This is the upper of two treehouses, connected to the lower one by a swaying catwalk. I slept up here one night. Check out Foster on Instagram: www.instagram.com/fosterhunting

Jay Nelson’s work has been featured in Tiny Homes and Tiny Homes on the Move. Foster Huntington’s Toyota Tacoma camper was featured in Tiny Homes on the Move.

From Foster:

“The car is a Suzuki SJ410. It’s the predecessor to the Samurai and has a 1 liter 4-cylinder engine.

The camper is made out of marine plywood and thin copper sheeting. The camper has a sleeping space that’s just over 6 feet long over the cab.

 Jay Nelson designed and built the camper in two weeks with some help from some friends.”

Jay’s Website: https://www.jaynelsonart.com/

More on Jay: https://www.lloydkahn.com/?s=jay+nelson

Foster’s website: https://www.arestlesstransplant.com/

More on Foster: https://www.lloydkahn.com/?s=Foster+huntington

This is Foster’s account of 75,000 miles on the road, a lot of it on California and Baja California beaches, photographing all types of homes on wheels: pickup trucks with camper shells, vans, trailers, and motorcycles. It’s surf-centric, and a book that flows as smoothly as the waves in San Juanico. This is Foster’s tribe of nomadic wanderers, beach-oriented and minimalist. Expensive, but short run color books in small quantities are expensive to print. NOT available thru Amazon.

Click here.

(Foster’s latest vehicle, a 6-speed, Toyota 4×4 with expandable lightweight camper shell, is in Tiny Homes on the Move — it’s the best vehicle I’ve ever seen for serious beach/surf/desert/on-and-off-raod travel.)

To anyone receiving this for the first time, I send these newsletters out every few months. They’re different from social media — old school in a way — in that they go to a select audience (about 4,400 people now), rather than blasting out into the internetosphere.

If you’re not signed up on the list to receive it, you can sign up for email delivery of the Gimme Shelter newsletter here.

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I’ve been swamped with work for months now, and just getting rolling in the last few days, so this is a long newsletter. A dearth of soundbites.

The State of Shelter’s State

With new versions of Stretching, the Stretching Pocket Book – 40th Anniversary Edition (available in early June), and Galloway’s Book on Running, our sales are up over last year. And — ta-da — we’re just about to start on Rolling Homes.

We’re working on search engine optimization (SEO) for selling our books; we’re way behind in this area, and we’ve got an immense amount of content. Suggestions welcome.

I want us to keep operating for another 10 years — I ain’t retiring! For one thing, I’ve got 3–4 books waiting in the wings. Plus we’re running a hub for like-minded people. Sometimes I think of us as a tribe similar to the book lovers in Fahrenheit 451. Not mainstream, but committed to a certain lifestyle — we want to make stuff for ourselves, we want to be as independent, as self-sufficient as possible, we want our homes to be colorful and warm and inviting and handmade.

Rolling Homes

This will be unlike some of our books, such as Tiny Homes, where we came out with a publication at the onset of a movement. Nowadays, there’s a plethora of information about homes on the road. A number of pretty good books, plus on Instagram, hundreds of accounts of 21st century nomads. To see what I mean, do a search on Instagram for van.

When I first considered this book, it looked like there was a saturation of information. But as I studied the books, Instagram accounts, YouTube videos, and websites, I found a lot of sameness. There’s no end to Instagram posts featuring Mercedes Sprinter vans with young, attractive couples living idyllic lives; a lot of shots of them lying on the bed, looking out the rear view window at a beach or other photogenic background. They are, of course, linked in via satellite with iPhones and MacBook Airs, and some cases, monetizing the lifestyle.

Nothing wrong with that, but there is another, much larger group of people without the resources for brand new kitted-out vans. (And a lot of people these days are forced into mobile living.) Almost all of our contributors are do-it-yourselfers. We’re going to cover it all, from $400,000 Earth Roamers (not owner-built, but boy what rig!) to a $300 aerodynamic pickup camper shell — with everything in between.

We have so much material (it’s pouring in!) that I’m thinking of doing a series. We’re thinking about being a hub, an ongoing source of communication on the subject — not only with books, but also on our social media platforms and with YouTube videos. Handbuilt Rolling Homes, brought to you by Shelter Publications.

From our 50 years of publishing building books, we’ve got a robust network of people who like to work with their hands, and when we put the word out, we get lots of input (photos and stories).

Contribute to Rolling Homes

If you have or know of any road rigs, please contact: lloyd@shelterpub.com.

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