January 1 – 23, 2020. Sometime this past summer I found out that you could camp on the National Seashore beach at Padre Island in Texas for free for 14 days (*free if you have an America the Beautiful pass or for the cost of the entry fee to the park if you don’t). We …read more
November 19 – December 7, 2019. “What’s that grinding noise?!” It was just a signal telling us that the “vannymoon” was over. Our vannymoon lasted three years and almost 65K miles. But it definitely ended on Tuesday 11/19/2019. We had been on the move, visiting friends and family, and were looking forward to camping in …read more
October 22 – October 30, 2018. This fall we begin Journey 8.0, our eighth year (!!) of wandering and our third year traveling in Ballena Blanca. Just like our sailing years, each season as we have traveled across North America we have pushed our wandering further into unknown (to us) territory and have tried to …read more
Another 2 months of tracking expenses is finally done. This little project can be a bit daunting sometimes because, really, we spend way too much money. But it is great to see where the money goes and be able to talk about the money we spend on the van and the changing importance of where …read more
September 24 – 26, 2018. When we left off in our last post (about a month ago – so sorry I am catching up) we had just wrapped up a week of traveling and visiting friends and family – and were on our way to our ultimate destination, a van meet up, in Liberty Center, …read more
December 19 – December 27. I spent a lot time in New Orleans worried about rats. Worried they would get stepped on, worried they’d play with the cats too rough, worried they’d hide food in my bed, worried they’d get lost, worried they’d escape out the door. Their names were Buffy and Veronica and although …read more
December 3 – December 13. It was starting to get cold and rainy in NC. Every project we undertook took at least twice as long as we thought it should. We were itching to travel. We decided to delay building storage cabinets. We just needed to complete the galley enough to hit the road. We …read more
November 14 – December 6. If I had been working alone, my van build would probably look like some of the other “single dude†builds we have seen. They basically consist of a piece of plywood with a mattress on top. Some stuff is stored under the bed, and some is in racks overhead. Fortunately, …read more
October 19 – November 17. Remember when you and all your friends went off to college? There was the one guy who stayed with his parents, employable, but unemployed, tinkering with some dream vehicle in their driveway. Well, I waited until I was 57 years old to be that guy. After spending the summer in …read more
Our first choice for a new (USED) van was a diesel Sprinter. Next were gas Sprinters, Transits, and Promasters. We wanted a cargo van with a ten foot long bed and six feet of standing room. It had to have windows on the back doors. If you care, HERE is a nice write-up of the …read more