Every Place We've Stopped on Moments in the Miles

Arizona

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Antelope Canyon is what happens when water is given a few million years and no deadline. Light falls in beams and the walls curve like something poured. An hour south, Sedona glows like it’s lit from the inside. Arizona kept humbling us.

California

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

We’d seen the photos our whole lives; none of them prepare you for the scale. We stayed until the last light left the granite and drove out of the valley in the dark, not talking, the way you leave a place that just rearranged something in you.

Cambodia

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

We ferried out to Koh Rong and landed on the wrong beach for us: younger, louder, somebody else’s good time. So we went back to Sihanoukville, to a hotel that got every small detail right, and stayed two extra nights for no better reason than that. Eight months on the road teaches you when to quit a plan.

Colorado

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

We chased the aspens for two weeks, whole mountainsides going gold a ridge at a time, and us rerouting every morning to stay inside it. Colorado in October is the best argument for a house on wheels we know.

Florida

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Our first winter in the van ended the day we reached the panhandle. We meant to pass through Santa Rosa Beach and stayed a season instead: sugar-white sand, the Gulf warming by April, nowhere we had to be. That was the spring we learned the van was also for staying put.

Indonesia

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

A short boat ride off Bali there’s a smaller island, and off that one, a smaller one still. Orange umbrellas, water you could read a book through, and no good reason to check the calendar. Nusa Lembongan is where we stopped counting days.

Laos

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Two days on a slow boat down the Mekong: car bench seats, a roaring engine, and time moving the way the river decided it would. Some of what happened on that water still sits with us.

Maine

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

We drove up Cadillac Mountain in the dark, September cold, coffee in the cupholders and a blanket around Karlee’s shoulders. When the sun came up over Frenchman Bay, every stranger on that summit went quiet at the same moment we did. Acadia was the far end of our first big loop; everything after it was the drive home.

Malaysia

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

George Town might be our favorite city in Malaysia: UNESCO shophouses, street art that doesn’t try too hard, and food worth planning a whole day around. We ate char kway teow and asam laksa and cendol and wished we had more time. We still talk about going back just to eat.

Michigan

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Years of mountains and deserts, and then Lake Superior pulled this out: green glass under the cliffs at Miners Castle, kayaks like toys far below. We gave 2024 to the Great Lakes and Michigan kept the best of it, Pictured Rocks one day, Sleeping Bear the next.

Montana

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

The trail to Grinnell climbs past lakes so turquoise they look printed, and ends at the edge of ice that has been quietly leaving for a century. People kept telling us we were getting too old for this. The glacier disagreed.

New Mexico

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

White gypsum to every horizon, cool underfoot even in the heat. We ran the dunes barefoot like kids, two people well past the age the world says this is for, having the best afternoon of the year.

Oregon

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

We drove the Oregon coast slower than any road before it. Every pull-out was another sea stack, another beach with nobody on it. The fog rolls in, the coffee gets refilled, and you stop pretending you have somewhere else to be.

Singapore

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Two days is not enough for Singapore, frankly. It was enough to eat our way through the hawker centres, walk the colonial district, and feel the ambition of a city-state that decided to take everything seriously. Next time gets a full week.

South Africa

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Before there was a we, Jesse spent a month crossing South Africa, Johannesburg to Cape Town. It was the trip that planted the question this whole site keeps trying to answer: what if we just kept going?

St. John, U.S. Virgin Islands

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Before the van and before Asia, Karlee spent five seasons living on St. John: barefoot commutes, hurricane seasons, and a blue you eventually stop trying to describe. Some chapters you don’t get to share. You just bring what they taught you.

Thailand

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Chiang Mai was the first place in Asia that felt like ours: morning markets, gold rooftops, seventy-cent noodles eaten standing up. It’s where eight months stopped being a plan and started being a life.

The Philippines

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

The Philippines came after weeks of mainland travel and felt like a reset: islands again, a different light. Manila, then Bohol and the Chocolate Hills, then Palawan — Puerto Princesa, the long road north to Port Barton, and El Nido. The four-day boat through the archipelago is slow and occasionally uncomfortable and completely worth it. You sleep on the boat. We came off it feeling like different people than the ones who got on.

United States

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Forty-eight states, eight years, one van. This is the map above, the slow version of home.

Utah

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

We parked close enough to hear the water: red rock, glass-flat blue, and a silence that took a day to get used to. Some campsites you leave and forget. That one we still talk about.