It was time to put the relationship to the van adventure test. We had already survived a quick overnight camper adventure, but could we squeeze into a much smaller space with no bathroom and still like each other?
We took off with the two giant dogs and drove out of Gunnison without much of a plan about where we were heading. I enjoyed letting my boyfriend drive while I took in the sights along the way and tried to keep Rico from making his way into the front seat.
Eventually, we landed in the little town of Ouray, Colorado: The Switzerland of America. We found a hike that traveled the perimeter of the town and set off with the dogs.
We found waterfalls and scrambled over snowy spots. Again, being mostly plan-less, we just hiked until we decided we should turn around.
Each new mile brought more beauty as the setting sun played with the color of the snowy peaks in the distance.
Then, suddenly, it was nearly dark.
I struggle to see well in the dark and we left unprepared without headlamps, but my boyfriend insisted we go just a little further. Soon we came to a clearing with one of the most magnificent views I had ever seen, right at sunset.
The dogs chased each other through the tall grass and I did my best to soak in all the happiness of that sunset in the mountains with my pack. I wanted to stay in that moment forever.
We couldn’t stay though, dark was settling in quickly. Since the trail circled the town, we could really hop off the trail at any point and wander back to the van along the streets of “downtown.”
I was more than ready to be back on the pavement, but my boyfriend still wanted us to wander along the trail for a bit longer. Despite my discomfort of not being able to see well and lighting my way with my phone flashlight, the time together and adventure of wandering in the dark was well worth it.
Eventually, we made our way back down Main Street where we dropped our two tired dogs off at the van, ditched the idea of cooking dinner, and found a spot to go eat instead. I introduced my boyfriend to “Detroit Style” pizza and then we ended the night with a soak in the local hot springs.
We took Forrest up a dark, icy, dirt road, putting the new, studded tires to the test, and called it a night.
In the morning, we found ourselves at a beautiful, little campsite next to a river.
I made breakfast and enjoyed sharing my home and routines with my boyfriend. But when my boyfriend woke up, my blissful little bubble soon deflated. I had slept alright and was generally just riding the high of adventuring with my boyfriend in the van, but he wasn’t quite having the same experience.
He hadn’t slept well being crammed into the tiny space that was made even smaller by two dogs who insisted on sharing the bed. Now it was too cold to spill out into the campsite and I was taking up most of the “living space” while cooking. The heater was loud and the fan was squeaky and he was cranky coming off of a bad night of sleep.
And I was sensitive.
The criticisms of the van hit a sore spot left behind by ex-boyfriends. Although he didn’t mean to be critical, all the hurt had been stirred up inside of me. I felt the tears rising to the surface.
But then I took a breath and remembered why I built this van in the first place. It wasn’t built for two people and their dogs; it was built for me and Dakota. It was perfect for us, and really that was all that mattered.
Maybe this relationship wasn’t standing up to the van test, but no relationship had survived that test before. Maybe no relationship was meant to, and that this van would always just be for my adventures with Dakota.
He saw my emotional response to the cranky sentiments he hadn’t meant as complaints and reassured me that he didn’t hate the van. He reminded me that he knows it’s awesome for me and Dakota but that squeezing the four of us into it wasn’t ideal. And I knew that, too. Hopefully, we’d get to do more traveling together someday, but we’d just have to dream up a perfect vehicle for the four of us.
We rounded out our trip to Ouray with another waterfall hike, this time without the dogs. Then we checked out Ouray Brewery, which I highly recommend, before heading back to Gunnison.
The weather report showed a good snowstorm heading to Colorado and I was ready to take advantage of it. The closest ski resort on my pass was Copper Mountain, so I drove the 3 hours to Frisco, Colorado just in time for the snow.
I enjoyed the vastly different routines of winter vanlife. I cooked breakfast in the ski resort parking lot and loved being able to come home at lunch and snuggle with my pup. Although it was still early in the season, you can’t beat a powder day.
I snowboarded for the next few days, doing my best to wrap my head around this life where I get to snowboard every day, midweek, and with fresh powder and no chairlift lines.
I did my best to balance exercising myself and then making time to exercise Dakota too. Winter brought this new challenge because my favorite activity didn’t include Dakota, so making time for her to get outside would be especially important, but also more difficult with shorter days and frigid temperatures.
The spot we were staying at gets windier, colder weather than some of the surrounding areas. The upcoming low temperatures were near zero, with windchills in the negative double-digits. While the powder days were worth the struggles, winter vanlife was proving to be a whole new beast.
Vanlife is hard, but winter vanlife presents all sorts of unique challenges. Despite having a heater, I still was waking up to frozen water lines due to their location along the floor. Shorter, snowy days meant limited sun on the solar panels and keeping my computer charged during work was increasingly difficult. But each powder day reminded me why I signed up for this.
Thanksgiving was approaching and it was going to be my first Thanksgiving alone, ever. I had made the decision to stay in the van for Thanksgiving, knowing that I’d be flying home for Christmas in just a few weeks, but as the day approached, I found myself feeling a little sad. My boyfriend, who also works a strange schedule, would be working on Thanksgiving. I did my best to convince myself that it was “just another day” and we had plans to celebrate Thanksgiving together on his next day off work.
I began the journey back to Gunnison but stopped in my favorite Buena Vista spot again to split up the drive. I woke up on Thanksgiving and counted up all the things I was most grateful for. I talked to my family on the phone and then did the thing that makes me happiest: I wandered around the snowy campground with Dakota.
That afternoon, my boyfriend called me. Due to the weather, he wouldn’t be going to work today after all.
I packed up as quickly as I could and drove straight to his house. It seemed silly to not celebrate Thanksgiving, but we hadn’t planned to celebrate today so we didn’t have any food. 2pm on Thanksgiving wasn’t too late to get a turkey, right?
We set off to the grocery store in search of a turkey. We picked up all the sides, but there wasn’t a single turkey left. Luckily, Gunnison is just big enough to have two grocery stores, and the other one had turkeys still. The unfortunate part was that the turkeys that weren’t frozen happened to be the expensive, organic, brined turkeys. The reasonably priced turkeys were frozen. We were determined to have this Thanksgiving dinner though, so we grabbed the expensive bird and headed to the house.
Soon, the turkey was in the oven and we were both excited for our last-minute celebration. We got a fire going in the wood-burning stove and relaxed while we waited on the turkey.
We knew we’d be eating late, but the temperature on the turkey was rising nicely so we began getting the sides ready. The wood-burning stove ended up getting too hot and eventually, we ended up in shorts and t-shirts, sweating in the kitchen as we cooked the sides. Nothing about this dinner was quite going as planned.
We were wrapping up the sides and the thermometer went off, signaling the turkey had reached the right temperature. We stuck the thermometer probe into another part of the turkey and watched as the temperature dropped quickly, back to double-digit temperatures.
There was nothing we could do but put the turkey back in and try our hardest to be patient.
At 9:30pm, our turkey was finally cooked through. We had nibbled our way through most of the sides and were nearly ready for bed. It was as far as you could get from a perfect Thanksgiving, but spending it together had made it perfect enough for us.
I stayed in Gunnison for the next week, hiking with the dogs while my boyfriend was at work, and trying to enjoy a slower pace. But I couldn’t quite settle into houselife this time.
Deep down inside, I was longing for the road. I missed the van and the adventures. I wanted to spend time with my boyfriend, but I also needed my life on the road. This lifestyle had become such an integral part of who I was that I was feeling a bit lost without it.
So, I packed up and set off for one of my other favorite spots, Twin Lakes, Colorado. I’ve been here many times now and it’s one of the most beautiful places I’ve ever been to. As soon as I pulled up, I felt like I could breathe again.
The view out my kitchen window, Dakota wandering around camp, and settling back into the routine of just the two of us instantly had me feeling whole.
I had been feeling so out of balance lately. I was putting my lifestyle on the backburner as I put my time and energy into my new relationship. I knew that’s what I needed to do if it were going to stand a chance, but now I needed the pendulum to swing back the other way. I needed to put the time and energy back into myself for a little in order to really be my best. I couldn’t grow this relationship without making sure I was truly happy and centered on my own.
After pausing in Twin Lakes for a night to fill my lungs with some nature, I headed to Winter Park Ski Resort. This is another resort that I traveled to back in college nearly 10 years ago.
Winter Park in 2010 
Winter park 10 years later
A couple of weeks earlier, some other van friends I only knew through Instagram had added me to a group chat with other vanlifers with the same ski pass. We were mostly spread all over the west at this point but we were sharing what we knew about places to sleep near the resorts. It was fun knowing there were other people out there doing the same thing as me.
At the time that I was heading to Winter Park, there was another couple there from our group chat.
I rolled up into the parking lot just about at my bedtime, so I quickly introduced myself and then went to sleep.
The next day, I met up with Jessica and Parker of www.parksandwils.com. They had done some part-time stints in the van before but were still a few weeks shy of hitting the road full-time. We hit the slopes together for a few hours and then decided to head back to our vans for lunch.
I had arrived about an hour after them, so I wasn’t parked in the same lot they were. I took off my snowboard and started the trek up the road towards Forrest. As I was walking though, I wasn’t seeing the van. I had parked along the road at an angle, and all the cars here were parallel parked. I figured if I kept walking up the road, I’d make it to the van sooner or later. But eventually, I got to the end of the cars parked along the road. Still no van.
When your car is nearly 10 feet tall and has distinctive features such as solar panels and rust in particular places, it’s hard to lose your car. Since I got the van, I’ve never worried about remembering where I’ve parked because I simply look out into the parking lot and see it towering over the other cars. But now, I had made a huge mistake by not paying closer attention.
I was starting to worry.
I pulled out google maps and tried to figure out where in the world I could have left it. It had to be along this road, there weren’t any other roads leading to the resort. I walked up and down one more time, lugging my board and trudging along in my boots and snow pants through the deep snow. By this point, I was sweating and exhausted from my search.
There aren’t too many times where I get sad about being out here alone anymore. But in this instance, where I had nobody to ask, “Do you remember where we parked?” or “Where else should we look?” I felt hopelessly alone. There was nobody to help me solve this problem. It was all on me, and today that felt overwhelming.
I went back to the base and got out my phone again, looking at the map more closely, trying to stay calm and think clearly. Then, I saw another parking lot. This one was a lot further up the road and I’d need to take a chairlift to get there, but that had to be where the van was parked. Sure enough, as I was on the chairlift up there, it all started looking familiar. I walked through the parking lot and up the road, and there was Forrest, towering over the other cars.
Jessica and Parker had already warmed up and eaten lunch by the time I finally found my van, but I was able to meet back up with them for a few more laps that afternoon. They headed back to Denver and I spent the next few days riding at Winter Park alone.
There was lots of new snow to enjoy, which was perfect for snowboarding but was making it difficult to walk Dakota. There were trails beginning right in the parking lot where I was staying but the snow was so deep that I sunk right past my knees as soon as I stepped into it. I don’t have snowshoes or cross-country skis, but I do have a splitboard.
If you’ve never heard of a splitboard, it’s essentially a snowboard that can be split into skis and used to access backcountry trails (ski trails outside of resorts). I wanted to take Dakota out splitboarding but needed to get her used to being around me on the board first. I dusted off the splitboard, essentially using them as cross-country skis on an extremely flat trail, but I was no longer sinking into the snow! We adventured through the snow, excited to get Dakota some real exercise despite looking ridiculous in my backcountry gear on this cross-country trail.
From Winter Park, I made my way back to Frisco and Copper Mountain. A few couples from the Instagram group chat were going to be there and I was excited to meet more fellow ski bums. When I got to town though, my first order of business was to find a shower.
Up until this point in my vanlife journey, showers have either come from Planet Fitness locations or from my solar shower and a nearby river. Winter vanlife has complicated my shower plan. Most mountain towns don’t have Planet Fitness gyms and an outdoor solar shower is out of the question.
Luckily though, the vanlife community is amazing. One of the couples from our group chat has a van as well as a condo near Copper Mountain.
Their condo has a hot tub as well as showers near the hot tub. They texted me the code to access the hot tub and I spent the afternoon soaking and relaxing and finally getting a shower after far too long without one.
That night I made my way to the “Kayak Lot,” an overnight parking lot in Frisco and what will eventually become a staple in my winter vanlifing. I woke up the next morning to find a foot of snow and a parking lot full of other vanlifers.
I met up with one of the couples, Natacha and Vincent, at Copper Mountain. They can be found on Instagram @MissLollipopTheVan. We hit it off right away and enjoyed DEEP snow on probably the best powder day of my life.
We skied as long as our legs could stand it since it was still early in the season before we had our ski legs.
That night we all piled into the Kayak Lot again, with even more van friends lining the parking lot this time.
This storm brought 3 powder days in a row and we did our best to get out there for all of them. I spent most of my time with Natacha and Vincent and we also met up with Kate and Curt of @GoGoGallaghers for some laps.
My legs were sore and I was exhausted from trying to balance snowboarding all day, socializing in the evening, and working overnight.
Evenings while winter vanlifing are tricky. It’s too cold and dark to socialize outside, so although we had a parking lot full of friends, everyone was cooped up in their own vans. None of our vans are big enough to pile many people into, so evenings in the winter can be pretty isolating. Everyone I was with was a couple, so they all hung out with their partners, but I was alone.
Luckily, Natacha and Vincent took me under their wing and adopted me into their van. They invited me (and Dakota) over for taco night and cooked up an amazing spread of vegan tacos. I sure am fortunate to know such kind people.
I had the next day off work and it also happened to be Danny’s birthday (of @the.vandersons), so a whole crew of us (4 van couples plus me) all ventured into downtown Frisco to celebrate.
We bundled up and walked to a nearby bar where we drank beer and swapped stories of peeing in jars and vanlife struggles that our other friends can’t understand.
After a little time away, I was missing my boyfriend. We had tried to meet up while I was at Copper Mountain but snowy roads had made it impossible.
Now he was back in Gunnison and I had a few days before I had to be in Denver for a flight, so I decided to head back to his house to surprise him.
I left first thing in the morning after work and broke my 2-hour rule, determined to get to his house before he had to leave for work. I watched the sun rising over the mountains and watched the temperature drop from -5 to -22 as I made my way closer to what I’m convinced is the coldest place in Colorado.
As I pulled onto his street, my heart raced. I had heard from him that morning and made sure he was home, while also doing my best to make him think I had plans to ski that day.
I imagined pulling into his driveway and having him come walking out of his house, shocked to see me. Forrest is far too loud for sneaking up on someone and big windows in his living room look right out onto the driveway.
I turned into the driveway with a stupid smile plastered across my face and palms sweaty from the excitement of pulling off the surprise. I shut off the van, waiting to see Rico barking from the windows, but there was no sign of anyone.
I got out of the van, feeling unsure, and opened his front door. Still no Rico. My heart sank as I realized he must be gone on a walk.
Dakota and I walked around the house looking for clues, then suddenly Rico came bounding out of the bedroom.
As soon as he saw me, he started barking and crying and melting into a puddle on the floor. A moment later, my boyfriend appeared in his towel, shampoo still in his hair.
“What in the world are you doing here?” he said as a smile crept across his face.
I was flooded with relief and joy. The surprise was a success.
To appreciate the beauty of a snowflake it is necessary to stand out in the cold.
Aristotle
What a great blog post! Love reading about winter vanlife adventures, and your VanFam.