To be honest when we left Canada on our first trip in 2018 trip with our big 5th wheel trailer we didn’t have a real plan, we didn’t know exactly where we were going, I’d only driven our massive 350 truck once and felt it was too wide for the road, Adam had only driven with the trailer attached once, but we had a pile of maps and a GPS that was newly updated with 3 countries of maps. That night we ended up in Battle Creek Michigan it was cold, snowy and dark and guess what we found just off the highway....Walmart! Our first night on our big trip and we were going to sleep in a Walmart parking...
After we left family in Phoenix for Thanksmus (American Thanksgiving and early family Christmas) we found a cool mountain that was about an hour or so out of Phoenix that was on BLM land. For those of you who don't know BLM stands for Bureau of Land Management and they have over 12 million acres of public land in Arizona along. This is land that you are allowed to camp, hike and stay on for 14 days for FREE, then move at least 25 miles away and can go to another part of the BLM land and in most place in Arizona you don't need to register when you arrive, just in Quartzsite.
November 1st, we crossed the boarder into the USA and it took us about 5 days of driving to make it to Roswell New Mexico. We stayed a week at a funky little ufo themed campground. We took Matti (our truck) in for a few repairs and found that Val (our 5th wheel) had so many wood cupboards, wood walls, wood floors, and huge window valances, that is was nearly impossible for us to work because it was so dim and dark. That was the week the unofficial remodeling started. The dusty, dark and heavy window valances were the first thing to go and already things seemed brighter.
Last November, after about 14 years of living and traveling China and Asia, Adam and I decided to move back to Canada. The months leading up to that, we had been watching a lot of documentaries and youtube videos about van life and we thought living and traveling in a sprinter van was the perfect idea for us.
