FREEWHEELING
WHEN I LOOK BACK on the start of the trip, I realize I was selling van life to my kids right up to the loading of the old Eurovan.
“Look, a sink!” I exclaimed, as though I’d spotted a rare Javan rhino. “And these seats fold into a bed, and the top pops up into another bed!”
Arms remained crossed. What finally swayed my five-and nine-year-old skeptics was learning that van dwellers can, under certain circumstances, roll out of bed directly into a pancake situation without the typical strain of walking down a hallway. Amy, my wife, shoved one last grocery bag in the back, and we climbed in.
It was a normal August morning in the Bay Area at the start of an abnormal undertaking. My family was about to trade our hemmed-in existence for the literal and metaphorical California we too often neglect, a realm of adventure and spontaneity and solemn redwoods and meandering rivers and freedom. God bless Jim whatever-his-last-name-was, owner of our new van home.
I’d been introduced to Jim through a company called GoCamp. Essentially an Airbnb for camper vans, GoCamp lets a regular person like me rent an affordable VW from a regular person like Jim when he isn’t using it. After signing the rental agreement, I’d immediately begun to plot a five-day road trip of some of the West’s best: We’d tour the lakes and canyons of Plumas National Forest. Watch for the bears and elk of Mendocino National
