Van Tour of Solo Woman Living in a 4x4 Van

This one in particular is the Chinook Baja. It's the only four-wheel drive one they made. They only ever made 25 of them. All right, everyone, welcome back to my next video. Today, we're gonna meet Lori, and she is in the rig of my dreams. I mean, there's no other way to say it. This would be the rig of my dreams. It's perfection. So, Lori, tell us a little bit about how you came to be living out on the road first, then we'll talk about the rig. It's my dream rig, too. Every time I, I love to see the other rigs in town, but I think, would I trade? No, I just, it's so much fun. My husband got cancer in 2018, and he passed away in 2019. I'm sorry. Thank you. And so, I didn't get enough life insurance to pay off the house, and I decided to sell it and buy a rig and go full-time. I've been part-timing off and on a good part of my life. I was an over-the-road trucker for about a decade. Oh, wow. When I was 19, graduated high school, I bought a car and drove it to Florida, lived out of it. So, I've been on the road before. The road calls you. Yes, this is my fourth camper van, and I think I got it right this time. I think so, I think so. And so, how long have you, you're full-timing, and how long have you been full-timing? I closed on my house April 30th in Knoxville, Tennessee, and I had this, bought this rig in March, so April 30th, I've been on it. All right, great. So, and you're enjoying it? It's, of course, you've been doing it a long, long time, so you knew, it wasn't, you weren't surprised by anything. No, no, I kind of had it down. And how are you supporting yourself? Are you working as you go? No, I'm not. Oh. Between the life insurance and what I got out of the house, I'm living on savings. I threw it in investments, and it's making enough to cover my annual expenses, so I'm about seven years from Social Security, so I'm just riding along that way. Great, that's ideal. And so, tell us a little bit about your rig. It is a 2002 Chinook Baja. It's a nomadic dream. It is. It's four-wheel drive, and very comfortable to live in. I want for nothing except for maybe an oven. I just have a stove top, but it covers everything else I could ever want in a vehicle. I can go anywhere in it. Well, first, let's talk about Chinook, because some of our audience may not know what Chinook is, so tell us a little bit about Chinook itself, and then the Baja edition, which is really truly unique, but tell us a little bit about the Chinook itself. What's the nice thing about a Chinook is it's a fiberglass body. It's all one unibody. They bought the chassis and then put the fiberglass shell on the back. They went out of business in 2005, and I recently had an RV salesman here in Quartzsite tell me the reason they went out was because of these Bajas, because they put so much into them, the very best of everything. It hurt them financially, but... This one in particular is the Chinook Baja. It's the only four-wheel drive one they made. They only ever made 25 of them. They made 26 Bajas, one of them on a Hummer, and the other 25 on the Ford chassis. It's got the Quigley four-wheel drive conversion in the front. It's a 6.8 liter Triton V10 engine, four-speed automatic. It's got the overdrive. It's got dual wheels, 410 limited slip differential in the back, Dana 60 front axle, 138 inch wheelbase, twin I-beam front suspension. Yeah, it's a great rig. 21 feet long, 10 and a half feet high. And the Chinook is one of the highest quality of all the RV makers, which is probably another reason why they didn't last is they made such great rigs, they couldn't really charge what they were worth, would be my guess. I agree. You find one for sale, snag it. You do. If you find a Chinook, you grab it. They're the only thing that there's, I think of three of the RV manufacturers, the Lazy Days, the Born Free, and the Chinook. And I think of those three as just equal. If you can grab any one of them, you do. Yeah, I agree. But no one made anything like this, except Chinook, the Baja. So this was really built to be an off-road rig. Yes, yes. Almost like an expedition vehicle. Right, you've got the winch, the big tires. It's just the lift. It just, it's fantastic. Yeah, I've challenged it out here in the desert a little bit and there's nowhere it won't go. Right. That's just, it's just, I just walked around enough to know that, whoa, that is amazing. It is, yeah. And only 25 of them made on the van, the Ford van platform. You just got lucky and got one? I did, yeah. I saw one come up for sale in 2016 and it was the first time I'd ever heard about them. And I tried to grab that one and it was gone a day or two. And then this one came up for sale down in South Georgia. It spent most of its life in Florida. It doesn't have a spotter rust on it. And a man sold it to his son who lived in Southern Georgia. He had it about six months. He was a family van for young children and they couldn't really fit in it. So he decided to put it on the market. I went down and I bought it right away. I got there as soon as I could. I couldn't drive it home. It had some issues. The front end was kind of tore up in it. There were some repairs made that weren't quite what it needed to be. So I had it towed and put together good enough to get me home for my good mechanic. And then I put them on the job and they finished it up for me and it's cherry now. Right, right. Super. But the outside's in real good shape. Very good. The inside is kind of a mess. It had a water leak. They didn't put putty around the generator when they replaced it. Water leaked in there and it made a mess out of the cabinet the refrigerator's in, but I have plans to get that taken care of in the summer when I get back to Pennsylvania. There's an Amish woodworker up there who's gonna help me redo the inside. Oh wow. Yeah. Great. Yeah. Yeah, one thing about the Chinooks also was the inside was always impeccable. Just fantastic. So yeah, you can, once you get this restored, it'll be really something. So can we take a look inside then? I'd love to. Let's do that. Let's check it out inside, folks. So here we are inside. And as usual, this is beautiful. It's really, really nice inside. Thank you. Just the quality of the workmanship that Chinook has always done is really fantastic. You can see the real wood cabinets nicely made, not just junk. Really nice. So why don't you go ahead and show us around? It's a standard Chinook. It really is. And there's so much storage in here. Some of the cabinets I don't even have anything in. There's plenty enough space to live in here full time. The pillows are all full of either sleeping bags or jackets or clothing or bedding. They're not just pillows. I keep my clothing up here, my food here and there, general storage up here. I mean, this is pretty much, you know, if you buy a Chinook and you move in, it's just pretty much that kind of stuff. Yeah. Standard day to day. Right. So you, this is your bed and you sleep on it. And it probably folds away. It originally came with a couch and some previous owner converted it into just a regular bed, just a regular old standard mattress. Right. I put a new mattress in it, but it's a 72 inch long twin mattress. So that is a change that is different from factory. And the other change that's major is someone cut the table in half and made a storage area underneath. I think I like that. I do. I wish the table was a couple of inches wider because when you're sitting down at it, you have to kind of lean over to eat. But you know, it's not that big of a deal. It's nice turning around space in here for me and my dog, who's not a little girl. Yeah, but you're right. Three more inches, three, four inches would really be nice. Yeah, hopefully the cabinet maker can fix that for me. Oh, I'm sure he can. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And the Amish quality too, that'd be great. And back here, you've got your kitchen, which is plenty of kitchen space. Yep, it's a dual sink. I only ever use one side though. So if you were a couple, you would still be comfortable in here. If you could both sleep on the bed. Right. Because the table's been cut and put in there, you can't convert the dinette into a bed anymore. That's right. But yeah, if you can fit on the bed, you can do it. It's 50 inches by 72. And then there's a bathroom. And I love, love, love my bathroom. Right. It's, I can take a 20 minute hot shower in there. I have a really good shower head and it's like a steam shower in there. It's just wonderful. Right. Better than a house shower. Wow, good. No drafts in there, you know? Good, good. And so everything else, how much, do you have solar? I do. I just had a solar system put on it this summer. There's 400 watts on the roof and a 40 amp charge controller and 205 amp hour AGMs. That's a lot. That's a good system. It runs everything. Yeah, no problems whatsoever. Yeah, that's a good system. Except for the microwave and air conditioner. Right. It runs everything. And this came with a generator? It did. It has a 4,000 watt. There's your air conditioner. Yeah, I don't need air. I'm good. Yeah, no. Just go somewhere where it's not so hot. There you go. That's the plan. That's exactly how you do it. Yeah. And so just, it's beautiful. Really, really beautiful. Fridge there, big. Oh boy, that is a big fridge. That is an exceptionally big fridge. Oh, it's lovely. I don't need a lot of process in my meals, so. Very nice, yeah. And the standard bathroom. It is very standard. Nice. But all you need. So it just has worked out super well for you. You're thriving in your life. I'm tickled pink over it. Love it. Yeah. I just want to bring it back. Well, it's sure great already. I mean, really, it is really great already. Well, Lori, thank you so much for sharing your home with us. And I've never seen one of these before. And boy, am I envious. I'm green with envious, enviousness. So thank you for sharing it with us all. I'll watch this video over and over again, just wishing I could have it. So folks, I'm sure you've been impressed with this Baja Chinook and enjoyed meeting Lori and seeing her wonderful home. If you got anything out of this video, like us on YouTube, subscribe to the channel, hit that thumbs up button, and we'll talk to you later. Bye now. Cheap RV Living has a Patreon page. Please join us for behind the scenes footage and early release videos. Also, you'll get insights into who Bob is as a person, plus advice for the road. You'll also get sneak peeks and bloopers, as well as a place to ask your questions before the live feed. No matter what membership level you join at, you have full access to absolutely everything on the Patreon page. So we hope you'll join us at patreon.com slash cheap RV living. Together, we are changing lives.