vehicle like RAM Promasters, Sprinters and Ford Transits, so a Camper Van was a much more comfortable option for us. Personally I would have been nervous driving the van and only did stretches of highway driving during our trip.

• Do you need a shower?
  • Our van did have a secret shower in a drawer that was super cool, but we did not use it. The set up and break down was too much to deal with so we just hit a Plant Fitness when we went through a town that had one.

• What is the toilet situation?
  • Our van had a composting toilet which I was not familiar with before this trip. It was essentially a wooden box with a toiled seat that had a jug to catch pee and then a hole for anything else. You would then throw wood chips over the top to reduce the smell. We tried to use the toilet as little as possible for #2 and lined the seat with a plastic bag if we did need to use it and threw it out right away. Take into consideration that this is a shared space so the other person or people might have to wait outside while you are using the toilet. Its also a very small space so the smell is going to linger.

• How many people are in your group?
  • There are only 2 of us so we could choose a smaller camper and still be comfortable.

• How large is the vehicle? Can you drive a vehicle of this size? Do your campsite accommodate a vehicle of that size?

• Do you want to be able to stand up inside the camper? You might not be able to tell by the photos, but some vans like Transits are not full height.

Whats Included:

• Does the vehicle rental include miles? If so how many?

• Does it come with WiFi?

• Is there a sink?

• Is there a cooktop? Are plates, silverware and cookware provided?

• Is there heat or air conditioning?

Additional Costs:

Make sure you read the details for each van because they all have different add ons, fees or penalties.

• Do they charge for miles over a certain amount?

• Insurance – You are required to get insurance through Outdoorsy. They have different teirs that have different levels of support and coverage.

• Gas
  • This is a HUGE expense that should absolutely be considered when planning your trip. These vans do not have good gas mileage (ours got about 14 MPG), so if you took a long trip like ours you could be looking at $400-500 in gas.

• Wifi
  • Our Van had WiFi, but we had to pay for it each day.

• Fees for transportation, early pick up, late return, pets, refueling, or leaving the toilet full.

• Add ons like camping gear or adventure gear.

Cost Breakdown

Was this more cost effective than renting a car and separate Air Bnbs? Eh, not exactly. But the experience? Absolutely worth it! Being able to take the van to different campsites (rented through HipCamp!) made for a bucket list worthy trip that we would not have gotten if we were worried about checking in and out of different air BnBs every day or two. Here is the cost of Just the Van rental.

The Van – Total $3123.58

• Base Cost for a 9 day rental – $1648
• Airport Drop off and Pick Up – $250
• Internet – $280
• Insurance (required) – $404.55
• Prep Fee (?? What is this) – $100
• Tax – $257.93
• Outdoorsy Fee – $182.30

This was a pretty expensive trip when you add in the gas, camp sites, National Park fees, flights and food, but we would absolutely consider doing it again for the experience! We do have an RV now though, so expect lots of road trips in the future!

So what do you think? Would you use Outdoorsy to rent a van for an epic road trip?