I’ve got to get out of the habit of only posting on this blog when I release YouTube videos. Sorry about that!

In this episode of Big Rob’s Van, I pull off my first stealth camp. “Stealth Camping” is loosely defined as sleeping overnight in a place not designated for overnight sleeping. For some people, like Steve Wallis from YouTube’s “Camping With Steve,” that means camping behind a fake billboard or in the middle of a roundabout. For me, and millions of vanlifers, stealth camping means sleeping inside your vehicle in a place not designated for overnight parking.

For many vanlifers, stealth camping is just a fact of life. Some people who live in their vehicles are tied to a general location due to work or family, and spend the majority of their nights finding parking spots, parking lots, and other creative places to stay overnight. For others who frequently travel across the country, stealth camping is a way to save some money between destinations.

I have tried to be very upfront and transparent when it comes to my van adventures. I am building my van for fun, and nothing more. I do not live in my van and never plan to. For me, spending a few hours parked at the lake or a few hours in a random parking lot is enough to satiate my needs. Once my van conversion is a little more complete I do plan to take more road trips, but even then we’re talking about a day or two away from the house, not weeks or months. For those trips, I plan to stealth camp.

One of the things I touch on in this video, and something I’ll be diving into deeper in future videos, is that I think stealth camping less about being physically stealthy and more about not attracting attention to yourself. Camper vans have a lot of telltale signs that are easy to spot, from roof vents and fans to external power ports, and so fooling people like the police and parking lot security guards is pretty tough. I’ve been homing a ruleset in regards to stealth camping, which I’ll probably cover in my next video.

I tried to make this video entertaining with the whole ninja angle. As I mention in the video, yes, ninjas blended into the night by wearing black clothes and disappearing into the darkness, but they also dressed up like farmers and field workers and remained in hiding that way, too. My van is white, weighs 9,000 pounds completely empty, and is 20′ long. To hide something like that, you have to get pretty creative.

This little adventure was a fun experiment, and I hope you have fun watching it!