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.
I don’t think I’d ever so much as touched a saw of any kind, I had no idea that 2x4 really meant 1.5 inches by 3.5 inches, and the descriptions of some of these screws sounded like gibberish to me (how can a screw be both a Phillip’s and flat? Why is it a #8 but it’s 2 inches long?).
Read MoreHome Depot and the local hardware stores have become such a milk run that I‘ve actually gone to them in the same clothes I slept in the night before, without brushing my hair (but I did brush my teeth, I still have some standards).
Read MoreI think people like that, people who really try to make others’ days better, deserve to be recognized.
Read More…And all I could think was: “The VanGods have spoken.”
Read MoreWe tugged, and yanked, and pulled, and wiggled, and pled. It was completely anchored down, not moving an inch, and I realized I’d made a massive mistake.
Read MoreI’ve got this general sense of being totally overwhelmed sitting in the back of my mind, and these moments when I’m so uncomfortable and can’t seem to get something to work right just hit me really hard.
Read MoreI can’t help but think about what I would do differently if I were to do another build. There is one big thing that I wouldn’t do the same way over again if you dared me to.
Read MoreHere I am, sitting in half an inch of insulation foam sawdust, looking around at the walls of my van, which are slowly disappearing behind these big shiny panels, and one day soon it’s going to be my home. Completely surreal.
Read MoreSuddenly, a whole category of van build tasks was wiped off the to-do list. The roof is finished. The only thing left to do is toss the solar panels up there when we’re ready to connect the electrical system.
Read MoreI was adamant, though, that I was going to break ground on this thing today. So we finished the prep work — cleaning the surface and marking off the exact places we were going to drill— and got out the drill.
Read MoreA big part of van life, for me, is learning to be less self-conscious, to worry less about what others think, and to see my own beauty as something that comes from my health, who I am as a person, and how I see myself.
Read More
