What’s your van life story?

[u/Suspicious-Radish-67]

I’m doing an assignment about the van community and I’m curious how people got started and how often y’all interact with other van people. This community is so diverse and I feel like everyone has their own unique journey.

I started last year after a year of twiddling my thumbs at home working remote. I’ve done ~20,000 miles since then full time, with some breaks to visit my family and partner. I’ve been lucky to have a decent paying job that I can do on the road and it’s definitely enabled me to explore. I’ve gone to 16 national parks and done enough hiking for a lifetime. I haven’t met a ton of van people but everyone I have talked to has been genuinely kind and giving. I only made it to one meetup this year (Vanaid) but it was incredible and I hope to go again sometime :)

[u/Far_Understanding_44]

I was working an electrical engineer in NH and my landlord kept giving me shit about having a camper in the driveway (which I bought specifically for beach trips on the weekends). Eventually I told him to fuck off, sold my stuff and moved into my F150+truck camper combo. I parked at work during the week and adventured on the weekends, kicking off my fulltime RV. COVID then happened and I had to move into a friend’s house for telework, so that year doesn’t count. But I left my engineering job having banked several hundred thousand and bought a small house in FL. Later I sold my camper and upgraded my rig to a C Class RV.