Watery waves of heat rising off the blacktop, wheels purring as they rush over asphalt. The ever-changing picture show rolling by outside: the motley greens of a forest, the pastel brushstrokes of a desert, the sharp lines of a mountain, the open blue sky over a canyon. The windows rolled down, the radio turned up, and all the world before you, accessible from the endless miles of connecting roadways that weave and curve and loop their way across the land.
The road has always called to me. After graduating college, I decided to answer it. I packed up, built a tiny home into the back of a cargo van, and took off. Every step of the way was an adventure, from buying the van to saying goodbye to it.
You can read about it all here, starting with buying the van and converting it into a tiny home, a process which took 2 years. I took two major trips in the van: the first through Canada and around Alaska, and the second in a loop around the United States. Ultimately, Danica and I visited 25 American states and 4 Canadian states together, including national parks, capital cities, historic sites, and more.
Unfortunately, I realized that as great an experience traveling with Danica was, van life wasn’t really for me. In 2020 I decided to sell Danica and use the money to embark on new adventures, which you can read about on Pushpins and Passports.
Dave and Nancy finished their 600-day, America-to-America odyssey last month, and they came to dinner at our house tonight. Their blog, leavewithoutpay.com, is an amazing read, and they pointed something out to me: the emotional journey is as interesting, if not more so, than all the technical bits.
Read MoreI spent a lot of time trying to figure out the “perfect” van for me. I wanted to make sure that every specification was ideal for my plans. I tried to make comparison charts, looked at all kinds of details that made absolutely no sense to me, and tried to figure out how to become a mechanical guru overnight.
Here’s the problem: plans change, and so do people.
Read MoreGood news: as of December 17th, I am officially finished with college. Now that I’ve put school behind me, I can focus on the van and the impending trip. There’s a lot that needs to happen before I leave, a lot more than just buying and building the van.
Read MoreI once again find myself without a clear explanation for my decision to leave home. There is only the endless fernweh, the longing for places I’ve never been, that has always dogged my heels, and the relief of a debilitating tension that has hounded my mind since I returned from exchange.
I feel, for the first time since my exchange year, that I am on the right path.
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