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Saying Goodbye to #Vanlife

Saying Goodbye to #Vanlife

If you haven’t heard the news yet, we sold our van a few weeks ago.  And unlike last time I sold a van, it’s not because we have a bigger, newer one waiting to get built out.  It’s because for now, we are done with vanlife.  Our decision to sell the van came as a shock to many, and to be honest, it surprised us too.  When we bought our Promaster in 2016 we fully intended for it to be our home for the foreseeable future.  I envisioned a minimum of 10 years in that van.  I had absolutely no intention of getting off the road, nor of settling down.  So what happened?  Why did we seemingly give up the ultimate dream of a life of freedom, travel, and adventure?

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No one big thing happened that made us sell the van.  There were actually many factors that played into our decision.  There were practical (read: boring) ones- like the fact that Star was needing vet care every 3-4 weeks, which was not feasible while we were traveling.  Even when we were stationary last summer in Alaska, it was still at 4.5 hour round trip journey, which included an international border crossing, to see the vet.  We knew it would be best for her to be in a place with consistent, quality vet care.  There was also the issue that we hated owning a Dodge.  While the Promaster was an awesome van for us, dealing with Dodge for any matter was a painful experience every time.  Because we had an extended 100k mile warranty, we felt tied to them and obligated to use the dealer for repairs, which we really disliked.  Then there was the fact that we now have another home(ish), and practically speaking, it doesn’t make sense to own two homes.

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That begs the question: how did we end up with two homes when we had our van, which we figured would always be our home?  Last year we decided to start looking at property.  We thought it would be nice to have a place to park the van and to be a sort of basecamp.  That way we could store our off-season gear, have somewhere to settle down between trips and seasons, and set up an overhang to drive the van under and create more dry space during the winter (living in a wet climate, participating in wet activities that produce wet clothing and gear, and having two large dogs makes winter in a van a challenge).  After searching, we found our dream property just outside of Leavenworth, WA.  It came with a large gear barn, a well house (aka drying room), a 13x13 house type structure (finished on the outside, studs and concrete floor on the inside), and 3 RV hookup sites (aka van parking).  We figured it would be the perfect place to rest and relax between trips.  Leavenworth was a great compromise of a location for us as it has everything we like- whitewater, climbing, biking, skiing, hiking, and it also has sunshine, unlike the westside locations Brian was interested in.  We closed on the property while we were working in Alaska and looked forward to swinging through to check it out after our season.

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When we finished our season in Alaska, we came down to check out the property.  After running through various timelines and itineraries, we decided to stay put in Leavenworth until our Grand Canyon trip so that we wouldn’t be driving back and forth across the west for the entire fall from climbing to biking to boating destination as we usually do.  We both breathed a sigh of relief and settled in for a relaxing fall.  (Turns out it wasn’t that relaxing as Star relapsed in her disease and Titan suffered a major injury that ended up being a 6 month process back to health- but good reasons to be situated somewhere with a good vet!). 

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After the Grand Canyon we were good and broke, which meant travel was not in our future.  I got a part time job at the ski resort, and Brian found fulfilling work as a camp host at some backcountry huts near our property.  Titan had also just had his surgery and was no longer able to get in and out of the van, which meant officially moving out of it and onto the ground floor of our little shack.  Our driveway turned into a hellacious nightmare of slippery snow slopes, ruts, and other perils, which meant that getting the van in and out was not practical without a multiple hour time commitment that included lots of digging, Escaper Buddies, the come-a-long, and in some cases, melting ice with boiling water.  So we picked up a Honda Element from our friend and the van sat idle in the driveway waiting for the snow to melt.  

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All these circumstantial things added up to us becoming more and more distant from the van.  But it wasn’t just logistical hiccups that caused us to shift away from vanlife.  The more time we spent at the property, which we had entirely intended to be a part time basecamp, the more I started nesting and settling in.  It felt good to be stable and stationary.  Part of the excitement of living in a van is that you are surrounded by so much newness, so much uncertainty about where you’ll sleep or where you’ll go next, but after so much change, sometimes it also feels good to be in one place.  

As I started to think about it, I realized that I had been circumnavigating the west for the past 8 years.  

I had lived in a car, a tent, and two vans during that time and I had lived and breathed being on the road.  Anytime I wasn’t on the road because I was working a temporary job, or going to school, I was scheming about where I would go next and what I would do as soon as I saved enough to get back in the car.  I always had new adventures planned and a fresh list of places to go.

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It felt amazingly and surprisingly good to give myself permission to take a break.  The vanlife community is wonderful, truly fabulous, but once you become a member of it, it becomes part of your identity.  And for me, breaking from that identity was simultaneously hard, and yet very, very necessary.  My biggest fear has always been complacency.  Not spiders, not dying.  Complacency.  I always worry that I will waste the precious gift of my time here and will wake up after years of a work induced coma to realize that I’ve settled into a life that I don’t love, a life void of passion.  Living in a van was the antidote to that for a long time.  It forced me to seek adventure, to stay mobile, to be active everyday.  But for me, too much of the cure turned into a problem.  Looking back at my last year in the van, I realized that we were traveling just to travel, doing it because we felt like we had to.  Last winter we left a fantastic season at Mt. Baker, where we had been happily living in the RV lot and skiing almost every day, to drive around the west and use our Mountain Collective Pass.  We had a great time in Idaho and Wyoming, but by the end of the trip it honestly felt like a chore (yes first world problems).  Where we really wanted to be was Mt. Baker, but because traveling was our lifestyle and our identity, we just did it, almost unconsciously.  

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The more I reflected, the more I could see that I had lost sight of the reason I used to travel, the reason I yearned for a van so much before.  I was directionless and goal-less, and I needed to pull the van over, get out, and try something new.  It’s funny for me to say this, because for many people getting into vanlife  it tends to be for the reasons I’m getting out- to shake things up, to find themselves, to search for meaning.  And vanlife is a wonderful vehicle for all of those things.  I am in awe of the way that the vanlife community has grown during my time in it.  When I built out my first Sprinter, I felt like I could identify each and every converted van that I saw on the road, either by knowing them personally or by recognizing them from Instagram.  Now, I’ll see dozens of rigs in a given weekend, and not know a single one of the drivers.  I am amazed and inspired by how many people are following their dreams, going against the grain, shrugging off the status quo and going it their own way.  I hope that their time spent in a van is every bit as amazing as mine was.

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As I posted my goodbye van picture to Instagram, my followers started dropping off.  I was bummed at first- my life is largely the same as it was for the 5 years I had a van; I go out with my dogs nearly every day to find new places to explore, I ride my bike, and I hike, but now I come home to an uninsulated, unplumbed shack, instead of my well designed and built van!  And when I go to sleep on the road, its in the back of our Element, not on a queen size memory foam mattress.  But, I realized that many people followed me because of #vanlife, and that is no longer my identity so it makes sense for them to go.  I now have more freedom to be authentically me, there is no pressure to sprinkle in a scenic #homeiswhereyouparkit van shot every now and then, and I can continue to build and discover what brings me passion now.

The funny thing about all this is that as soon as we sold the van I started thinking about our next one.  What it would be, how we would convert it.  I don’t know if another van is in our future, but it certainly isn’t out of the question.  I have a feeling that the nomadic life will always appeal to me and I’m sure that in time I’ll be antsy to hit the road again.  In fact, I just got back from a road trip to Montana, and I loved every minute of it.  It's not that I dislike road travel now, quite the opposite, it's just that I want to do it with more intention.  Change is the only constant, and it seems that I’ve at least got that part down.    

 

(side note: adding all the photos in after I was done writing this made me way more sad and nostalgic than I've been since selling the van.  Bye Pedro :'( thanks for being our home)               

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2018- A Year in Review

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