I love camper vans. Little mobile houses on wheels you can just take exploring, making your home wherever you park? What’s not to like? I mean, other than how you feel after a week or so of living in a van and are craving a shower and just one comfortable shit, for once. There’s a company, Tiffin, and they make a van called the GH1, and I was sent these press images of the van from a reader named J, just J. There’s some weird stuff in these pictures, though, and I just want to talk them out with you, if that’s ok.
The Tiffin GH1 is a Mercedes-Benz Sprinter 2500-based camper van that seems to retail for somewhere between $175-$200,000. It’s an all-wheel drive, off-road machine with an inline-four turbodiesel making 208 horsepower and 332 pound-feet of torque. It also has a 540 amp battery pack and a 220-watt solar panel system, and overall seems like a pretty nice off-road camping setup or “overlanding” or whatever you want to call it.
But that’s not what I want to talk about now; I want to talk about these press photos, because I have some questions. First, let’s look at one of the main press photos:
Okay, so we’re out in a forest and our #vanlife couple, Dustin and Claire, are out there relaxing on their chairs, pounding kombuchas or whatever and enjoying their time in what looks like a vast, old-growth forest.
It looks a bit chilly, or at least brisk out there under the tree canopy, too. Seems idyllic! But I have to wonder: what the hell are the surfboards for?
Or paddleboards, or whatever they are – I’m not a surfer, but even with my limited understanding of the sport, I’m pretty sure you’d want a body of, you know, water, to do all the paddling or surfing in, right?
Is there a way to glide a paddleboard over a lot of pine needles and leaf litter? And have fun?
Here our couple is absent, but they’re drying some clothes; maybe there’s water around here somewhere? An unseen lake? A big puddle? Maybe the local Sasquatch population saved up enough for an above-ground pool?
Oh, also, there’s this; look at the window on the sliding door:
Let’s zoom in. Computer! Zoom, and enhance!
That looks like the reflection of a sort of possibly friendly bear? Maybe a polar bear? I don’t think it’s inside the van because the door is slid into the open position. It seems to be more of a reflection. Did a bear take the photo, maybe? I don’t mean to discriminate, but generally, bears aren’t great photographers.
Am I missing out on something here? Is there a big woodland-surfing or forest-paddleboarding movement I’ve been foolishly unaware of? The cynical part of me is tempted to think they just wanted to throw in every #vanlife cliché into these pictures, and surf (or paddle) boards are absolutely a part of that, so someone propped them against a tree and they looked good and everyone moved on and never thought, hey, why the fuck would you bring those things out into the forest?
That doesn’t explain the bear reflection, though. The ghost bear. He knows something.
Definitely not Pacific Coast Redwoods. I’m sure they brought the kitchen sink so why not surfboards?
maybe they used it as ironing board
Well – from the video on the Tiffin site, they’re clearly at Haystack Rock on the Oregon coast. There’s some good wave action up there.
This is just up the coast from where the nice couple in the brochure photo for the 1972 Mercury Montego MX Brougham coupe were photographed post-snorkel.
I’m guessing one of them are the Montego couple’s grandkids, carrying on the family tradition.
Oh – and the Bear? It’s clearly inside the Tiffin GH1, making food for everyone.
That’s what all the Bears I know do, between disco tea dances and pool parties…
I think we should do a #forestsurfing after each #vanlife
Wild temp swings are pretty common with a little elevation. It was 40 degrees this morning along the Wasatch back; we should hit 80 (or pretty close) by late afternoon. Perfect for hitting an alpine lake on your SUP.
As for the bear, I’m pretty sure that was just a graphic artist dropping an easter egg. There’s no trace of it in the video on their website.
Aren’t those SUP’s? (stand up paddle boards). In which case it makes a lot of sense, since there are usually a lot of little lakes in woods. People love to paddleboard around mountain lakes…for some reason.
Not to ruin the fun but this is a very reasonable Northern California thing.
I spent a summer living out of a 12 passenger E350 at China Camp state park in California, Marin County, where my coworkers (we guided trips in Yosemite and the King Range) taught me to surf, mostly at Bolinas, a modest but reliable break just down the Pacific Coast Highway. It’s cold. The Muir Woods looks rather like this photo and should be familiar to anyone who knows what an Ewok is.
Thankfully this was all before social media so I remain blessedly clout free and un hashtaged.
Multi-climate CA camping is definitely a thing, and a good way to relax. We had a nice week once at Plaskett Creek about halfway between SF and LA. Camping in amongst the beary trees on the side of a mountain where it was cool to downright chilly at times, especially in the evening. A short walk across the highway and down a bluff and you were on the beach where it was sometimes 20 degrees warmer and breezy with enough wave action for an amateur to have a bit of fun. The top of the bluff between the highway and beach was grassland bathed in sun with not much wind so you could actually work up a sweat going for a walk. And no connectivity. It was nice to unplug and have at least 2 or 3 different climates within a 5 minute walk of each other.
Yeah, don’t they know they’re supposed to “LIVE IN A VAN, DOWN BY THE RIVER!!!”
They’re German tourists whose knowledge of America came only from 90’s TV reruns. So they had it in their heads the entire west coast was one giant Baywatch beach full of hotties and tasty waves.
They’re very disappointed.
Also they keep feeding the bears leftover knackwurst. Never, ever feed bears, ESPECIALLY knackwurst. They’re about to find out the hard way what garlicky sausage does to a bear’s digestive system. Sasquatch is giggling in the shadows eagerly anticipating the unfolding shitshow.
Makes a lot of sense.
The video in the linked page includes Cannon Beach, which is on the Pacific about 60 miles west of Portland, Oregon. Plenty of surfing at the beach, plenty of temperate rain forest immediately inshore. I am now thinking cross-country road trip.
I was going to say that this looks like it could be anywhere on the Oregon or Washington coast. When going down 101, I do see setups with surfboards there.
I’m from Oregon and didn’t notice anything weird in the picture, also, pretty sure that’s a dog inside the camper
I was going to say it was probably Washington, but Oregon would have been just as good.
Not sure why the author would not think it could not be the Northwest. Lots of forest and close to the Ocean. A lot of people camp in the trees and enjoy the beaches during the day.
So glad I’m not part of the cliched #vanlife movement. I keep an inflatable kayak, not a paddle board, in mine.
That’s a banksy bear surfing mural painted on the side of the van. Worth millions.
That’s a wild David Tracy in the reflection trying to offload on of the Jeep kittens onto the unsuspecting campers.
Meh. There’s plenty of lakes in mountains that one could paddle board or whatever on. What weirds me out is how small the people look next to the van. Are those people tiny? Is the van huge? Is it just me?
In the future, #vanlife influencers will have evolved smaller bodies to fit more comfortably in cramped quarters.
The bear is sneaking up on them and is about to have them for dinner…
The bear is no danger. It’s just taking a shit. Those aren’t surfboards, they’re washboards. If you’re going to cosplay hillbilly homesteader, you use those to do your laundry in the crick.
I’m pretty confident that is Redwood National Forest or State Park, which is on the ocean. People do surf up there, especially in the summer when the chilly water is more doable.
As others have pointed out, one could be pretty close to a lake or river appropriate for paddleboarding. I’d expect to see paddles, but those are easier to stow, so it isn’t super weird. The reflection is likely just pareidolia and bark from a nearby tree.
Also, since it’s likely set on the Olympic peninsula or maybe northern California, that may not be chilly at all. It stays pretty green like that all summer. They call them evergreens for a reason.
So there’s actually two bears, Gary and Claudette, and those are their surfboards. See, they’ve been hitchhiking up the PCH visiting a different surf spot every other day when Dustin and Claire picked them up. Claudette was nice enough to offer to take their photo sitting in front of their sweet camping rig and Gary doesn’t appreciate your presumptions about bears and photography, thank you very much.
Later, after an unfortunate and extended series of ugly events, Dustin and Claire ended up dumping Gary and Claudette’s bodies in Central Park, with the paddle boards, in hopes that it would be misinterpreted as a surfing bear paddle board accident. But they later confessed unprompted in an interview.
Someone has a worm in their brain?
Yes, but Dustin said he’s fine, just fine, really, because it just died up there. No problem.
I’m thinking lack of oxygen.
Today I learned that Torch apparently thinks lakes cannot exist in close proximity to trees.
My first thought was:
Door wide open + interior lights on = we’re sleeping with 1000 bugs tonight, Claire.
There are very few bugs in the Pacific Northwest – even in the forest. Something that shocked me when I moved here considering I grew up in Michigan where even after the bug smogger truck came through the mosquitos would try to carry small children away.
Overlanding, surfing, kambucha, Patagonia fashion, just your average pretentious couple into all things trendy. Later they’ll be practicing yoga among the trees, which is why they brought along their yogi bear.
Smarter than the av-er-age bear!
Yeah, where’s the “Pic-a-nic basket?”
Mr Ranger confiscated it because they had ‘shrooms and edibles.
Apparently these two are unconcerned about mosquitos and other pests entering their living quarters.
Bear must be photoshopped in to cover their Kanye window cling.