3 Things We Learned About “Van Life” in our First Week on the Road

Although we had a fair taste of “van-life” during summer shakedown trip, our first week on the road taught us a lot. It has been wonderful… and challenging in unexpected ways. The addition of Dan’s full time work and our aging pooch, Milo, have changed some routines and created new ones. Here are three things we’ve learned as we set off on (at least) 10 months on the road.

1. Weather and Wifi Will Dictate Your Days

When it’s hot, managing HEAT is a constant. When parked, we set up the fans and window screens. When working, or eating, or anything, we seek shady picnic spots in small town parks, slivers of shade beside box stores, anything (anything!) to shield our van from direct sunlight. When grocery shopping, we have to split up. One of us walks the dog, and one rushes in and out of the store before “meltage” has occurred. When it’s cold, we batten down the hatches (well, put up the reflectix window panels anyway), dig out warm gear and bundle up the (shivering) dog.

Here in South Dakota, in early September, it is both too hot and too cold almost every day. So there’s lots of “managing” to do. In addition, we have to keep an eye out for extremes: storms, wind, rain, ice, snow. All of these could change our plans and possibly upend our van life altogether.

On the plus side, it feels wild and wholly natural to live by the weather. While at home, I (Perri) woke before sun-up and watched the sunrise through my windows. But this lacked the immediacy of a van life sunrise. Now, we wake to the sun sailing red over the horizon and the dew sparkling and cold at our feet. It’s lovely, wild and real and immediate… though not always comfy.

Managing wifi is another constant. Dan needs to access his online work almost daily, and we are frequently hunting for the magical 2 bars of LTE. On days he has meetings, we set up in a good spot well before his start time.

The wifi scene became more challenging as we crossed from the mid-west into the west-west of Nebraska and South Dakota. And we recently bought a WeBoost cell signal booster (for a hefty chunk of change!) to make managing “the bars” less of an issue overall.

On the plus side, we “unplug” often (like it or not!) and have been walking and reading much more than we did at home. Aside from missing my New York Times Spelling Bee Puzzle and the daily Wordle, it’s not so bad 🙂

2. Slowing down is harder than it seems

If you’ve ever been on a road trip, you know the drill: get up, breakfast, drive towards a destination with (perhaps) interesting and quirky stops along the way, eat sleep, repeat. The driving is the constant. In van-life (or at least OUR version of van life) there is no end point. Much of the time, you don’t need to get anywhere or be anywhere. Or so you’d think…. We are new to van living but much practiced at road tripping, which means that (strangely) slowing down takes some doing.

In our first week, we drove to central Pennsylvania via Hartford CT (8+ hours), drove another 8 hours to Michigan and spent Labor Day weekend with family. Then it was off to Eastern Iowa (6 hours) and Western Iowa (6 hours) and Nebraska and…. then we got smart (or smartER anyway).

On the last day of our first week on the road we realized that — although we wanted desperately to get out west– driving all day with a few stops along the way was not van living. It was “Van-driving all day setting up and sleeping”. We took stock while doing our laundry and found a wonderful spot close by where we could spend almost a full day kicking back.

In our second week, we have made it a habit to drive less, only a few hours a day max, and we stop a whole lot more. We ditched the interstate, and visited small town parks and unsung picnic spots across the mid-west. As I write this, we have been on the road for 12 days. We have only traveled from our home in Massachusetts to the Black Hills of Dakota… on the cusp of the western states we long to explore.

But we are still going too fast! In our next few weeks, we hope to lose the go-go-go hustle and slow down even more, spend a week or so in one place maybe. Somehow, it’s harder than you think!

3. Old dogs can learn new tricks

Oh, Milo! Truth be told, we weren’t sure how our 12 year old doodle would take to his new lifestyle. Before September, he was a couch potato, looking forward to daily walks in the back woods and occasional hikes close to home. Until September 1st, he’d never spent a single night away from home.

So how’s van life been treating him? Overall, he’s doing great!

He loves hanging out in the van… even when we are parked! And he’s taken to his no-pull halter like a pro. He walks with us off leash, without ranging too far. And, most importantly, he remains his happy-go-lucky doggy self, even in the face of extreme heat and cold, cattle grates, burrs, sandspurs, cactus, the bite of a small dog whom he greeted ever so politely, an inquisitive herd of black angus cattle, and– worst of all– an active shooting range not far from our camp.

What a good dog!