The End of Full-Time Van Life
They say home is where you park it, and that’s true. Aside from a few small trips, the van has been parked here for over a year. But as of this past weekend, there’s been a huge change that doesn’t come through in this picture. We are no longer living in the van. For a…
Life Update
It’s no Arizona sunset, but outside the southwest, have you ever noticed that the best sunsets usually occur in grocery store parking lots? This seems to be a universal constant, no matter where I am. An update is in order since I haven’t written anything here for an entire month. We’re still alive. It’s June,…
More Writing: My Professional Blog
And now, for something completely different: a Polaris Slingshot. This is not mine. Polaris has graciously loaned me one for two weeks to review for ADVRider (and whoever else I can convince to publish my thoughts about it). It has nothing to do with van life, but it does give me an opportunity to mention…
Adding Even More Living Space
Megatent worked out extremely well. It provided an outdoor living room and a hangout area where both of us could sit comfortably, something I don’t have in the van since I originally built it for just one person. We really enjoyed hanging out there. It also doubled as a garage for several maintenance jobs on…
Adding More Living Space
On The Office, Dwight had Megadesk. And now, we have Megatent. Here’s how things came to be this way. As the weather started to warm up, we set up Melissa’s pop-up canopy next to the van. It’s several years old, and after a while, the nylon top ripped, rendering it useless. I bought a replacement…
Adding More Flat Space
Ever since expanding the bed and losing the table space I used to have instead, I’ve been griping about not having enough flat space in the van. Of course, it’s been totally worth it to have Melissa on board! Still, it’s been a constant shuffle of things from one flat surface to another, including on…
Temporary Loss of Battery
After a short tease of reasonable temperatures, another arctic blast has descended upon us, with highs in the 20s and yesterday’s overnight low of -1º! Such temperatures should be against the Geneva Convention. Melissa had told me about surviving camping in 1º at the Grand Canyon before her journey to Quartzsite, where we met, but…
Snowed In, But It’s Okay
It feels like I’m back in New England again. A snowstorm just covered the whole state with the white stuff. Originally, we were in the 2-4 inch zone. Then, they increased that to 4-7 inches. Now, at the conclusion of the storm, we have about 10 inches on the ground. Unlike New England, we’re not…
Cold Shot
Yesterday, the temperature dropped rapidly from the 50s to the 30s over just a couple of hours. We knew this was coming, but not so soon, so we scrambled to fill up a couple of water jugs before things froze in case our water supply from the house got cut off. I’d topped off our…
Devil’s Den State Park
We deserved a break after a wedding and a funeral all in the same week. We took advantage of the rest of Melissa’s time off work to camp for a few days at Devil’s Den State Park. We took a motorcycle day trip here last summer. We always intended to go camping here sometime, and…
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Smokey Da Van 