Where Do Vanlifers Poop?

To answer this commonly asked question, please join us for a triggering telling of one of our least favorite, but most funny, stories from the road. 

When Katie and I tell someone we live in a van, there are a few commonly asked questions. 

“What’s your favorite place you’ve been?”

Probably Vancouver Island. We went for a week, and stayed for a month. It’s like the Pacific Northwest, but Canadian. 

“What do you eat?”

Roadkill, mostly. And a lot of oatmeal.

But the single most commonly asked question that vanlifers–at least these vanlifers–get asked is this: 

“Where do you, you know, go number two?”

When the curious party squeezes out the question–much like a, oh, nevermind–it’s often tinged with embarrassment. But van people, at least these van people, aren’t a shy breed. I will gladly explain to you where, and how, and when, we poop.

Where do Vanlifers Pee?

But before we get to the exciting realm of excrement, let’s start off with number one, for chronology’s sake, if nothing else. Vanlifers, much like storm-battered mountaineers stuck in their tents, pee in jars. Or bottles. Or nalgenes. Or, oddly enough, in bladders–it takes one to flow one, I suppose. This pee is then stored, fermented, and sold or traded amongst other vanlifers for trinkets, gas, and invaluable beta on the best places to park overnight.

Just kidding. The pee is then dumped–ideally someplace that you’d be comfortable peeing in or on in everyday life, like a public urinal, a tree in the middle of nowhere, or a campaign sign for that politician that you really hate.

Where do Vanlifers Poop?

Peeing in a jar in your van is fairly straightforward (at least for dudes–ladies, this is Katie’s go-to funnel). Pooping, on the other hand, in a jar in your van is not recommended. If you spill a little pee, oh well, wipe it up, it’s sterile. If you spill a little poop, call in a hazmat crew and put that van on Craigslist–it is forever unclean. 

In response to this dilemma, some vanlifers–the shitty vanlifers–poop in the great outdoors. Allow me, if you will, a story. 

Katie and I had just finished building the van in October 2019 (I think)–an arduous, marathon of a task that left us both mentally and emotionally wrecked. We had planned to meander up to Canada through the month of August, but neither of us are very handy, and, needless to say, the van took infinitely longer than anticipated. 

Hoping to make the most of a rare sunny week in autumn on Vancouver Island, we jetted up from California in a three-day push–it might not sound fast, but in our obese, obstinate Chevy Express, that’s a PR we’ll never break.

We woke up, and the campsite was idyllic–even more so than we’d imagined. The forest was breathtaking–walls of moss-draped old-growth trees in every direction. The creek was clear and bright, like riffling crystal, pooling up in holes so enticing I fetched my fly rod before so much as making coffee. I fished happily until Katie woke up, made breakfast, and joined me on the river. 

There was a log, bridging the creek, aesthetically striking, picturesque, no doubt the neighborhood nymphs’ go-to breakfast nook. Naturally, we took our oatmeal out to the log, and sat eating breakfast and soaking up the–

“What the fuck is that smell?” I asked Katie a question that, deep down, I knew the answer to. 

“What smell?” she asked.

I reached to put my breakfast on the log, only to pull back.

“Oh my god,” I said. 

“What is it?”

“There’s shit.”

“There’s shit?”

“There’s shit on the log.”

“Who the fuck shits on a log?” I asked, stupidly. “How do you even shit on a log?”

And then I began to do a little bit of sleuthing. I looked back along the log, and there, every few feet or so, was a dollop of doo doo.

“One of us stepped in it,” I said, now in full Sherlock mode. 

We both looked at our shoes. Katie’s were clean. Mine, on the other hand, were not. 

Grumbling, I gingerly stood, doing my best not to put my hands in the compromising clumps of crap, thinking I was off to rinse my shoes in the river, and that was that. 

But that wasn’t that. 

I took a few steps toward the bank, and Katie stopped me. 

“Oh hun.”

“Oh hun, what?” 

She pointed. 

I looked. 

A brown brushstroke down the pantleg of my favorite corduroys. 

“Oh hun,” she repeated. 

The multisyllabic expletives that flowed out of my mouth, a verbal diarrhea, if you will, is not fit for print. 

But this isn’t print. It’s cyberspace, motherfuckers! This is a blog. And it’s our blog. So I’ll tell you exactly what I said.

“Cocksucker motherfucker!”

This was a tasteful phrase that I coined, used, and abused throughout the van build, say, when I incorrectly cut the chimney for the second time, or a table saw tried to murder me in cold blood. I hadn’t used it in a few days, not since working on the van. But it seemed so appropriate for the bastard who’s fecal signature now graced my cords. As I traced my track back to the scene of the crime, I realized that this uncivilized hooligan had taken a shit steps from our parking spot, without so much as digging a hole. Worse, it seemed he was not alone. This was a communal shithole. Small turrets of toilet paper jutted out from the earthen landscape, mocking me, as if to say, “It’s your fault you didn’t see this.” 

I was too caught up in the beauty of the trees to look down and see this city of shit. 

Whether or not these poopooing perpetrators were vanlifers, God only knows.

But as vanlifers continue to become a more and more hated breed, what with our eyesore rigs and pee jars and patchouli and sage, not shitting in pristine nature is the least we can do. 

So where do vanlifers shit? Some of us–the worst of us–drop deuces in what’s now known as the Copse of the Coffee-Colored Corduroys. But the responsible ones Leave No Trace. We seek out toilets. We shit in Targets. Walmarts. Gas Stations. Libraries. Coffee shops. Restaurants. Climbing gyms. YMCAs. Campground pit toilets. Job site port-o-potties during off hours. And if we do have to take an emergency poop in nature, we carry WAG bags, or, in an absolute worst-case scenario deep in the wilderness, we dig a fucking hole. A deep hole. Which we then cover. Because that’s just what being a decent person is all about. 

There are a few vanlifers who, foreseeing life without a toilet might be problematic, go so far as to install composting toilets into their rigs. Many of the vanlifers we know who have toilets try not to use them that frequently, as they do stink up the place and are a pain in the butt to deal with, but it’s a great insurance plan. You never when you’re going to park in a pull-off, camp in the dark, and have to go number two. 

So what did we learn from all of this?

That there are two types of van people. Those who shit responsibly, and those who do not. And maybe vanlife isn’t everything it’s cracked up to be, either. If you look at the rose-tinted photos Katie took of me that morning, I’m fishing, stoked, having a blast. I posted a couple of those pics to Instagram–with zero mention of this traumatic experience whatsoever. You’d never know that I just sat on a log, on a log, and unleashed a deafening string of “cocksucker motherfuckers” into the beautiful backwoods of British Columbia.  

You might be wondering: What the hell did I just read? Will all Groves & Coves articles be so graphic? So profane? So poop-centric? No. I seriously hope not. My corduroys–I still have them, by the way–can’t take it. But do expect the stories that Katie and I tell here to be this transparent. This is no-holds-barred adventure travel–you can’t have the glamorous without the gritty. If that’s your cup of tea, please be sure to join our fledgling email list below to stay in the loop on all things vanlife, adventure travel, and, occasionally, poop.