There is a week in late October when the trails change character overnight. The maples have dropped, the mud has stiffened, and the first hard frost turns every root and rock ledge into something closer to glass than dirt. I took a fall two seasons ago on what I would have sworn was a gentle … Read more
Every van build hits the same wall eventually. You have the floor, the walls, the wiring tucked neatly where it belongs — and then someone asks the question that quietly decides whether the whole rig works: where are you actually going to sit? For a shockingly long stretch of our ProMaster build, the honest answer … Read more
Every square inch inside a camper van has to earn its keep, and few things earn harder than the dinette table. In the morning it is a desk with a sunrise outside the window. At lunch it is a prep station for sandwiches assembled between trailheads. By evening it is the place where two people … Read more
Every October I find myself standing in a cold field at two in the morning, craning my neck at a patch of sky most people stop thinking about after Labor Day. The crew calls it the appointment. The rest of the world calls it the Orionid meteor shower, and this year’s appointment book says Wednesday … Read more
Some of the best meals I have ever eaten involved a camp stove, two plastic bowls, and a parking spot at the edge of nowhere. But somewhere between the hundredth lap of eating off my knees and the time a bowl of chili ended up in my lap thanks to a passing truck, I admitted … Read more
The last airport tea I ever bought cost $6.25, and I never got to drink it hot. O’Hare, Terminal 3, a January delay stretching from forty minutes to four hours. I stood in a coffee line long enough to memorize the menu, paid airport money for what is legally just hot water and a paper … Read more
There is a particular kind of dread that arrives around 6 p.m. at a boondocking spot: you are filthy, the sun is dropping, and the only water in the van is exactly as cold as the mountain air outside. For my first two years of van life I solved this the way most people do … Read more
Eleven days after I returned a midsize SUV in Albuquerque, an envelope showed up with photographs of a rear bumper, a magnified scratch, and an invoice for $1,124.50. The scratch was real. It just wasn’t mine. I had watched that same bumper for ten minutes in the rental lot, camera rolling, before I drove a … Read more
There is a moment on the tundra outside Churchill, Manitoba, when your guide kills the engine of a two-ton vehicle, and the only sound left is wind coming off Hudson Bay with nothing between it and you except the curve of the planet. Somewhere out there, usually within a hundred meters of where you’re sitting, … Read more
The reservation was for 8 p.m. in Lisbon. My flight touched down at 10:40 a.m. That gap — nine-plus hours of cafés, hill climbs, and people-watching between baggage claim and the first glass of vinho verde — is where most “comfortable flight outfits” go to die. You land looking like you slept in your clothes, … Read more