We're really doing it! Today commemorates our van build kickoff, and as I'm sure many seasoned van lifers can relate, we spent what felt like a gazillion hours at Home Depot searching for and purchasing materials. Since we're just starting out, I'll take a minute to provide some insight and backstory into our motivation to jump into this lifestyle.
Shaun and I have been married nearly 14 years after growing up together and dating throughout high school and mostly through undergrad in our home state of Tennessee. We moved to Maryland where we both attended graduate school. Growing up in East Tennessee, we both developed a love for the outdoors, exploring the Smokies, hiking (both of us) and fishing (Shaun) and really missed that aspect while living in Baltimore. Yes, Maryland, Virginia, West Virginia, and Pennsylvania offer amazing outdoor pursuits, but the population density there was becoming more than we could bear. After completing an extended clinical rotation in Colorado, I knew the west was where I wanted to be. It took less than a nanosecond to convince Shaun, and we moved to Washington in 2009. We have never looked back.
Both of us maintain full time careers, he in education administration, and I in healthcare. Weekend warriors who always feel like there's not enough time. After enduring some trying times and losses, we've decided to really embrace the idea of uncomplicating our life together and put all of our efforts into spending more time together and more time in the outdoors. The van will allow us to realize the first step in our dream of traveling full-time. We both snowboard, fly fish (he convinced me), and hike, and find that waking in the 4's or 5's in the morning to race people to parking lots, fishing spots, or trailheads to be exhausting and limits us from living in the moment. Now we can head up Friday night and stay gone till Sunday evening. Eventually, we hope it will evolve into something more, but here we are. Thanks for reading, and I hope you will follow along for updates to our build where we will cover strategy, struggles, successes, and more.
Thanks again!
Amanda
Saturday, March 18, 2017
Van Life... here we come!
We're really doing it! Today commemorates our van build kickoff, and as I'm sure many seasoned van lifers can relate, we spent what felt like a gazillion hours at Home Depot searching for and purchasing materials. Since we're just starting out, I'll take a minute to provide some insight and backstory into our motivation to jump into this lifestyle.
Shaun and I have been married nearly 14 years after growing up together and dating throughout high school and mostly through undergrad in our home state of Tennessee. We moved to Maryland where we both attended graduate school. Growing up in East Tennessee, we both developed a love for the outdoors, exploring the Smokies, hiking (both of us) and fishing (Shaun) and really missed that aspect while living in Baltimore. Yes, Maryland, Virginia, West Virginia, and Pennsylvania offer amazing outdoor pursuits, but the population density there was becoming more than we could bear. After completing an extended clinical rotation in Colorado, I knew the west was where I wanted to be. It took less than a nanosecond to convince Shaun, and we moved to Washington in 2009. We have never looked back.
Both of us maintain full time careers, he in education administration, and I in healthcare. Weekend warriors who always feel like there's not enough time. After enduring some trying times and losses, we've decided to really embrace the idea of uncomplicating our life together and put all of our efforts into spending more time together and more time in the outdoors. The van will allow us to realize the first step in our dream of traveling full-time. We both snowboard, fly fish (he convinced me), and hike, and find that waking in the 4's or 5's in the morning to race people to parking lots, fishing spots, or trailheads to be exhausting and limits us from living in the moment. Now we can head up Friday night and stay gone till Sunday evening. Eventually, we hope it will evolve into something more, but here we are. Thanks for reading, and I hope you will follow along for updates to our build where we will cover strategy, struggles, successes, and more.
Thanks again!
Amanda
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