The One Where We Go Home

Our Final Week

This last week we finished our drive from the west coast to home. We drove around 40 hours in the last two weeks. Our last week was fairly uneventful, just full of lots of driving.

After our time in Theodore Roosevelt National Park, we drove about 7 hours to a state park in Minnesota called Glacial Lakes. Our first day at Glacial Lakes was rainy almost the entire day. To be honest, we kind of enjoyed the dreary, rainy weather and the cozy vibes. We had the entire loop of our campground to ourselves for the day. Tuesday was a sunnier day and we were able to get a load of laundry done at a close by laundromat and go for a hike around a few of the lakes. Wednesday was again another gloomy day but didn’t actually rain until the evening when we had decided to cook our dinner over the fire. We persisted, though, and finished cooking our meal and ate outside. We and our things were a bit damp after that.

On Thursday we woke up early to complete our last long day of driving to our final destination of Indiana Dunes National Park. The drive was 9 hours but went very smoothly and we made it to our campsite in Indiana Dunes just before sunset. We took advantage of the free, hot showers at the campground before heading to bed. Friday after work we set out for a 4 mile hike around a bog area. We realized we should have read the reviews on Alltrails before starting the hike because the bugs were TERRIBLE. The entire 4 mile hike we were swatting bugs away from our faces. I resorted to waving my arm back and forth in front of my face the entire time. If I stopped swatting for even a 5 second period there would be at least 10 little gnats clustered in front of my face instantly. A few times we thought maybe we should just turn around but continued on and finished the trail. Saturday we slept in and then hiked another trail around a lake that took us to the beach of Lake Michigan. We decided to hike back, change into our swimsuits, and head to another beach area close by. We enjoyed laying in the sun on the beach and relaxing. We ended that night with a movie in our van.

Sunday, the day I’ve been looking forward to for a while finally arrived. We made the 5 hour drive home after a brief pit stop in South Bend, IN for some brunch. We arrived home around 5:30 to our families welcoming us in the driveway. It was a very sweet and surreal moment to finally be home after 6 months on the road.

Now that we’ve been home for a week, we’ve had some time to reflect on our adventure in the van and that season of our life being over. Although we plan to spend a few weeks in the van this fall going out east (and we’ll give a bonus blog post or two during that time), it does feel like this season of our life has mostly come to an end. We wanted to share our final thoughts about our time on the road.

Kendra’s Thoughts

The end of this era certainly feels bittersweet for me (maybe a little more sweet for me, but bittersweet nonetheless). If I’m being honest, I’m pretty proud of myself for sticking with van life for this long. It tested me/us in a lot of ways and I’m proud of the ways I’ve grown and tested my limits over the last few months.

I am typically an easily overwhelmed/stressed out person and try to avoid uncomfortable or stressful situations as much as possible. I know that’s not always healthy, but it’s just my natural default. So doing van life, moving around to places we’d never been before, definitely stretched my limits of comfortable living. It forced me to be uncomfortable and put a lot of trust in God to meet our needs and protect us at times. And He came through many times.

Trevor and I certainly lived a more minimalist lifestyle prior to van life, partially because we’ve always lived in small apartments and partially because we’ve always valued experiences over things. Van life forced us to take that minimalist lifestyle to an even more extreme and honestly it was quite refreshing and not that hard for either of us. There was basically nothing that we didn’t bring that we wish we would have and quite a few things we brought that we never/rarely used.

Another thing I’ve come to learn over the last few months is that there is a lot of beauty in both ways of life – life on the road and life at home. As we’ve mentioned in past blog posts, van life seems to have higher highs and lower lows than we would typically experience in our day to day life at home. There’s a lot of beauty in being close to family and friends, living life in community with others, having many of your basic needs met so that you can focus on the deeper things in life.

There is also beauty in adventure, pushing yourself into unknown territories, figuring out how to do life with just the two of us, and seeing amazing places all around you.

When we lived at home, it was easy for us to take for granted some of the basic things like unlimited water, flushing toilets, a family member or friend to call when you have car issues, etc. Whereas, after life on the road we’ve grown a much greater appreciation for those simple things. But to be honest, after seeing amazing places week after week, we’ve also found ourselves starting to take for granted the beauty and awe of what we get to see and experience. So just like almost everything else in life, we’ve learned that balance is good and a change of pace/lifestyle/scenery every once in a while is a great way to give you a healthy perspective and appreciation for the things you may be taking for granted.

On that Saturday morning in February just before we set out for the adventure of a lifetime, my mom prayed an Irish blessing over us:

May the road rise to meet you. May the wind always be at your back. May the sun shine warm upon your face, and rains fall soft upon your fields. And until we meet again, may God hold you in the palm of His hand.

We thank God for giving us this incredible opportunity to see this beautiful world He created for us to enjoy and steward. Although our journey was not without its challenges, we are grateful for God’s protection and guidance on this amazing adventure. We felt this Irish blessing that was prayed over us was answered as we traveled the open road, felt the sun upon our face, admired many blue skies, and were held in the palm of His hand.

Trevor’s Two Cents

Hey y’all, its me, Trevor. I just wanted to echo a lot of what Kendra talked about above with a little bit of my own perspective.

My goodness! We crammed a whole lot of experiences into a relatively short amount of time! It is wild to look back at pictures of our trip and remember the many, many places that we had the privilege of exploring. I know that those are memories that we will cherish for a lifetime. I am incredibly grateful that we had the means and the opportunity to go on such a fun adventure.

Seeing the beauty and diversity of our world helped to shape my perspective on the creativity of our Creator God and the role that I play in stewarding and continuing in that creativity. I learned to slow down and take in the beauty that is around me. I learned that beauty comes in many different forms – in the landscapes, in wildlife, in relationships, and in connections with strangers. While these are not all new learnings, they are new perspectives on things I already knew to be true. But I find that in getting out of routine and slowing down, I gain deeper understanding.

Our journey also gave me a greater appreciation for the things that we left behind. I realized just how much our family and friends really mean to us and missed them a whole lot at times. While it didn’t bother me all that much to be living off of limited water, electricity, etc., I do have a greater appreciation for flush toilets and the modern conveniences that we have gotten so used to.

For me, van life was a whole lot of fun. I loved the process of planning for and building the van. I loved that we were forced into a life of minimalism. I loved that we had the freedom to do just about whatever we wanted, whenever we wanted to do it. Oddly enough, I loved having to think hard about our electricity consumption – thinking about how much energy everything uses and how we are going to recoup that energy. I loved planning for hikes and travels that we were going to do. I loved washing our dishes, cooking food, and brewing coffee with the incredible scenery in the backdrop. There are so many joys that came with the lifestyle.

But it was far from being sunshine and rainbows the whole time. It came with many challenges. I am very proud of Kendra for the ways she challenged herself during this (I’ll admit it) crazy thing that we have done. I didn’t go into this adventure expecting it to be easy all of the time, but it was certainly more challenging than I expected. And I know that the challenge was often more difficult for Kendra’s homebody than it was for my go-with-the-flow self. It definitely brought to the surface some of our relational struggles – more often and with greater intensity than life at home tended to do. We had to work through some difficult things together, but I believe that our marriage is better for it. I am forever grateful for the growth and the many memories that this trip brought to our lives. I look forward to many adventures in the future!

Interesting Stats

Time on the road: 6 months +1 day

Miles we drove: 17,242

States: 17

Miles hiked: 250+

Elevation climbed through hiking: 42,000+ (the equivalent of climbing Mount Everest 1 and 3/4 times)

National Parks visited: 22 (and we will add one more when we visit Acadia in the fall)

Flat tires: 5 😑

Speeding tickets: 0 (Surprisingly…)

Mechanical breakdowns: 0 (So grateful!)

Our Favorite Moments

Of course the pictures just never do anything justice so get out there and see these places for yourself!

Honorable Mentions

The Future

So you may ask, what’s next for us? And that’s a great question – one we don’t totally have an answer for 😊 Trevor and I are definitely planners so it feels weird for our future to be so up in the air right now. Our current plan is to spend the next month and a half spending lots of time with family and then at the end of September we’ll set out for a few weeks along the east coast enjoying the fall colors. But what’s after that is to be determined. What we do know is that we’re ready to settle down a little bit more, we plan to sell the van 🙁, and travel will continue to be an important part of our lives as long as we continue to be blessed to do so.

If you’ve continued to follow along with our blog we are so grateful that you have stuck with us. We really wanted to have a journal of this season of our life and the many memories we made. We’ve also loved hearing that people have been enjoying our posts and the messages we’ve received from many of you. Thank you for your support from afar!