Reflections on Van Life in NYC With Our Dog

My primary impression of visiting New York City in Hermes the van: So much easier than I’d imagined it could be! I think a lot of different pieces went into this.

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Van-specific things that made our visit smooth

We’re used to living in our van full time

Sean, Scout, and I have been living on the road for more than nine months now. (This is absolutely astounding to me. Where is the time going?!)

At this point we have a handle on all our systems, we know how much we can stretch our freshwater and gray tanks if we change up our use, we’re old hat at sleeping in parking lots, we’ve gotten used to driving the van itself on a range of roads… all that good stuff.

I think visiting a tight urban environment would have been much harder at the very beginning.

Our converted van fits on passenger roads and in standard-size parking spots

I can’t overstate how happy I am that we prioritized this when selecting a van base for full-time living.

While we’re too tall for parking garages at just over 9 ft, most tunnels don’t pose any issue — so we only had to avoid a handful of parkways to make our way into the city. Length wise we’re about as long as the average pickup truck at just over 19 ft.

It might not exactly be a breeze to squeeze into a tight parallel space, of course… but finding parking was way more doable than I thought it would be. If we were much longer at all, I think we’d have struggled.

How NYC itself helped us out

NYC has more free parking than other cities we’ve visited

NYC has a surprising amount of free parking and overnight parking. At least, it was surprising to us after driving through many smaller cities and communities where everything is metered and adorned with massive red “No Overnight” signs.

We slept in three different boroughs (Manhattan, Queens, and Brooklyn) without a problem. It was easy to find streets that were fair game most hours of the day, with just a few restrictions for street cleaning that we had to avoid.

Traffic was loud — we definitely didn’t get great rest compared to remote public land spots — but worth it to be able to get up and walk around!

There are plenty of public restrooms

Okay yes, a lot of these facilities were pretty gross porta potties… but they got the job done for us to be able to empty our pee jug. We never had to drive more than a few minutes to be able to access an appropriate spot to dump.

Public restroom logistics are one of the most important things I think about when going somewhere new now. We can make our freshwater and gray tanks last a long time if we need to — but our toilet access is one thing we really can’t compromise on.

The city is full of people… who don’t care what you’re doing

Speaking of finding appropriate places to empty our pee jug: I felt like absolutely no one paid any attention to us in NYC. And it was delightful.

Many parts of the city were bustling at seemingly all hours of the day, crowded with all sorts of people doing their own things. I never felt shy about walking up to a porta potty with our little two-gallon tank in hand (something I can’t say about some other places we’ve visited).

Of course, we made sure to find spots where we wouldn’t disturb anyone — we won’t empty it in a public park restroom during a kid’s soccer match or anything like that — but the nature of the “there’s a million people around and no one really cares what anyone else is doing” vibe helped.

Successes with a sensitive dog

Scout can (finally) use the bathroom anywhere

Our scaredy cattle dog has finally reached the point where she will pee anywhere. This is way too exciting for me. 😂

She used to get overwhelmed easily and had to relieve herself only on dirt or grass. It felt like we needed to seek out capital-P Precise conditions just to make sure she could avoid a urinary tract infection. But a combo of ongoing confidence work and living in the van seems to have fully cured her of this pickiness.

I might be the only dog owner in the world who cheers when her pup pees on a curb, but hey, sometimes you celebrate whatever win is available.

She can also play almost everywhere!

We’ve worked so hard on Scout’s confidence over the years, and that’s primarily taken the form of play. I was utterly thrilled that our sensitive cattle dog was willing to engage in a game every time we asked — even on busy sidewalks and at parks during crowded off-leash hours!

There were a few occasions where Sean and I had to turn up the silliness for a few seconds to get her involved, but by and large she kept coming out of the van ready to have some fun. Her ability to play in the city was important to both provide some fulfillment and shake off stress.

We can leave our dog behind in our van

I kind of never want to visit anywhere — city, amusement park, family’s home — without our van ever again. Hermes enabled us to strike a balance of bringing Scout with us to do exciting city things and leaving her behind to sleep in her house (more on that process in this article).

Thanks to that flexibility, all three of us creatures could feel both fulfilled and relaxed. It would have been significantly more difficult to take Scout to NYC without the option to have her “with us but also not with us”.

Finally, a Haley’s-expectations thing:

I was prepared for the worst

I was prepared for the worst. When your mind runs wild with big bad “what if”s… it’s not that unreasonable for reality to be easier than you imagined 😉