My husband and I had been married for two years when we sold most of our belongings on Facebook Marketplace, bought a van, and hit the road to explore the world outside our doorstep.
One year. That’s what we committed to justify the cost of converting the van into a home on wheels.
At the time, we were working fully remote as self-employed contractors. My husband, Chris, designed websites for a living, and I was working as a contracted event planner for a company 3,000 miles away from our home in Seattle. Our jobs were only restricted by WiFi availability, which in 2018 was already widespread and accessible pretty much everywhere in the US. So off we went.
We drove through all of the US (including Alaska), through much of Canada, and developed a love for life on the road. One year has turned into a seven-and-a-half-year adventure with no plans of stopping anytime soon.
We’ve continued traveling for years
We grew a life and a business that was sustainable while always on the go. We shared our stories on YouTube and Instagram, and our jobs slowly became about telling stories from the road.
After we finished traveling through all 50 states, we decided to take our adventures a step further: we wanted to drive from the US to Panama along the Pan-American Highway.
We loaded our 1988 Land Cruiser camper with the essentials and headed straight for the border, nervous and unsure what working and living internationally would look like, but ready to give it a go.
Courtesy of Chris and Sarah Aho
It took us all of a week in Mexico’s Baja California Sur before we realized we wanted to travel slower than we ever had before. We wanted to learn about a country and its culture in a way that a vacation would never allow us to. We knew our favorite grocery stores, our favorite local dishes in each region, and how to drive like a local.
Our time in Mexico brought challenges like language barriers and bribes, and car trouble that left us with no brakes on a rainy, flooded mountaintop in Oaxaca. When life threw us curveballs, and car trouble kept us still for a month in Oaxaca, we made ourselves at home in a campground on the outskirts of the city full of other overlanders from all over the world.
Work looks different for us
Being self-employed on the road, we don’t get paid vacation days, but we do get to take our work with us.
I’ve written work emails on my phone in incredible places like Copacabana Beach in Brazil, a hot spring in Iceland, and from the back of a motorbike in Thailand.
Some may view this as never truly escaping work, but for us, it’s a life without ever having to return to a cubicle in a fluorescent-lit office.
Our office view changes daily, and we’re in charge of our hours, job descriptions, and location. Every lifestyle comes with give-and-takes, and for us, we’d rather prioritize the present while still working for the future.
We often connect with older retirees on the road
The thing about van life is that you’re really just an RVer with a more trendy name attached to the activity. Since most RVers are generally retirees, we found ourselves in countless conversations with fellow travelers 60+ years old that first year on the road.
Many of the conversations ended with something like, “You’re doing it right traveling while you’re young and still able to enjoy it before your knees are too worn out.”
Between in-person conversations and YouTube comments on our videos, we have heard that statement in various forms hundreds of times now. When someone in their 70’s approaches you and says, “Wow, I wish I had done what you’re doing,” you take it to heart.
The more it’s repeated, the more seriously we take the advice, and the older we get, the more urgent the challenge becomes.
Maybe one day we will retire, but right now, we have no plans to. We’re already living the life we always dreamed of.
