Van Life

I got lost every where I went in my younger days... Always terrified I'd end up stranded somewhere, buying paper maps, stopping to check them constantly, trying to memorize the route back to wherever I messed up without messing it up again.

The world's a whole new place nowadays. Me and Phone B*tch (Google maps) hit the road in the spring, and don't look back 'til fall. I tell her to keep me out of the cities and off of the highways, and she sends me down the loveliest windy roads and into adorable small towns. If I turn the wrong way (like out of damn near every parking lot... why can't she say turn left instead of east? You'd think by now she'd know I don't know which way is east...) she figures it out and gets me back on track.

I go nowhere in a hurry. If I need to be somewhere on a specific day, I generally start heading that direction 5 days to a week in advance. I stop and enjoy small town museums, swim in the lakes, nap in rest areas, hang out in parks, shop in thrift stores, visit roadside attractions... I rarely drive more than three hours/day. Sometimes I spend two or three days in a pretty little town, just soaking up the atmosphere.

I'm seasonal, so I loosely plan next summer's adventures through the winter, using findpenguins.com to make notes of festivals, events, attractions, etc., along the way. Getting there is the adventure.もっと詳しく