How Do Two Best Friends End Up Living in a Van Together?
What are you doing right now? What is your best friend doing right now? If the answer to both of these questions isn’t ‘traveling in a van with the bestie’, then it may be time to rethink your life!
Now, I know everyone has their own individual life journeys and that I am EXTREMELY LUCKY that my best friend’s and mine have matched up in such a wonderful way. But, if you have been wanting to do the van life thing and what is stopping you from going all in is not having a partner and not wanting to go alone, maybe it is time to check in with your BFFs. It is VERY possible that at least one of them is looking for something to shake up their life. We are seeing an incredible change right now with the amount of jobs that have switched to full-time, work at home careers. The fun part is, with the amount of free Wi-Fi across the world and the increase in data speeds, there are an unlimited amount of new locations that can be your H in ‘WFH’.
If you believe in astrology, I am a full-on Sagittarius with a hunger for new experiences every day. The last time I lived in my own apartment was April of 2018 (my home base is now in Idaho with my aunts). Since then, I’ve been couch-surfing with friends, family and even some strangers. I’ve always been an extremely independent person (to a fault sometimes), but I also had a travel buddy built into my life: my twin sibling, Jo (they/them). Then in 2020, the pandemic started and I went to stay with my aunts and Jo went to work at Yellowstone for the summer. They ended up falling in love and finding a new travel partner, which though WONDERFUL and EXCITING, left me at a loss for what I would do next. I started thinking about getting an old minivan or an old truck and a camper that needed some fixing up (I stopped working my gig jobs when the pandemic started, but I also wasn’t eligible for very much unemployment because I was technically self employed, so money was very tight) and then setting out into the world on my own. But, amazingly, life had other plans!
We have to backtrack now to the first week of March 2020. Following a pretty spectacular beginning of the year (2 week trip to England visiting friends, hanging out by the beach in Florida with my grandma, and going to Disney World for the first time), Jessie (owner of this blog and of Sunnie the Van), Jo (aforementioned twin), and I took a weeklong trip to Kauai. We were already wary about what was going on in the world, but had no idea it was about to shut down and that this would be our last time spent together and out of our houses for months.
That week in Kauai was amazing! We rented a van and stayed at different campsites all around the island. The amount of freedom this way of traveling gave us was INCREDIBLE and by the end of the vacay, both Jessie and I knew that we could handle vanlife and were itching to get started in whatever way we could. While I was looking at minivans and broken down campers, Jessie found a van, designed her tiny home, and built it with some help from her dad in the intense California heat. It killed me that I could only watch Sunnie’s journey from afar without being able to lend a hand, but I was so excited that Jessie was making things happen for herself!
I finally drove back down to California towards the end of October and in November we took Sunnie out for her first overnight trip to the Grand Canyon, bringing our friend Melia and her wonderful pup Gonzo along. What a fun few days! It just made us want to go out more and more, but there was an issue: Jessie’s job wasn’t remote and unemployment would eventually stop. We went on multiple trips when we could, but for a while Sunnie’s main parking spot was outside Jessie’s apartment.
I was working my gig jobs again, but decided to go remote, thinking that it was time for a change and realizing something quite obvious: if I got a job I could do anywhere, I could go anywhere, even without a car. Remember, Jo was with their partner by this point and Jessie was going to have to remain in one spot for the unforeseeable future. My options were endless, but making decisions about my future was daunting. I got a fully remote quality assurance job and for the next few months traveled around in my usual fashion and worked from “home” in California, Colorado, Idaho, Utah, Arizona, Oregon, Washington, Texas, and New York.
In the meantime Jessie was looking for a WFH job in her career (social media manager, graphic designer, and aspiring nutritionist focused on Health At Every Size, HAES). She had decided she was ready to be a full-time vanlifer and invited me to join her whenever she finally was able to go out on the road!! OH MY GOODNESS OF COURSE I SAID YES. I still can’t believe she asked me to join her in her new home on wheels and I have definitely pinched myself a few times to make sure I’m not dreaming! Then, Jo and I bought tickets to Firefly Festival in Delaware with the event scheduled at the end of September 2021 and we decided to get one for Jessie as well. This became sort of the end date for finding a remote job and going out in Sunnie full time. Mid-August Jessie landed an amazing job working for two BIPOC women nutritionists (check out Food Heaven, if you haven’t already!!) and we set off officially on September 12th, 2021.
It is weird thinking about where I would be right now if I wasn’t living on Sunnie with Jessie. Where would life have taken me? Would we be living in a van if our trip to Hawaii was a week later? (It would definitely have been cancelled by COVID-19.) What if we hadn’t made the trip to Hawaii at all? The amazing thing is all of this can be traced back to a moment in April of 2019 when I was dogsitting outside of Los Angeles and Jessie came over to keep me company. We were fairly new friends and not the BFFs we are now (Jessie was closer with Jo at that point), but were finding out quickly that we make a pretty good pair. I started talking about Hawaii and how we HAD TO GO TOGETHER and that’s what really got the ball rolling. Vanlife had been on both of our radars before this and we probably would have ended up at it individually some day down the line, but that moment in Temple City, California is what led to me typing these words at Bagel Cafe in Camden Maine on a Saturday morning sitting across from my bestie.
So anyways, that’s OUR story about how two best friends ended up traveling and living in a van together. What will yours be? Remember, van life isn’t limited to couples and soloists. Grab your best pal and get on the road!!
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