November 2024

In October, we celebrated our fifth “Vaniversary.” When we embarked on this adventure in 2019, we casually said, “Let’s give it five years, and then see how we feel.” So, here we are. The time has gone quickly. We’ve seen and done so much. The tallies are staggering.

The number of campsites has become a blur; we stay at more than 100 spots each year. That adds up over time. Without our Excel chart of travel data, I’d be lost to tell you exactly where we were at some specific times. The van now has over 150,000 miles and continues to be our comfy home on wheels. It has been through all the lower 48 states and has stayed in all but a few of the “fly-over states” in the Midwest.

Curiously, people still ask us, “What is your favorite place?” There are places we’d go back to in a New York minute.

Some places are just drop-dead gorgeous and returning would evoke the same sense of wonder we held when we first saw them. Some were special because of the day, the weather, the serenidipity of occurence, or the thrill of discovery. We now know that a return to a particular place might not evoke the same emotional response.

We’ve now visited close to 30 National Parks and dozens of National Monuments in the US. We’ve been to Canada and loved British Columbia and Alberta.

We’ve met fabulous people along the way. CareAVanners and camping have introduced us to a group of friends we hold dear. Family and friends have been generous in welcoming us to their homes and hosting us. We feel very fortunate to have such kind people in our lives.

In October of 2024, we spread our wings a bit and flew to Portugal for a couple of weeks. Such fun! Life continues to be good.

The bottom line, as we start our sixth year of traveing, is that we’re not done. We haven’t found that perfect place to put down roots and, more than ever, we know there’s so much more to experience. Life continues to throw us curve balls, but we are determined to stay in the game. So, we’ll keep on, keeping on, and reconnoiter further down the road.

January 2022

We are now into the third year of our van travels. Although Covid 19 has held surprises and a few setbacks, we’ve managed to visit 35 states and put 70,000 miles and two sets of new tires on the van.

John has declared the van officially “done.” We have reworked spaces to the max and now feel we have everything we need to live in this van. The van we drove away in the fall of 2019 was our “starter kit.” It took another eight months of addition, subtraction, do-overs, and fixes to make it exactly what we needed. And it is, and we love it. Now, it’s mostly preventative maintenance to keep things in good working order.

We’ve learned a lot about camping, especially the ins and outs of finding good places to stay (or not), how many tools, supplies and how much food we can cram into nooks and crannies (or not…), and are discovering what works best for us. Laundromats are still a drag, but it’s part of the deal.

We have our camp set up and breakdown routines down to a fine science. Adding the pop-up outdoor room which, for no particular reason, we nicknamed Elvis, was a game changer that gave us a place to hang out without mosquitoes.

Adding bicycles was another great improvement. We can explore a lot more, a lot faster than on foot, and have found wonderful rail to trail bike paths. And the bikes gave us the name for this blog! We have since traded up, opting for nine-speed Treks instead of seven speed. Our current bike rack wouldn’t be able to handle the weight of e-bikes. That might be something we address one of these days.

We still haven’t found a way to keep the floors clean for more than ten minutes, although two fold-up indoor-outdoor carpets help keep sand outside. Our little handheld Makita vacuum cleaner gets a daily workout.

We have organizational schemes for all the cabinets, overheads, under beds, cubbies, and the cooler. We keep trying to make things smaller, but even with these efforts, there isn’t much room for overstocking or new items. Once in a while, we overdo it, but “buy one, get one free” sometimes gets the best of us all, doesn’t it?

We did take a break from the road during the shutdown when campgrounds closed. We spent that time with family and treasured being able to stay together.

Once or twice a year, we take a short break from the road, usually staying at an Airbnb. It’s a way to spend some concentrated time on van maintenance, camping reservations, bookwork, and see doctors in our old hometown.

In our travels, we’ve been to interesting, off the beaten track sites, as well as more well known ones. We are learning that this country has so much to offer in terms of history, culture, art, cuisine, and nature. More than we ever imagined. What we’ve written about in our posts is just the tip of the iceberg. And we’ve met fabulous people doing the same thing we are. There are more than a million Americans traveling full time!

Launching pad post below. Fall 2019

Hi! We are John and Sally Kutyla.

John has been a cabinetmaker for the last 30 years. We started our post and beam home in Lima, PA in 1985, and almost finished it in 2019. You never really “finish” a home, do you? Projects to add onto the original structure and refine it were more than good challenges, they were a way for John to use his expertise to solve puzzles, and they were how we met some of our life-long friends.

Sally had always loved plants, and as a horticulturist by trade, she was lucky to be able to combine her love of plants and people in her career.

Early in 2019, John retired and turned his attention to polishing the house for sale. In July, Sally retired from her role as Director of Volunteer Services at Longwood Gardens, somewhat reluctantly saying good-bye to staff colleagues and more than 800 volunteers.

In a few short months (and boy, they really seemed short…) we sold our home, jettisoned belongings, and prepared to head out in our 2018 Dodge Promaster van. We’ve chosen the open road as our home! It was a leap of faith to leave the house we had built and lived in for 35 years, but we knew we were ready for a new adventure.

We hope you enjoy reading the highlights of our travels.