Week 1 on the road

The not-so-great vanlife realities hit faster than expected

Ok, ok I know we’re not a van — but “truck camper life” doesn’t flow off the tongue quite as well, and the realities of this lifestyle did hit faster than expected.

I knew the not-so-great things would happen eventually — but I didn’t expect grumpiness to hit on day 3 (oops).

I’m getting ahead of myself, though —

We’re on the road full-time! Woo! 🎉

After a few very full days in Portland, Oregon getting allll the last minute additions and organizational necessities purchased (and a few returned) — we are finally on the road. We are on a bit of a time crunch though, because our first big stop is Tucson, Arizona for the gem shows and the shows have an end date! The goal is to have a few full days of browsing, shopping & networking so our trip south is going to be a *smidge* rushed (but that’s ok, because, turquoise).

That being said, our first planned campsite was a fun 6 hour drive away in Northern California. But, with the perk of living in a truck camper, we made a ~spontaneous~ stop in Bend, Oregon to say hi to some family and ended up at a Mexican restaurant with margaritas in hand (cheers).

Sno park camping, OR (peep the snowmobile trailer)

Our campsite for the night was a sno park parking lot just outside of Bend. It was super quiet & had an incredible view of Mt. Bachelor, which we decided to ski at the next day. A day of blue bird skiing was the perfect way to start this trip!

Afterwards, we headed to the Lava Beds National Monument — our original first night destination — finding camp in the dark (I think that may happen more than I’d like). We were here shortly, getting back on the road the next morning for a 5 hour drive to the northern side of the Sierra Nevada pass by Mammoth Lakes.

Lava Beds National Monument, CA (lava beds not pictured 🙃)

And this is where we got our first reality check.

To make up for our impromptu ski day, we decided to have a longer drive day on day 3. But by the time we got to the turnoff for our campsite, it wasn’t plowed. And then the next campsite option also wasn’t plowed, and the same thing for the 4 backup campsites.

Have you heard how much snow the Mammoth ski area has been getting this year? Yeah, we did too. But did we think about that when picking campsites? No, because we’re amateur vanlifers.

So our plans changed. We turned into the back of a gas station (where it was -6 degrees outside) to feed the dogs and ourselves dinner, and looked at our options. It was either a random & very cold parking lot for the night, or we go over the pass in the dark where chains were required for our weight class & route ourselves to Bishop, California — 3 hours away. We opted for the latter, and got our snow boots, jackets, chains, and snacks (for my grumpy butt) ready to go.

Now in hindsight, this wasn’t all that bad. We got over the pass safely, chains ended up not being required, and my partner has been to Bishop before so he knew where he was going. But in the moment? Meghan was not so happy.

The lesson: don’t go camping where it’s snowy unless you know they’ve plowed the access roads.

Things turned around the next morning though (because we woke up to this) —

Bishop, CA

& it was sunny! One of my biggest reasons for moving on the road was because of the gloomy winters of the Pacific Northwest. I am built to need a daily dose of sunshine, so despite the cold in Bishop, the sun was so so welcome.

The fun stopped in the morning though, because we decided to take a little off-road trip to see the Buttermilk boulders. Again, poor planning was at play — and we got “stuck” on a bumpy snowy road.

Stuck isn’t the best word, because we were never actually stuck. But we *did* have to drive backwards for about 1 mile on said bumpy & snowy road because there wasn’t a spot to turn around (I got a bit carsick).

Once we got off that road, we spent the rest of the afternoon driving to Alabama Hills, California where we arrived with sunlight to spare for finding camp! This spot is incredible and I will be returning (because, just look at it) —

Alabama Hills, CA

There are a bunch of campsites spread throughout the rocks — so there’s tons of privacy if you’re willing to get to it. Many of the sites are a bit difficult to get to (and of course we decided to explore a bit) which brings us to vanlife reality check #2:

All the food is on the floor

Canned food, coffee, spaghetti noodles, and bow tie pasta adorning our floor. An incredible end to our incredible day 🙃

At this point, we were in need of a driving break. The first night ended up being super windy (rocking boat windy) so we moved camp the next morning to this incredible spot:

Alabama Hills, CA

180 degrees from the day before, day 4 was filled with rock crawling and reading in the sun (send rocks, sun, and a Sarah J. Maas book — iykyk — & I’ll be a very happy human). Day 4 was pretty uneventful otherwise, but it was probably my favorite day on our way to Tucson ☀️

Our penultimate stop before Tucson was the Mojave National Preserve — & boy was she a beaut 😍

Mojave National Preserve, CA

The cacti have officially began to show themselves and I am obsessed (this PNW lady has apparently not seen nearly enough cacti in her lifetime — I didn’t know what I was missing)

Cactus lovers! What is this guy called?!

Rocks and horses (?!) were also spotted!

Mojave National Preserve, CA

The final leg of our journey to Tucson was in Kingman, Arizona for our third and final vanlife reality moment of week 1:

A tire alignment in the Home Depot parking lot

Somewhere between off-roading in Bishop & driving on the Arizona highways, our alignment was thrown off, which meant a trip to the closest hardware store for the tools to realign the truck.

Thank goodness my partner is a car guy.

Kingman, AZ

But the cool part about being semi-stranded in Kingman is that we got to see the mountains Kingman turquoise is mined (kinda — from far away — but still very cool)! The Kingman mine is the last full-time production mine in the United States and it’s located inside a large-scale copper mine. Copper is the reason turquoise has a blue/green color; you can’t have turquoise without copper being close by!

Kingman turquoise ranges from rich blue to green to both, with & without matrix. It has so much variety & is one of my favorite stones to work with!

Kingman Turquoise: blue & green with matrix

By the end of the day, the car was aligned & we found camp 20 feet from a secluded highway. The next day we were off to Tucson!

There were lots of lessons, lots of reality checks — albeit small in the grand scheme of things — but also lots of good views & fun times our first week on the road. If the reality checks continue at this rate though, I may need to create a new segment on them (thoughts? Shall we take the romanticism out of vanlife culture?)

Next letter I’ll be sharing all about our time in Tucson & my gem show finds! Along with lots of gorgeous photos like this:

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Thank you for being here, for reading (all the way to the end?! Holy 🐄 I’m so grateful for you), and I’ll talk to you next time!

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