Why Living on the Road Doesn’t Have to Mean Van Life

travel seasons

May 6

Written By Kelly W

When people hear “living on the road,” they usually picture van life. A converted van. Tiny space. Driving from place to place. Waking up somewhere new every day. And while that’s one version of living on the road, it’s not the only way to do it.

For us, living on the road for the last five years has looked more like normal life, just somewhere else. Longer stays. Everyday routines. Grocery runs, workdays, and favorite spots in places we’ve never been before.

In this post, we’re sharing why living on the road doesn’t have to mean van life, and what it can look like instead. This is part of our “Living on the Road” series. You can read the rest of the posts here:

How Life on the Road Started for Us

Toward the end of 2019, Jonathan got a remote role that made both of us location-flexible for the first time. (I had already been working from home for a few years.) We decided to travel more and began with small trips, including one week in Virginia Beach, followed by a two-week road trip through North Carolina, splitting time between Raleigh and Asheville.

We loved exploring new cities, seeing friends we hadn’t seen in a while, going for impromptu hikes after work, and trying new restaurants… all while still keeping up with our normal day-to-day lives. In fact, we had so much fun with those couple of weeks on the road that, in 2020, we decided to take things further and spend the full year traveling.

While that year didn’t go exactly as planned, one of our biggest takeaways was this: We love being on the road, and we like having a home base to return to.

Enter: The Travel Season

By the end of 2020, we had built our lives into two seasons that we now call:

The Travel Season (when we’re on the road)
The Basketball Season (when we’re at home in Dallas)

We’d spend the fall, winter, and early spring at our home base in Texas, watching our favorite sports team play just down the block. Then, we’d spend the summer months traveling on an extended road trip.

What Our Version of “Living on the Road” Actually Looks Like

Living on the road didn’t mean downsizing into a van or moving between new locations every day. It meant picking a place (or a region), staying for a few weeks or longer, and building a life in many different places around the country.

We’ve done:

a 6-week road trip through New Mexico
a 2.5-month stretch through the Rockies
3.5 months across Colorado and Utah
a 5-month season in New England
a 5-week road trip through the Florida Keys

In many of those places, we stayed long enough to settle in. We’d unpack in our home-away-from-home, which was usually an Airbnb or a hotel room. Then, we’d go to the grocery store, find a coffee shop we liked, and start recognizing the same streets and trails.

We’d work during the day and explore before or after. Some days looked like full workdays. Some days looked like hiking, driving scenic routes, or checking out an activity nearby. Most days were a mix.

The best thing about staying in one place for a few weeks or even a month was that after a few days, you stop feeling like you’re on a trip. You just feel like you’re living in all of these new areas, even temporarily.

Why We Don’t Do Van Life

Van life is appealing for a lot of reasons. It gives you flexibility, freedom, and the ability to change plans quickly. It also gives you stability, because while you might be moving between locations often, you’re keeping the same bedroom and living space.

However, since we work full-time on the road (Jon’s in a corporate role, while I’m self-employed), we like having a place to spread out and work comfortably. We like having a kitchen, plenty of room for our dog, Lincoln, and a work-life setup that feels easy, especially when we’re somewhere for a few weeks.

We also don’t actually want to move locations every day, and prefer staying in one place long enough to get to know it. One month is our sweet spot. We like finding favorite restaurants and coffee shops to return to, and want to build a routine, even if it’s temporary.

The Road Trip Local Way

Somewhere along the way, we started describing our travel style as being “Road Trip Locals.” It’s exactly what it sounds like: feeling at home on the road.

We love road trips, and we love doing our best to feel like locals everywhere we go. Of course, we’re not the traditional definition of a local in any one place, but we still aim to make each place feel like ours, even when only staying for a short time.

That means we still do the big things like the national parks, scenic drives, and highlight destinations we came to see. But we also leave space for the in-between moments, like the morning walk, the trail you go back to more than once, and the restaurant you’ve already tried but know you’ll enjoy again.

Those moments don’t always show up on a “top 10 things to do” list, but sometimes they’re the ones that leave the biggest imprint.

Living in a Place… Without Living There

One of the best parts of this style of travel is feeling like you get to live in a lot of different places. Not permanently. Not long enough to fully settle down. But long enough to get a glimpse into what your life could look like there.

What your mornings feel like. Where you’d go for coffee. What your after-work routine would be.

It’s like trying different places on, and the longer we’ve done it, the more we’ve realized that’s one of the things we enjoy most about long-term travel. Not just seeing a place, but experiencing what it actually feels like to live there.

There was our three-week stay in Lake Placid that I didn’t want to leave. Our month in Kanab, where it felt like we had access to the biggest adventure playground in the nation. We reflect all the time on our month in Winter Park, CO, and about how much just two weeks in Durango surprised us as a place we’d absolutely return to one day.

You Don’t Have to Do It One Way

If van life is your thing, that’s great. But if it’s not, that doesn’t mean “living on the road” isn’t for you. There are a lot of ways to do this!

We do it by planning a Travel Season, which is a slow travel style that usually takes place over the summer months and lasts anywhere from a couple of weeks to five months. We’ll pick a region, map out a larger road trip loop, and build in a series of “home bases” where we stay for a few weeks or even a month at a time, then take smaller trips from there. It gives us the chance to spend real time in each place and build a version of everyday life while we’re there.

The goal of living on the road is the same as at home: to create a life that feels good while you’re in it, just in a different place.