My Plans for Travel in My Van!

    Hello! This is another post that you guys voted on! I had more votes this week than last week, and I really appreciate that! Here is the poll for next week if any of you would like to vote again: Poll! This post is a very exciting one! I am going to be writing about my current travel plans while living in my van.

     This post will be separated into two sections, concrete and vague. Concrete plans will be plans that I have thought out and have a good idea of what they are going to be like. Vague plans are going to be plans that are still up in the air and are not planned out much at all. If any of you have any travel suggestions, please leave them in the comments because I would love to have more travel ideas for my van!

    I am going to be starting with some vague plans. I would really love to do all of these things, but I have not thought about them that much. Some of these are more vague than others, but eventually I will know what I am doing. 

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    The first vague plan that I have is to travel upwards in the United States to find some forests and rivers that I can camp next to. I love both trees and water, and have not been in many forests throughout my life. I would love to camp in a forest with a river, and I am looking forward to finding out places that have these things. This would be an amazing experience for me in my opinion because these places are so calm and beautiful that it would be so different from my daily life. 

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    Another vague plan that I have, the one that I actually based my van life off of, is to travel to concerts and festivals across the country. I love both concerts and festivals with my entire heart, so it was just natural for me to choose a lifestyle that revolved around attending them.

     Right now, it is pretty difficult for me to attend festivals since I live with my parents and doing road trips and planning them and buying tickets and preparing for these kinds of things is a big hassle. This is especially difficult when these things take place hundreds and hundreds of miles away from my house, and both a road trip and a plane ticket would be very expensive. Living in my van will make this a lot easier, and I am really looking forward to this new chapter in my life. 

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    I would also love to travel to all of the coasts in the United States and maybe even Canada, when I feel the desire to branch out like that. I love the beach and I love surfing, so this also feels like a natural travel plan to have while living in my van. After this van life chapter in my life, I would love to have a house near the coast so I could visit the beach every day. I also think that the towns and cities on the coast are also very interesting, and I would love to explore these to the best of my ability while I am living in my van. 

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    Next up are some of my concrete plans that I have come up with in the past year. I am really excited for these, probably even more than how excited I am for the vague plans, because I know a lot more about these plans and how they will end up happening. 

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    The first concrete travel plan I would like to tell you guys about is visiting every state. I would love to do a huge road trip that crosses through every state that I can get to in my van. I count this as a concrete road trip because there is already a plan of the “Ultimate Road Trip” and you can look at it at this link: Ultimate Road Trip! I would love to do this entire road trip to see every state.

     After this road trip, I would love to make a list of the states I liked the most, and then decide which states I want to explore further in the future after I have a little taste of every state. I would love to completely explore every state, but I think that having a priority list after doing this road trip would make that a lot easier.

     This road trip would be about 9 days of continous driving, so it would ideally take 2 to 3 months if I would like to stop and explore every place that we pass. I know that this sounds like a really long road trip, but since I am living in my van, it would basically be like taking my house with me everywhere I go. 

    Plus, I would be working and doing college exclusively online at this time, so that would not be a problem while I am on the road. If everything in my life goes according to the current plan, there will be no problem if I want to get up and go on a 3 month road trip at any point during the year. 

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    This plan is similar to the last plan. I would love to visit every national park in the country, and there is also a big road map for that, at this link if you would like to look at it: Ultimate National Park Road Trip! This kind of looks like the exact opposite from the last road trip in terms of where all of the destinations are located. 
   

I would really love to visit every national park in the country. A few years ago, this would not have appealed to me since I did not find much interest in natural things, but over time, I have grown to love the outdoors and nature. This would also probably end up being a very long road trip, but I am okay with that. 

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    Another idea that crossed my mind was to combine these first two plans into one huge road trip, but I don’t know if that would be too much or if I would be up for that at the time of the road trip. Including both road trips into one road trip would make it close to a 6 month road trip. 

    Maybe after I do both of these road trips separately, I can plan a much larger road trip to other places that I want to see in the United States that I did not during these two. This could be a longer road trip than 3 months, so that it would be a similar feeling to if I combined both of the first road trips in the first place. I think taking one super long road trip to begin with would be better than doing all of them at once to begin with. 

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    The most exciting concrete plan I have is the west coast road trip I planned last year with a couple of my closest friends. I planned out a road trip that would go from Las Vegas, my hometown, down to San Diego, and all the way up the west coast, staying as close to the coast as possible, to the very tip top of Washington. After we reach the very top of the west coast in the United States, we will pick either the same route we came or a more inland route to travel back to Las Vegas.

     The driving alone that will take place during this road trip is over 40 hours, so the road trip itself will take a lot longer than that because I want to explore all of the coast and all of the towns on the coast. I want to soak up as much information as the coast has to offer me.

     Ideally, this road trip would take about 3 months, if I really want to spend as much time as possible in each place that we stay in.

     I also do not know if this will take place inside my van alone, or if there will be another campervan that we have to rent out. There would be 4 people total attending this road trip, so I heavily doubt my van would fit all of them in the nighttime, and besides, my van would only hold 2 people in the seats that have seatbelts. 

    Eventually, I would like to do the same kind of road trip along the bottom of the United States and along the east coast, but those will be much futher along in the future than this road trip. I would also love to do this kind of a huge road trip across different, inland sections of the United States as well. I love road trips and I really want to explore the entire country before I can’t. 

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    The last concrete road trip that I would like to tell you guys about is visiting the lightning field in New Mexico. Originally, I read about this in a book a long time ago, and that is what intrigued me in the first place. The author of the book brought his girlfriend to this location to propose to her, and he also wrote about their general experience here. 

    This is an art installation, and I have yet to learn a whole lot more about it, but I would love to visit it and learn more that way. I know that it is supposed to be a really powerful experience when the art installation comes to life, and I would love to experience that. 

    If you would like to learn more about this art installation, here is a link to their website: The Lightning Field! This would not be a very long road trip for me, since it would only take about 7 hours to get to from Las Vegas.

     However, this piece of art is designed to be viewed for a long period of time, so they offer overnight stays there. I would love to stay overnight at this place to fully experience the art, so it would end up being a trip that takes a few days. This is still really short compared to the other road trips, so it would be easier for me to plan sooner.

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     These are all of the plans for travel that I have so far, and I might write more blog posts about other plans I have when I come up with them. Thank you so much for reading my blog post and supporting my journey.

     P.S. If you would like to participate in the poll for next Wednesday’s post, here is a link: Poll!