Our Van Life Story!
Experiencing VanLife
It was a full year of exploring America aboard JUBI, our Sprinter Van that we called home. VanLife was one of those experiences that transformed us and made us understand that JOY in life is not dependent on where you live, the size of your home or for that matter any material belonging, now don’t get me wrong I am not against making money as it does provide the means to create a beautiful and comfortable life.
VanLife exposed us to a different reality, one that we had never experienced in our lives. In a very simplistic way, we were living on the street inside of a VAN and but that definition by itself made us rethink our priorities in life as that was our option. We started to enjoy the little things, like a beautiful sunset, the noise of the wilderness in a remote location in the middle of the mountains, the countless evenings we spent by the fire outside counting the starts and talking to each other.
We saw so much during that year, and we wanted for some reason to register every single thing we went thru so we created a YouTube Channel called Travel and Fun. We always tell each other that in many years from now we will look back at all the videos we created during that year and will miss it all, actually we do miss it already.
We were at the very start of putting our faces in front of a camera together. I don’t know if you ever tried, but it is pretty weird to say the list, so if you get to see those videos on YouTube bare that in mind before hitting the dislike button, actually hit the like button and subscribe to that channel since by now the quality have already increased and we do have subtitles in over 10 languages available on YouTube. We feel that the channel TRAVEL AND FUN tells the story from Patricia’s perspective as on Sailing Joy Ed takes a bit more of the lead.
THE JOURNEY STARTED IN THE MIDDLE OF THE PANDEMIC
The Pandemic hit the world and we were trapped like everyone else inside of our home in Miami, Florida. We watched all the catastrophic news on TV every day, and that started to take a toll on us. That was when we taught about VanLife so we could continue to work from home, stay home and respect all the social distance guidance that was in place.
It was probably one of the best decision we made that year and created an alternative reality in our lives. We bought the Van, that we called JUBI in Arizona and in a weeks notice we closed down our home and headed to Phoenix to pick it up. We had no experience about this type of life neither had an idea what to expect. Our plans were very limited, as we did not write down a route we would take. We felt that the VanLife JOURNEY would point us in the right direction. The first month was full of surprises and many things did go wrong. We found ourselves with mechanical and electrical problems, our inexperience and lack of preparation led us to not find spots to spend evenings and on those days we totally had to improvise and be creative.
After a month on the road we were starting to get the hang of it and to understand that we could slow down a bit and enjoy the trip since we did not have a specific date to get to no where, the only thing that was always on our minds was the it was going to start to get cold in couple of months and we believed at the time we would not be able to stay on JUBI because it would be freezing.
In about 3 months into the journey we had passed thru Arizona, Nevada, California, Utah, Colorado and could not get enough of all these awesome places. Patricia loved Utah so much that she wanted to live there forever!!! She always says, “I saw the most beautiful USA in the state of UTAH, the different tones of orange and the so many national parks made me fall in love with this place”
The VanLife Story on Instagram
We documented the full adventure aboard JUBI on YouTube Brazil !
30.000 Kilometers and over 15 states
zoom in to check the exact 361 spots we stopped
IT WAS A VERY INTENSE YEAR
We had probably one of the best year of our lives aboard JUBI ! It served as the foundation or us to try other things and get ready for new adventures, it showed us the real meaning of living a minimalist life and exposed us every day to the natural wonder you can only see if you are out there.
We do not believe this will be the last time we will go on an exploration journey on wheels! We believe the best way to live life is by travelling and exploring new places and nothing better than a RV, VAN, EXPLORATION VEHICLE for that. Who knows maybe in the future we will go by Land and Sea!