“How Long Can This Last?” Reflections on the Sustainability of #VanLife
Padre Island National Seashore
Somehow six months have flown by, and we find ourselves heavily immersed in this van life thing. We've traveled a bit faster than we'd hoped, covering over 14,000 miles already. Our travels have taken us across the nation in several unexpected directions. Our most recent jaunt somewhat unintentionally caused us to wander from the northern tip of the Keweenaw Peninsula in Lake Superior, in far northern Michigan, all the way down to a barrier island in the Gulf of Mexico near Corpus Christi. That stint alone covered about 2,000 miles and 8 different states.
That’s some epic shit right there.
As I sit in a campground on Padre Island, the wind is whipping across the dunes, flinging sand and driving rain at the campers battened down in their rigs. We sit and wait out the storm, waiting for warmer temps and clearer skies in the coming days. It might take another couple of days for this weather pattern to clear, and so... we wait, and make the most of the opportunities that each day presents.
A short walk on the beach spent leaning into the wind, the flying sand stinging our legs and getting stuck in our teeth, kept the Outside 365 streak alive. But those brutal winds confined us to the inside of the van for the majority of the day. Being stuck inside on a Saturday—one of two precious days each week that we don't have to check in with work—makes it feel like a wasted day.
Despite the sense of losing a precious opportunity to explore, it feels downright luxurious to have a hard-sided van to shelter us from the howling wind.
Storm clouds above Padre Island
High winds were the number one challenge that would defeat my old Sylvansport Go camper. In one wind storm on a mesa in Colorado, the violent gusts snapped one of the beefy tent poles, forcing me to pull the plug on the trip and run for home.
The winds today have wreaked havoc on some of the tent campers in this small campground. As I sat in the front swivel seats reading, I saw an entire tent go tumbling by in the gale-force winds, with a lanky backpacker in hot pursuit. Other tent campers were standing in their small domes, holding up the walls, trying to keep their poles from snapping in half.
Compared to so many miserable camping experiences I've had over the years, the van continues to feel like luxury!
While the tent campers are one end of the misery spectrum, as I look around at the other rigs I've observed that the vast majority of the other people camped around us are in much bigger rigs, driven by retirees who are obviously quite well practiced at this RV lifestyle. I can only imagine how nice it would be to, for once in a blue moon, just sit down and binge-watch some movies in an RV. On days like these, the space and amenities of an RV or fifth wheel would undoubtedly come in handy.
I've found that the sustainability of long-term travel is determined much more by how miserable the low points are, and almost not at all by how enjoyable the high points are.
How long can this last?
The storms eventually lifted, and we enjoyed so many fantastic sunrises along the coast!
This raises a question in my mind: how long can this last? And what is "this" anyway?
If by "this" I mean living full-time in a 19-foot cargo van... well, who knows? It could last a year. It could last 5 or 10. But at some point in our lives, we'll probably want a bit more space, a few more amenities.
But #vanlife and travel are not synonymous.
I don't know when living #vanlife or #rvlife came to mean the exact same thing in so many peoples' minds as "traveling." As I meet and talk to people along the way, it seems oddly difficult to explain to them that I've been traveling full-time for over two and a half years, but only about six months of that time was spent in a van. For some reason, it doesn't compute that there are so many different ways to travel, so many different modes and methods of experiencing the world. And there's no reason that we need to be married to just one mode of travel without sampling others.
The Many Different Forms Travel Can Take
Top of Mont Fort in Switzerland
By the time this article goes live, I'll have spent at least six months in the van—no two bones about it. But at the time of this writing, about one month out of the past seven, I actually spent living in apartments and hotel rooms in Europe. In fact, the reason that I didn't even try #vanlife out until 2021 was because I was more excited about traveling internationally than I was about driving around North America.
When I first started traveling full time in early 2019, there were two things that kept me from jumping into van life at that time:
I already owned a camper outright that I could use to travel somewhat comfortably
I was most excited to ramp up my international travel, instead of just traveling domestically
So after a few short international stints to Bali and British Columbia, in September, I finally pulled the trigger and flew to Europe for a planned trip of 89 days out of my 90 allowed Schengen Zone days.
Shortly after my return from Europe at the end of 2019, as I was just getting into planning my next big international foray, all international travel plans came to a grinding halt. Couple that with my camper getting stolen in August, and voila: both of the reasons to not pursue van life evaporated.
And here we are: living in a van and traipsing around North America.
The Beauty of Flexibility
We didn’t really plan to take a ferry to ride bikes on Madeline Island in frigid Lake Superior in late October, but it ended up being a fantastic experience!
Returning to the question of "how long can this last?" If by "this" I mean "traveling in a very rigid way, with no room for change, no room to transition to something different," then the answer is, "not that long."
However, once you add some flexibility and change into the equation, all of a sudden, the timeline for sustainable travel gets much, much longer. Instead of restricting myself to a timeline of 1-5 years spent in a van, if I begin thinking of sprinkling monthly rentals into the equation, international stints in AirBNBs, or even purchasing a bigger rig with more room and more comfort, all of a sudden the prognostication of how long we can viably travel gets much more optimistic.
Can I even put a limit on it? Can I even plant a bounding marker that says, "we would have to stop traveling at this point in our lives because of ABC reason?"
No, no I can't.
Who the fuck knows what the future holds? Maybe we'll only last another six months.
Or maybe it'll be another 30 years. We'll just have to wait and see.
