We had one main goal for our visit to Mount Rainier National Park: See Mount Rainier. We lived 3 hours away from the mountain for over a decade and the most we’d seen was a glimpse of Rainier’s snow covered top from a distance. We’d never been up close and personal with the behemoth. Seeing Mount Rainier sounds pretty easy right? It’s a giant mountain after all—just look up! Well it didn’t turn out to be quite that simple. Wildfires…
We experienced déjà vu driving through eastern Washington on our way to North Cascades National Park. It reminded us a lot of North Dakota. There’s a similar abrupt change from farmland to rocky dry wilderness. We were initially worried that the free campsite we’d selected was in the middle of a giant wheat field. I’m talking wheat in all directions as far as you can see. Suddenly the wheat fields turned into rocky craggy formations. We found our camp in…
Our first two days back on the road and heading west started well and seemed to help us achieve our balance goals. The first day we made it from Green Bay, WI to central North Dakota. The free campsite we’d picked turned out to be exactly what we needed. Our day ended by watching the sunset over the rolling grassy hills of North Dakota. Enchanted Highway We pushed to cover a lot of ground the first day so that we…
It’s been a few months since Hitting the Road with Stan the Tan Van so we wanted introduce everyone to our tiny rolling home. If you’re considering or just curious about vanlife this van tour will help paint a picture of what vanlife is like for us and give you some organization ideas. Living long term in a van is getting more popular by the day. There are people with vans of all shapes and sizes tooling around the world…
Arriving at Shenandoah National Park felt like being transporting into an eerie, moody mystery novel. The park was socked in by thick damp fog. The kind that’s more cloud than fog. Leaving all surfaces glistening with a cold wet sheen and reducing visibility to minimal amounts. As we wound our way further up the mountains, the tree-lined road slowly appeared out of the dense white background. From the overlooks we could see only hazy outlines of tree tops below, with…
Charleston, South Carolina is an old city. Old by US standards at least. In fact, it’s so old that Charleston’s founding pre-dates the United States itself. It was settled in 1670 and originally named Charles Town after England’s King Charles the II. While we didn’t have a ton of time here, we packed our days (and our stomachs) full. Charleston captivated us in a way no other city on our travels thus far has. Food Food brought us to Charleston….
In New Orleans we stayed at our first hostel. Not first hostel of the trip. First hostel ever. In the past our lodging has been mostly a mix of camping, hotels, and Airbnb. Honestly, as far as US travel goes, we’d never really considered a hostel before. They were just rather off our radar. Turns out that most substantially sized US cities have at least a few different hostel options. We plan to primarily stay in hostels next year during…
Greetings from the Great Midwest! We’re officially van dwellers. After arriving in Hannibal, Missouri Monday afternoon we’ve already visited the home of Sam Clemens (aka Mark Twain), played a round of 18-hole disc golf, survived a pretty intense thunderstorm, and set-up our office in the campground shelter. So you could say we’re making ourselves right at home. We’ll be sharing a separate post about Hannibal and our wanderings thus far, but we want to take a moment to talk about…