We're officially on our third week of van life! Although, these first few weeks have felt more like a vacation than real life.
Our first destination was Snoqualmie, Washington for our wedding. We gave ourselves 10 days to make the drive and made several stops along the way to say hi to friends and wander around some tiny towns.
We made it to the Tetons by Wednesday and had our first not-so-great van experience. We found a cool campsite on Togwatee Pass going towards the Teton National Park. It was about 5 miles off of the highway on a well-maintained forest road.
In the morning, we noticed that there was a shorter route back to the highway, so we took that instead. About 400m down the road, we noticed the road was… not as well maintained as the one from last night. We continued down until we reached a big puddle of water. Clay hopped out to see how deep it was, and what was coming up next. Spoiler alert- it was a river. So… we tried to turn around. The trip back was terrifying. We got stuck in the mud, nearly tipped, and made it back to the main road with racing hearts and a disheveled van. The dogs were on edge all day after that, and we had a pretty big mess to cleanup.
Since then, we've avoided jeep roads and Velcro'd some of our cabinets shut.
Our first destination was Snoqualmie, Washington for our wedding. We gave ourselves 10 days to make the drive and made several stops along the way to say hi to friends and wander around some tiny towns.
We made it to the Tetons by Wednesday and had our first not-so-great van experience. We found a cool campsite on Togwatee Pass going towards the Teton National Park. It was about 5 miles off of the highway on a well-maintained forest road.
In the morning, we noticed that there was a shorter route back to the highway, so we took that instead. About 400m down the road, we noticed the road was… not as well maintained as the one from last night. We continued down until we reached a big puddle of water. Clay hopped out to see how deep it was, and what was coming up next. Spoiler alert- it was a river. So… we tried to turn around. The trip back was terrifying. We got stuck in the mud, nearly tipped, and made it back to the main road with racing hearts and a disheveled van. The dogs were on edge all day after that, and we had a pretty big mess to cleanup.
Since then, we've avoided jeep roads and Velcro'd some of our cabinets shut.
After the Tetons, we drove through Jackson, WY, Butte, MT, and Coeur D'Alene, ID. We stopped to work in coffee shops and libraries along the way. Clay has also been writing kettlebell workouts to do in the parks. We've been posting them on our workout page. It makes the long drives way more manageable when we get to workout and run the dogs around every few hours.
Once we made it up to Washington, we visited my family in west Seattle for dinner, then went up to our "mountain tower cabin" in Snoqualmie, where we spent the rest of the week. Our first day in the cabin was 8 hours of laundry, dishes, and deep cleaning the van. Living in the van makes so many parts of our day convenient, but cleaning is not one of those things. So we took advantage of having space and time to tidy things up.
Wednesday night we camped at Red Top Lookout with our photographer, Mollie, and her husband, Drew. We woke up early and began the most magical day. We hiked, we had coffee, and we hiked some more. And Mollie took some incredible photos.
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After our wedding weekend, we drove down to Moab for another wedding (this time it wasn't ours). We're hanging out here with family for the week, and then we're planning to stay put for the new few weeks.
These last few weeks haven't felt like real life. We're definitely in the "honeymoon phase" of van life, though. We've had access to beautiful Airbnbs every other week, and we have been able to spend time with family. I think we'll get a reality check over the next few months. We're looking forward to the adventure!
These updates are a bit hard to write because, after each day that goes by, there are a dozen more things to share. We'll do our best to continue sharing our adventures, as well as the not-so-great parts of living on the road.