Gotta Have It, Winter 2025 Edition

Editor’s Note: This post is written by a member of LTV’s sponsored content team, The Leisure Explorers. Do you own a Leisure Travel Van and enjoy writing? Learn more about joining the team.

This edition of Gotta Have features practical, functional, fun, beauteous, and safe items to consider. We’ve seen, heard about, or used these in our 2023 Wonder Murphy Bed Lounge, Lucky Us Too!, including some that save us power and some made for your special travel companions.

Light With Solight

Bondockers and those who may overnight at a rest stop or other temporary spot when going from here to there may want to look seriously at the collapsible solar lanterns from Solight. From small, diffused light SolarPuff cubes and origami designs to larger models that can brighten any space, they recharge using solar panels, offer multiple colors, and even come with ports to power up other devices, including your phone.

Slight sells solar lights in all sizes, from origami-like to the Puff, which features multiple colors and even doubles as a charge station. (Photo source: solight-design.com)

They flatten to store. To open, hold, and twist. Toggle a button and choose from several colors, or even select a mode that turns it on automatically after sunset. A full charge lasts up to 10 hours. If you’re boondocking, these are great solutions to keep battery drain at a minimum. Puffs cost about $32.

Treats For Travel Companions

We don’t mean humankind. Wild Zora Foods of Loveland, Colorado, has cooked up freeze-dried beef liver chews dog treats that will please your favorite four-footed canine. Each pint-size recyclable cardboard container holds 50 pieces. Give them as rewards or, if you feel especially generous, sprinkle them on food. Each container is about $13 on Amazon or four for $46, so I think one piece at a time is just fine.

Beef liver freeze-dried dog treats from Zora’s.

Made In The Shade With Fancher’s

This might be one of the best least expensive ways to keep your LTV cool. Thanks to fellow LTV owners Bob Freese and Peggy Schaefer, a front and side window shade is on the horizon for us from Fancher’s Upholstery of Ypsilanti, MI, west of Detroit.

Sunshade window covers from Fancher’s cost less and offer the same protection as those costing much more. (Fancher’s photo)

Owned by Mary and Jonce Fancher, Fancher’s Custom makes both windshield and van bra covers for both the Ford Transit and Sprinter in multiple styles, including a full cover that goes over your wiper well to keep winter or long-term storage crud from gumming up water drains. The cost is about $125, or $135, for the “basic sunshade” that keeps out all light.

The extended model that covers the wiper well is $185. It attaches over the driver and passenger door frames. Compare that with others, which cost up to $500. Choose from the solid base model or one that blocks 90% of the sun’s heating effects but is semi-see-through. It includes driver-passenger door covers. Special orders are also available. Fancher’s also does other covers.

Doze with Doze

Attention, LTV owners, with those convertible twin beds. Check out the down-style comforter sold by Doze, featuring a duvet cover you don’t have to wrestle with to get on or off.

Doze comforter is covered with a Doze duvet, which easily fastens goes together with zippers. No more battling the comforter and trying to avoid bunching it up.

The duvet cover for the Doze comforters is an easy zip, and corners fasten with snaps to hold it all in place.

When you purchase the duvet, this down-alternative comforter features a cover that—why did it take so long for someone to do this—uses zippers to put the duvet on so you can easily put it back or take it apart for easy laundering. The set comes in twin, full, queen, and king sizes.

The Path To Infinite Hydration

Want to get your daily dose of microplastics when you opt for those store-bought crinkly plastic water bottles? The myth behind recycling them is that only 30 percent are reused. The rest go into landfills, buried for maybe only 450 years before they decompose. That’s just a little longer than your LTV will last, and that’s not counting those ingested microplastics floating around with each swig.

So, just stop it, and here’s the path to doing so. Use reusable metal containers instead.

One such seller is Path. Path uses only ultra-purified, reverse osmosis filtered water to fill its colorful—and infinitely reusable—aluminum bottles. Buy one of its caps with a handle and easily attach it to your belt, purse, or day pack. When you’re done with the first fill, reuse it. Each bottle is a bit pricey at about $30 for its sparkling flavored water to $26 for still water, but that bottle is, again, totally recyclable if you choose, or you can reuse it again and again.

Path also sells a double-walled stainless version ($18) that keeps hot drinks hot and cold drinks cold, a faucet filter ($23), and colorful bottles for kids ($35). Get one, and you’ll be on the path to ditching plastic.

Path water comes in multiple types and the containers, made of aluminum or stainless depending on type, is infinitely reusable.

Skin Care with Milusos

Translated, mil usos means a thousand uses, and the three products from Milusuos skin care claim to do just that. They also help rid your life of even more plastic containers.

Almost all skincare products contain at least 80% water—except these. The company says its Total Cranarcny multi-use balm ($52 USD) helps balance the skin’s microbiome and even provides moderate odor protection. Its ingredients include buckthorn berry, cranberry, and jojoba oils. The company recommends using it to block blister formation, soften calluses, treat bug bites, and more.

The Char Goals bar ($26) can be used as shampoo or soap and replaces face cleanser, shaving cream, and body wash. It contains shea butter, cranberry, and activated charcoal. Use it with its silk Scuff Love exfoliating glove ($19). Buy the whole shebang for about $87 USD, and stop slathering more microplastics on your body.

Products from Milusos can be purchased separately or bundled.

Stop Using Black Plastic Utensils

We stopped when I noticed that using a spatula while cooking pancakes caused bits of black plastic to come along with the flapjacks. We got rid of them immediately.

Now, it’s been shown that black cooking utensils are actually recycled computer waste containing all sorts of nasty forever chemicals. We now use either silicone or wood when cooking both at home and in our LTV. We picked up our wooden tools when we stopped at a store in Berea, Kentucky, that features crafts made by students at Berea College and the Kentucky Artisan Center off I-75. It’s time you make the switch, too.

Choose to use either silicone-based (left) or wood (right) food prep utensils, NOT black plastic (center), which is made with recycled computer parts and can be toxic.

NomadiQ May End The Great Grill Debate

Often, someone on the LTV owner’s Facebook page asks which grill is best–then, the debate begins.

Here’s one that could end it all. We first saw the amazingly compact NomadiQ propane grill on Vancouver Island. Fellow LTVers Johanna and Joseph Hoeller from West Kelowna, British Columbia, unfolded the clamshell-style unit and demonstrated its versatility at Rathtrevor Beach Provincial Park on Vancouver Island when we visited in the summer of 2024.

You can use one side of the ceramic-coated surface as a griddle and the other as a grill, or you can use one side at a time. Designed in the Netherlands, the grill folds down to a compact 16 inches wide, 14 inches high, and 6 inches thick, weighing only 12 pounds.

You can control the temperature of each side separately. For $49 USD, you can buy the dual-nozzle 10-foot-long RV hose and use it from your LTV’s quick-connect LP outlet. The grill itself costs $299. You can add the handy griddle side option for $45, and a carry case costs $30.

Johanna Hoeller shows off the NomadiQ grill she and her husband Joseph, from West Kelowna, BC, now use.

That’s it for this edition. More to come soon.

Bill & Denise Semion

Michigan-based Leisure Explorers Bill and Denise Semion use more than 75 years of combined writing and photography experience to bring you, along with their cat, on their adventures across the U.S. and Canada in their 2023 Wonder MBL. Bill is an award-winning travel/outdoor writer and author of two travel books. Denise is an accomplished photographer and outdoor communicator.