I spent my college years studying to become a teacher. Now, my studies are radically different, revolving around engines, mileage, and car parts.
Browsing: Writing
What is this blogging thing all about? What motivates us to blog during our travels? How did we get into blogging in the first place? Simply put: we love writing. But there is a lot more to it than just that.
The VW community is more than we could ever wish for, providing not only mechanical help when we need it the most, but also a sense of home as we meet like-minded friends in places we’ve never been to.
Giving and sharing is a common theme in the vanlife community, a spirit that we felt with special intensity at a recent vanlife-gathering: Descend on Bend.
Big Emma’s wheels spray water around as she rolls into downtown. Over mountains and through valleys we have traveled, watching the scenery change and the fog coming in. Through the misty slopes finally peeks the ocean, the inlets north of Vancouver. Big Emma shines her headlights, wide-eyed in the oncoming evening, wondering what to expect of it all.
When she walks by, heads turn after her. Women admire her style, while men secretly dream of running away with her.
Why did we decide to drive the Panamerican Highway? What motivated us to take on the monumental roadtrip that would take us years to complete and push us to and beyond the edges of our comfort zone? And what made us decide that driving from North to South America was the right road to do it on?
As you miss the fellowship of those back home, your fellow vanlifers become an important ingredient to life on the road.
In 1996, the journalist Jon Krakauer published a book called Into the Wild. It follows the life of a young man, Chris McCandless, who came to considerable fame by dying in the Alaskan wilderness near the town of Healy. Since then, Krakauer’s tale has been turned into a successful movie and both the book and the film have made Chris McCandless into something like an pop-culture icon for travelers. A reputation that McCandless himself would probably have hated. It also doesn’t do the ideals that this man lived and died for any justice.
We travel the American continents in our VW Bus, and we also live in it. But what is it like to live in a car? What is the culture behind the hashtag #vanlife? And how do we find a place to camp every night?