Colorado offers so much in terms of opportunities for living the outdoor lifestyle and living with nature. One downside to this is the risk of Colorado wildfires. This risk became a reality a few days ago. I was returning from a mountain bike ride in Breckenridge and as I turned ...

We've had the desire to head back east for quite some time. A & A's wedding celebration in Wisconsin made for a nice anchor point for the entire road trip. In addition to the wedding celebration, we had a list of places to visit. We also discovered others along the ...

Sprinter Center Console One of the pleasures in a well designed vehicle is to have cup holders that are in easy reach and can hold cups of various sizes securely. The NCV3 (2006-2018) Sprinters have several cup holders built in but they are either difficult to reach or are not ...

It is well known that the maintenance costs for European vehicles is expensive.  So it makes sense that when there is an opportunity to perform maintenance on your vehicle yourself that you take it.  In the case of a motor oil change for a Mercedes Sprinter NCV3, the process is ...

Kitchen with refrigerator Perishable food storage is always a concern on road trips.  We've been using an Engel rotomolded cooler for a while.  This worked well, with ice lasting several days.  However, the lack of a good organization system for food in the cooler and the fact that food is ...

Bike Slider Storage Trays The interior layout of the van has always been designed around the ability to store 4 bikes inside.  Initially, they were all mounted with fork mounts staggered on L-Track facing the rear of the van as documented here: DIY Sprinter Van - Bike Mounts and here: DIY Sprinter Van ...

Seat swivel upgrade One of the first upgrades we made to the van was a seat swivel to improve the use of interior space of the van for when we are not driving.  You can read about that first experience here:  https://ridingroadsandtrails.com/swivel-seat-install/ The original swivel upgrade worked fine, but the ...

Planned Route Road Trip by the numbers: 5800 miles driven 10 Road Rides, 372 miles, 24,000 feet of climbing 10 MTB Rides, 165 miles, 16,500 feet of climbing 7 National Park System areas visited 10 US States visited Casper MTB Trails Casper Mountain County Park Casper Mountain, overlooking Casper, WY ...

Vanlife shower One of the challenges of life on the road for an extended period is how to get a shower.  Often, campgrounds, recreation centers, fitness centers and aquatic centers offer free or low cost showers.  When these aren't available, we've relied on solar showers that are essentially a plastic ...

Completed upper cabinet with 8020 8020 Extruded Aluminum T-Slot cabinet The majority of our Sprinter van build structure so far has been done with 3/4" plywood and no 8020 aluminum extrusions.  This has worked out pretty well.  The upper cabinet for this latest project is a little different in that ...