I wrote a bunch about this trip last week, but now the video’s been posted so I thought I would write about it… again.

Instead of repeating what I wrote last week (you can read it) or recapping the video (you can watch it), I thought I would write about something else I’ve been thinking about since returning from my trip and that is… vanlife shouldn’t be fast. In fact, the slower you travel in your van, the more fun you’ll have.

I still own a home and work a full-time job. I’ve camped a few times on work nights which involves rushing around after work, finding a spot, sleeping in the van, and rushing to work in the morning. Camping on the weekends is more fun, but even then time is limited. Every minute in the van is a minute I’m away from the family.

For my trip to West Virginia I had to take vacation from work, and since the trip was all about the events in West Virginia that meant getting there as fast as possible. As you’ll see in the video, that meant a lot of fast-food along the way and not a lot of scenery chewing. Missouri is a beautiful state and we saw most of it at 80 miles per hour. I wasn’t able to take two weeks off from work, which meant covering the 1,000 miles between Oklahoma and West Virginia in two days, spending six days there, and then making the same drive back again in two days.

There are two types of road trips, I think. There are the kind that are all about the destination, when your only goal is to get there. We’ve done that plenty of times. But there are also the trips where the destination is less important than the journey. We’ve done trips like that before too, and they’re a lot of fun… but they take a lot of time, and time’s not always available.

One thing I’ve learned about vanlife is that the slower I go, the more fun I have. Part of that is simply because of the complications built into vanlife. Everything takes longer. Everything. Doing something like microwaving a frozen burrito in the van (not every day is a “grill on the campfire” day) involves a lot of scooting around, shuffling of things, finding of items… hell, even cleaning up after a meal can be a pain in the neck. In my home when the trash is full, someone grabs the trash bag, talks it out the back door, and dumps it into the waste bin. When the trash fills up in the van not only is there nowhere to put more trash, but it’s going to involve driving around and finding some place to dump your trash. I can’t stress how many times I’ve learned this lesson the hard way. Everything takes more time in a van.

On the next trip we take, I either want to take more days off from work or plan a shorter trip. I don’t want to cover 1,000 miles in two days next time. I want to cover, you know, 500 miles. I want time to stop and smell the roses, so to speak.

I hope you like the video. YouTube gives me an excuse to film our adventures and a place to share them. Thanks for sharing them with me.