DEL DIOS -- In this relatively new century, traveling without much money no longer means hitchhiking or hopping freight trains.

Angel Hess logs on to the Internet by cell phone, laptop and wireless connection to plot his next destination.

Craigslist is his street corner. PayPal is his tin cup. And, yes, this story begins on eBay.

Hess is a 29-year-old lanky Midwesterner by birth whose address this week -- and maybe next week, too -- is a roadside patch of gravel near Lake Hodges in Escondido.

His home is a 1953 Ford bread truck painted bright purple, with a hand-painted mural of the outdoors on the back and illegible graffiti --- spray-painted while Hess was in New York -- on the side.

"Kids in Brooklyn," he said, shaking his head and looking at the scrawl. "They do it while you're sleeping."

In 2006, Hess, a native of Indiana and a photographer by trade, found himself in New York City, earning too little to afford East Coast rents and weary of what the West Coast calls "sofa surfing" at friends' apartments.

On eBay, this century's favorite second-hand store, he spotted the funky bread truck and had an epiphany.

With a winning bid of $2,500, he bought the boxy vehicle, which already had been painted purple and semiconverted to an RV by a previous owner in Eureka.

Hess then took a flight to California, drove the truck back to New York and parked it in Brooklyn, taking showers at a gym while he added a bed, wood-burning stove, solar roof panels and a semifinished bathroom.

He later set up a Web site, purple53.com, and began attracting media attention with his unconventional new home.

That attention has followed him since January, when he left New York and headed for warmer, drier Southern California. He posts articles and news videos about his journey, along with his own photographs, at his Web site.

Some journalists have described Hess' bread truck-turned-bachelor-pad as art. Others have used it to bemoan the nation's lack of affordable housing. A North Carolina newspaper called him a "vagabond in violet."

Stereotypes from the 1970s have also followed him on the cross-country journey. Hess said he has been asked so often about illegal drugs since making the purple truck his home that his answer is posted under Frequently Asked Questions on his Web site.

No, he doesn't use drugs, he said.

Hess finds free places to park his home by logging on to craigslist.org, then placing or answering the free online ads.

"The people who let me stay at their homes and farms and ranches, some of them like the fact that I'm off the grid," he said. "Some people just like visitors."

He receives a $600 monthly Social Security disability check for an anxiety disorder, he said, and his Web site invites donations to his online PayPal account, which comes with an ATM card.

He said he once received a $53 donation toward repairs on the '53 truck.

For now, life on the road agrees with Hess.

"You have to like people and be creative about places to stay," he said about his online/off-line wanderings.

And you have to be well-connected, he said -- at least to a good computer network.

"I use the Internet all the time," he added.