At the end of March, we left off in Goat Rock, climbing at with our friends Matt and Allie. The next day was April 1 and we made our way to Bolinas, California for some surfing. Bolinas is a cool, little town right on the water.

At the beginning of March, we left Joshua Tree to head to Los Angeles. There we caught up with our dear friends Mel and Zenobia. We managed to find a fun hike that took us up to the “Wisdom Tree” and the Hollywood sign!

We hope that you all had a great weekend! About a month ago, we were camped out in Lone Pine, California when a good looking Adventure Wagon Vanagon pulled into the spot next to us. Naturally, we needed to go over and say hi! The owner of the van, named Desert Rose, is Barry Vogel. He’s a civil rights lawyer with a long time "radio habit".

A few Weeks back we met up with Aidan Klimenko to film a short story about us and our life on the road. This is the results. Enjoy!

In our own research, we did not find a great deal of transparency on how to keep up your hygiene when you are living on the road. Dialing in a process to maintain our personal standards of hygiene has been a learning experience that has taken a great deal of refining.

We started the month of February making our way to the coast for an impending Baja trip. We stopped along the way in Oceanside, California to see our friends, Tierney and Cory. Oceanside was the first opportunity we had take our new surfboards out on their maiden voyage.

The new year found us in south Florida. The holidays as a whole were great, because we finally had time to see and catch up with our families. In fact, we enjoyed it so much we stuck around all the way until the middle of the month. Taking advantage of our time off from the road, we tackled some nagging van projects.

At the beginning of the month Owen and I were staying with our good friends Hanna & Thomas in Tuscon, AZ. It was the starting point of our two thousand mile journey back home to family for the holidays.

This year has been a total whirlwind for us, thinking back to where we were at the beginning of 2016. Though this has not been the most amazing year on record for the world, for us we can honestly say this year has been increadible. We have experienced, grown, and learned so much. To reflect on our year and the first 8 months on the road we each picked out each of our top 5 favorite photos of the year and some details about how they came about.

We couldn’t have asked for a better first Thanksgiving on the road. Despite being away from our loving families we assembled a humble but thankful group of 8 new and old friends in a place that is both beautiful and unfamiliar. Zion National Park, UT.

The theme of November was friends. We spent most of the month with people and a lot of them we haven’t seen since we moved into the van in April. We started the month around Salt Lake City but quickly moved south to a bouldering area called Joe’s Valley. There we met our friend Thomas who was on his own road trip.

This was another not so typical van life month. At the beginning of October we were still in Hawai’i. Our total stay was just under a month long. We continued to surf almost everyday and I managed to go from hopeless kook to less hopeless kook. We will really miss the surfing in Hawai’i, and look forward to next time...

About a month ago, we spent two weeks in the UK. Half of our time was in London, and the other half was spent exploring Wales. Reflecting on our time, we wanted to pass along some things that we discovered during our stay. This list just includes some of the things that we personally experienced, because we can truthfully speak to their greatness! This list includes our recommendations for London:

September was a very different month for us. We only spent 3 days in the van! The rest of the time was split between England, Wales and Hawaii (where we still are!). It feels like we have been halfway across the world and that is because we pretty much have. There is an 11 hour time difference between the UK and Hawaii. 

At the beginning of the month we were in the bay area and over the course of the month we trended north and ended up in Seattle. We made loads of new friends and got to catch up with some old ones as well. 

When we started making our plans for traveling full time one of the first MAJOR decisions that we had to make was what vehicle we would take. To make this decision we considered everything that we wanted our vehicle to contain. The list was as follows:

We are going to start a new monthly post. It will be a summery of the previous month in photos. Being that we have never done this before this group covers the first three months of being on the road (April - July). We take more pictures then we know what to do with, so this feels like a nice home for them! If you ever want any additional info on any of the pictures, don't be shy we would love to pass the info along. Enjoy the ride my friends!

   Yup, you read that right... We each have just 1 cubic foot of space to store our clothes in the van. ONE. Buckle your seat belts people this is going to be a wild ride.

Let me back up and explain why we have such a small space to work with. When making the organizational plan for Stanley we decided pretty early on that our clothes were going to live under the back bench seat. It's perfect, there is plenty of space and it is easily accessible! It was not long that we realized that the space had to be shared by our two 6v batteries that control our aux power system...

There is not a more violating feeling than having your car broken into. To know that someone entered a space that you feel safe in, with no discretion for the things that are important to you will never feel good.

We were in downtown Miami and only away from Stanley 2 hours. He was parked in a public lot, sandwiched between two major roads, in broad daylight. As we walked up to the van I said, "I know I would have never parked in a spot with so much glass on the ground." I hardly made it through that sentence before I reached the passenger vent window to see glass all over the ground.

1. Watch you head...there is something to hit your head on everywhere
2. We could be 100% better at food planning. Going to the grocery store everyday is THE WORST
3. We need cooler weather then we thought we did. No AC has left us sweaty very sweaty