The Vandito came into our lives in 2015 as a plain white 2004 Mercedes Sprinter T1N. Over the next decade it would haul quads, chase the Baja 1000, take our kid and dog camping, carry motorcycles across the country and generally become the support vehicle for whatever we were doing at the time.
It wasn’t particularly fancy. Eventually, it wasn’t particularly pretty either.
But we kept finding reasons to keep it.
The original intent
The Vandito was originally built as a race-support vehicle. Four folding bunks and narrow shelving left enough room in the middle to haul two quads, tools, gear and then turn into a decent little camper after dumping out the bikes. It spent a season going to GNCC races before heading to Mexico in 2016 as a support vehicle for the Baja 1000.
After racing, it became the family camper. Paired with a bright-red 16-foot Zodiac named The OCDingy. We’d roll into Frontier Town looking like we were prepared for Armageddon, but it was a blast.
For years, we just called it the Baja van.
As the rust got worse and its general appearance became increasingly post-apocalyptic, a better name emerged.
The Vandito.
The trip that changed everything
In 2018, a Beta motorcycle went into the back of The Vandito and headed west to Colorado for a trip on the Trans-America Trail.
We came home with wanderlust.
The idea of spending the rest of our lives in a house in the suburbs suddenly wasn’t all that appealing. We wanted to travel farther, stay gone longer and see what else was out there.
Eventually, that idea took us in an unexpected direction.
We bought a sailboat.
Enter stage right: Ananke
In 2020, we bought Ananke, a 1984 sailboat that needed what we’ll generously call some work.
We had this idea that we’d refit the boat, eventually sell the house and go sailing. The Vandito wasn’t really part of the long-term plan. We figured we’d use it while we had it and probably sell it when it was time to leave on the boat.
Instead, rebuilding Ananke gave The Vandito an entirely new purpose.
The marina was about an hour from home. As the boat project grew, driving back and forth got old. By 2023, we started staying in The Vandito at the marina for a few days at a time.
Then a week. Sometimes two.
A few nights turned into a week or two, and apparently we had become those people living in a van down by the river.
And that exposed a few problems.
The electrical system was nearly ten years old. Cooking and washing dishes happened outside. The marina power was terrible. There was no running water, and working remotely from a van designed to haul quads had some obvious shortcomings.
The Vandito was still useful. It just needed some work too.
Of course it did…
Maybe we keep it?
There was also rust. A lot of rust.
It had gotten bad enough that holes were opening in the lower body panels near the wheel wells, which led to one of the stranger discoveries about The Vandito’s life before us.
Old Band-Aids and tiny bottles of hand sanitizer started falling out.
Before becoming the Baja van, it had apparently hauled medical supplies. Some of those supplies had been dropped deep into the interior wall cavities and spent years trapped inside.
The rust finally gave them a way out.
So now we had an old Sprinter with an outdated interior, tired electrical system and holes large enough to dispense first-aid supplies.
This was when the husband suggested we rebuild it.
Excellent timing, considering we were also rebuilding a sailboat and completely remodeling our house so we could sell it.
The wife’s initial response was something along the lines of: absolutely f*cking not.
But the more we looked at it, the more annoying his idea became.
Because he was right. (Don’t tell him.)
We already owned The Vandito. We knew its mechanical history. We’d already replaced the engine and transmission after an unfortunate cracked-piston incident on I-81. (that’s a story for another day…) Fixing it would cost considerably less than replacing it, and after years of using the original build, we knew exactly what we’d change.
More importantly, we were starting to realize that maybe selling it had been the wrong idea all along.
Why not both?
We’d been thinking about Ananke as the next chapter and The Vandito as something we’d eventually leave behind.
Living in the van while rebuilding the boat changed that.
Why did one have to replace the other?
Ananke could take us places by water. The Vandito could take us places by land.
We could have both.
The more we thought about the life we wanted, keeping The Vandito just made sense. The TAT had given us wanderlust, Ananke opened up the water, and there was still a whole lot of country we wanted to explore by land.
So, in the middle of remodeling a house and rebuilding a sailboat, we gutted The Vandito too. Because apparently we’re masochists for DIY projects.
Today, it’s hard to imagine our life without it.
The O.G. Vandito got us here. Vandito 2.0 was built for where we’re going next.
