We had grand plans of posting a lot more (or at all!) last summer once we moved into the van and headed to Alaska, but our summer didn’t turn out quite as we had expected. We experienced a lot of unforeseen challenges on the road, particularly having to do with drastic changes in both of our (previously very stable) employment. Throughout the summer, Nic was working 50-hour weeks in addition to interviewing with various companies, and we were driving a LOT of miles (over 9,000 total).

Eagle Lake near Anchorage, Alaska

Needless to say, our awesome summer of van-dwelling turned into more of a stress-filled summer of uncertainty, so once we returned to Utah, we decided to rent an apartment for a few months to regroup, refocus, and spend some time with our families and friends. Nic also started a new job in December, which was a bit scary after working for the same company for the last 15+ years, so we figured it would be good to have a stable home during the transition.

Even with all of the challenges last summer, we still had a great time and were able to do some pretty amazing things on our epic Alaskan road trip, so we hope to catch up on those posts soon!

A Dead Sloth

In early February we moved out of our apartment, sold most of our furniture, put the rest into storage, and were preparing to move into the van when a ($30) valve broke, taking out the piston and ruining the cylinder head on our two-year-old engine with only 18,000 miles on it. This was a huge blow financially, and we now had nowhere to live for the next few months.

We took a trip to Orlando with my family, which gave us some time away to figure out our next steps (and drown our sorrows in Butter Beer!). After a lot of discussion, we decided to go ahead and put another new engine in the van, but this still left us with nowhere to live until it was fixed. We searched online and ended up finding a beautiful AirBnB outside of Cortez, CO, which is where we’ll be staying for the month of March.

We have some big plans for 2018, so we hope to use this time to catch up on blog posts and plan out our next few months!