Sleeping on the Road

After 16 weeks in a van, I think our sleeping situation has been pretty good. Sure, there are the nights where you toss and turn but you have these at home too. And yes staying in campgrounds can sometimes get a bit loud. 2 examples come to mind – one was a night at a Territorial campground in the Yukon when a guitar jam session that was easy to tune out with ear plugs got quite a bit louder when they decided to add a saxophone to the mix. The other example was a small private campground in Prince Rupert where someone arrived late (around 1:00 am) and was backing up his trailer in a tight spot with his diesel truck in the pitch dark for what felt like 45 minutes. But for the most part we have had relatively quiet nights where even traffic or rain is just white background noise that is sometimes even nice to fall asleep to.

So we sleep in the top part/tent area of the van (after the roof is raised up). There are 2 foam mattresses on plywood that stack on top of each other when the top is down and that we pull/slide out when the top is up to make the bed. This means that every night we are putting our bed together basically from scratch (the only thing that stays on the foam mattresses is the fitted sheet) and every morning, we take it apart again (unless we are not moving the van anywhere during the day - which is rare). One of the main things we consider each night as we are getting the bed ready is what the system of blankets are going to be. This is dependent on how cold it is outside that night as well as how cold it was the night before. We have got caught a few times when we think it feels fairly warm at 9:00 pm when we are getting ready for bed only to wake up at 4:00 am freezing.

So for our blanket system, we have been using some combination of the following:
fitted cotton sheet (always on the bed)
top cotton sheet
top fleece sheet
2 quilts (which are really nice for afternoon naps when you don’t want to make the bed with the top sheets)
2 sleeping bags (+3 degrees Celsius and -3 degrees Celsius) which zip together to make a comforter (and also came with us on the Chilkoot trail)

When we were travelling through BC in June, it was fairly warm at night so we would just use the cotton sheets and the quilts. As we got further north towards the Yukon, it was a bit cooler at night (or at least when the sun finally set) so we would either add the fleece sheet or use the sleeping bags instead of the quilts. And then when it got colder still (ie up in Dawson City in August or right now), we started sleeping with the fleece sheet and the sleeping bags and also kept our toques on.

Our last night in the Yukon, it was really cold. I was in fleece pants and my down jacket just hanging out in the van so I was dreading getting into pajamas and climbing up into that cold bed. But Mike (also known as Mike-Guyver) already had the solution to a cold bed – a heated blanket that plugs into a cigarette lighter (which can charge from our “house batteries) that has a timer! Brilliant. Not only can we pre-warm the bed before climbing in but we can also press the button if we wake up at 4:00 am freezing (and then it will just shut itself off after ½ hour). And although I think Mike did this so he doesn’t have to deal with “Mi-ike, I’m cold” at 4:00 am, I think he secretly turns it on at 7:00 am after I get up in the morning so he can sleep a bit longer with the warmth.

And where do the dogs sleep? They would love to climb up to the top bed with us but luckily haven’t figured out how to do that. One is on one bench and one is on the other bench (their own beds – lucky dogs!