8 Months of Living on the Road

Some lessons learned

On Monday, J. and I will officially wrap up camper life — at least for a while. By the grace of god, or the universe, or good vibes and all that, we managed to find an above-decent place in Boulder, below budget. It is, of course, still a rental. The great dreams of homeownership it turns out were just, well, dreams. 

Which is to say I’ve come somewhat full circle, back where I began, and I had an inkling I might. When we hightailed it out of Washington and finally crossed into Colorado for the first time in two years back in September, and I saw the Book Cliffs purple and wrinkly on the horizon, I thought I might explode with the feelings of sentimentality pouring out of me. And when that first thunderstorm rolled across the desert, and the aspens up on Grand Mesa lit up a yellow so hot and bright it could make your eyes well up, there wasn’t much anyone could say that would have swayed me otherwise. I was home.

In these days before landing once again with a permanent roof over our heads, I’ve been reflecting on the takeaways from this extended adventure. I’m happy to share what I’ve learned, but I think it’s worth mentioning that the very first lesson is that no one’s experience is like anyone else’s experience. And in that sense, nothing that follows should be viewed as advice, but rather a story.

I received quite a lot of (unsolicited) advice over the last eight months (and in the months leading up to the adventure) and while just about all of it was delivered with the best of intentions, just about all of it was nonsensically useless. That advice from others was mostly projections of their own lives, own troubles, own insecurities, own fears, own demands, own objections, own dreams, own wishes, own hopes, own desires. Every once in a while my projections overlapped with their projections and the advice felt a teensy bit worthwhile. But mostly I found myself on my own adventure, and in the words of Brandy Carlile and Tish Melton, I realized (only recently) that I had to stop asking people for directions to places they’d never been. And with that, here are my directions to places you may never go:

1) Finances

We ultimately embarked on this adventure because rent in Bellingham was squeezing every last penny out of us, and we didn’t all that much like Bellingham (I know what a controversial statement this is, but there you have it). Our lease renewal was just a few months away and we either had to lock ourselves into another year in a town we pretty much despised, or plan to move with my job future entirely uncertain. The original balance was struck when we decided to buy a camper and live on the road for eight months, returning to Bellingham for the four months of spring and summer, which my job agreed to. 

I was able to save a lot of money while living on the road these last eight months, but that was less about the camper and more about the fact that I worked a full-time job while also juggling 2-3 freelance clients on the side because I was contemplating starting my own freelance business (and also because I’m a glutton for making my life as difficult as possible so that I feel useful — don’t worry, I’m working on this in therapy). 

The camper was definitely cheaper month to month than rent in an expensive place like Bellingham (or Boulder), but it wasn’t so much cheaper as to allow us to save enough for a down payment on a house. We would have needed to stay in the camper for at least another 2-3 YEARS to have enough money to make a house purchase even remotely possible (and even then, if prices keep increasing the way they are, we wouldn’t have had enough no matter how long we stayed in the camper). 

There are certainly ways we could have cut down monthly expenses, but we found most of them to be extremely constricting alongside a lifestyle that was already fairly constricted. And I’m getting real tired of living a life counting pennies to add money to a savings account that ultimately will still never be enough to cover home ownership or retirement. (Possibly more on this later, but I’ve really been sitting with the idea of spending my money NOW and living my life to its fullest while I’m young and healthy rather than hoping I make it to retirement — a thing millennials likely won’t ever have access to anyways).

I’ve seen a lot of outdoor influencers and YouTubers and the like picking up the cheapest, shittiest campers, only camping in free, dispersed campsites, and living off of peanut butter. Quite frankly, I absolutely was not willing to do any of that. I wanted a nice camper that wasn’t going to leak every time it rained. I wanted to feel good about its construction and know we could use it for years or sell it if we changed our minds. I also wanted to park in places that had some aspect of wilderness to them, but were also safe, quiet, and close to towns and grocery stores and showers, which inevitably meant we almost always had a nightly fee to pay. 

We also needed to be in service for our hotspot to work because we each had full-time jobs that had to be clocked into eight hours a day (and trying to work full time out of a coffee shop or public library eight hours a day, five days a week for months at a time is not sustainable). 

So in terms of finances, I suppose I’d say, for myself, camper life was not a great way to save money, but it did allow us to step outside the confines of yearly leases and landlords and all that. It was fun to feel financially untethered in that way. But as a person who grew up extremely financially unstable, it didn’t ultimately eliminate the money anxiety that has plagued me most of my life.

So this might sound counterintuitive, but if I had to do it again, I’d keep everything the same, but quit my job. And instead of trying to save money while on the road, I’d just enjoy the opportunity to not be tied to a computer for so many hours of the day and try to make my savings last as long as possible — which might ultimately mean leaning into cheaper options. 

However, being in a remote place, eating nothing but peanut butter sandwiches, and not showering for days at a time is a whole lot easier when you’re just exploring and bopping around. The experience becomes an adventure that you have time and space for. It’s so much harder to feel comfortable in that kind of wildness when you’re also expected to spend 9am-5pm answering emails and attending Zoom meetings. 

2) Work

I know I said not to take any of this as personal advice, but, if I can backtrack that for one moment: if you’re contemplating moving into a camper or van or whatever, maybe don’t uproot your entire life, change everything about the way you sleep, eat, poop, and bathe, and adjust how you exist with your partner in 100 square feet of space AND THEN add in two more jobs on top of your already full-time job while also trying to travel around the country and maybe even, I dunno, have a good time? 

It feels utterly insane that I should have to say that, and yet it’s exactly what I did. There’s some core psychological wound deep in my gut that makes me a sucker for suffering and I don’t wish that lifestyle upon my worst enemies (okay, I wish it upon them a little). 

For a while there, I was a wreck. I knew if I didn’t find a new job or launch my own business I’d need to go back to Bellingham (because I promised that job I would). And I did not want to go back to Bellingham. So my life pretty quickly became a raced panic to figure out what to do next. 

Even J  — who was only working one (stable) full-time job — found the experience of working all day out of a camper pretty challenging. I’m sure there are other people who live on the road and work full time and do it with more grace than J and I did, but I also see a lot of van lifers doing intermittent freelance gigs, or taking sabbaticals, or just full on quitting so that they can have that kind of lifestyle. It was extremely challenging emotionally to try and carry on as normal at our jobs while absolutely everything else about our lives had changed. And in hindsight, it was a little silly that we even attempted it.

That said, our hotspot worked great (and was WAY cheaper than Starlink) and we had more than enough electricity from our solar panels and batteries to make work physically possible. And I’d love to do it again for a week or so at a time. It just emotionally sucked ass to do for months and months and months with no end in sight.

3) Travel

This is the one that came as the biggest surprise. In starting camper life, I had these lofty dreams of parking at the edge of beautiful lakes and vistas and mountain bike havens, wrapping up work early, and doing all the outdoor things I loved all day every day. 

But because being in the camper was already so physically and emotionally difficult, by the time I wrapped up work each evening, all I wanted to do was nothing. Either that, or my nights were spent grocery shopping or finding a shower, or going to the laundromat. And because we were both working full time, if we wanted to move to a different location, that had to be done on the weekends which meant the only two days a week we had for fun would inevitably be used up with hours and hours of driving. 

That’s not to say I didn’t experience really wonderful things I wouldn’t have otherwise. There were altogether gorgeous bike rides through Colorado National Monument, mountain bike adventures through Moab, new restaurants discovered, hot springs soaked in, wine sipped, javelinas spotted, owls hooting, coyotes howling, and all kinds of other fantastic experiences that wouldn’t have happened from our Bellingham rental. It just fundamentally wasn’t all that different from how we would have gone about life in that we had to squeeze in enjoyment around full-time work schedules which made this new exciting life in the camper less new and exciting. 

I have a hunch that we’ll actually get more out of the camper this year by taking long weekends away from home and more formally separating ourselves from our jobs.

3) Relationship

This one is funny because it’s the area people gave the most unsolicited advice about, and it’s the one aspect of camper life I think both J and I struggled with the least. (Yes, that’s me tooting my own horn. J and I have a really fantastic relationship).

In full transparency, we had one major blowout fight the first month in the camper and it mostly had to do with logistics and the way the space was configured and not communicating well at all (i.e. basically every fight every couple has all the time). 

The camper created a lot of constrictions and limitations and that kind of pressure is bound to add stress to ANY relationship, especially if you’re not easing up on other emotionally taxing areas of life (like trying to keep your jobs - see above). 

I was under the (false) impression that moving into a camper was simplifying our lives, but it was actually a way of extremely overcomplicating them. Normal daily activities like getting food out of the refrigerator and going to the bathroom suddenly became daily discussions and places for tension. How will we tetris our groceries into the tiny fridge? What do we do when one of us gets food poisoning because the fridge turned off and we didn’t realize it? Who is going to empty the pee jug every two days? Who is going to clean up the spilled pee when the pee jug inevitably overfills because whoever was in charge of emptying the pee jug forgot to empty it? If we have two meetings happening at the same time and we both need to talk through them, who sits outside in bad weather to take their call? How are we cleaning dishes when we have to conserve our 22 gallons of water? Where are we going to get a shower? Why does one of us (me) turn so much in their sleep and shake the entire camper all night long? Why are you breathing so loud? Can we turn the heat up? Can we turn the heat down? Can we open a window? Can you turn your phone volume down? Why did you put that there? Can you turn that light off? I’m still sleeping, why are you making coffee right next to my head?

After our one big fight, we got a lot better about communicating what wasn’t working for us and fell into a pretty easy daily rhythm. We even (gasp) had fun. But over these last few weeks crashing with friends, inside actual homes, I’ve felt a lot of tension easing up. Being in relationship feels much easier when you aren’t three feet away from the other person every hour of every day. Again, I think some of those tensions would have been easier had we not also been trying to hold down our jobs and figure out our futures. That was just too many things. 

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I could probably continue on with more about our logistics, how we packed belongings, what we brought with us, what we ended up not needing, what mistakes we made, etc., but there are a million YouTube videos out there that can tell you how to do that. And most of it you just have to live to know for yourself. 

I guess if I need to do a tidy little summary on the experience it would be something like this: I’m glad I did it. I had wondered for years what getting out of traditional housing might feel like and now I don’t need to think about that anymore. It was harder than I thought it would be, and also easier in other ways. I’m so glad it’s okay to change my mind. I’m so glad I didn’t have to do it for the rest of my life. I wish I’d been more present. I wish I’d worked less. I wish I hadn’t also been adjusting to new anxiety medication for a big chunk of the experience. I wish the weather had been better and we hadn’t had to start this adventure in September. 

And I’m so excited to open the front door to a place that is ours for the foreseeable future come Monday.