Ten: December/January 2018/2019

ROVA

The magazine for epic road trips

ROVA3 min read
From The Editor
People are wary of change. It means reassessing what you know to be true, it means throwing yourself outside of familiarity, and it means expending both mental and physical energy to come to terms with a new reality. Winter is perhaps the most bracin
ROVA1 min read
Rova In Your Words
Ching Fu’s article about social media ruining boondocking (Adventure Nine) raised some great points. We often find other people’s trash when we’re seeking out spots that are supposed to be off the beaten path. It’s annoying, yes, but it’s also a huge
ROVA3 min read
Rova Recommends
The new Phosphorescent album speaks of what Matthew Houck has gained in the five years since his last record—a new home, a wife, a child… happiness. It’s an album of comfort and sweetness, with a lingering taste of the weirdness that we’ve come to lo
ROVA1 min read
Why The Road?
We’ve always loved traveling, exploring the outdoors, and living a minimalist lifestyle. We feel our best when we’re exploring new places and gaining new experiences. Full-time RVing allows us to do all of this! Earlier this year, we decided to go fo
ROVA5 min read
The Rebuild
Once I typed those four words into Craigslist from a coffee shop outside Portland, Oregon, there was really no going back. I didn’t want to admit it then, of course. Even though I felt the telltale tightening in my chest brought on by stress, and th
ROVA5 min read
A Family’s Roots Begin Where The Old Canada Road Ends
While I’ve always known that my ancestors immigrated from France to Canada, a recent road trip and review of genealogy documents firmly set my roots in the Quebec region of Canada. Those roots perhaps explain why I’ve driven from my Walpole, Massachu
ROVA6 min read
Surviving The Canadian Winter In A Van
Originally, the trip was meant to be from Alaska to Argentina. Due to visa issues and a lack of time, however, my girlfriend Sara and I ended up leaving California in the middle of winter, which kind of scratched Alaska and its prohibitively cold reg
ROVA2 min read
Five Tips For Tackling Van Life In Extreme Temperatures
1. This kind of goes without saying, really, but pack warm bedding! I’m talking massive quilts or blankets, and minus 20-30 sleeping bags, because unless you are able to magic a hot shower out of nowhere, if you get cold at night you are never gettin
ROVA6 min read
Human. Nature.
Humans. What a bunch of weirdos. In all other species, threats to well-being and existence arrive externally. You’re an impala? Gotta keep an eye out for the lions. You’re an ant? Stay away from sunlight and magnifying glasses. Humans are unique in t
ROVA4 min read
Fear And Love On The Road
Fear is a primary emotion; it’s a survival tool that has kept our species alive. But fear is weird. It’s mean and irrational. It doesn’t care about your feelings or your plans. It will burn the whole house down if you let it. For me, fear sometimes g
ROVA6 min read
Music And Mania In The United States
America has some of the biggest music cities in the world, all of them well worth a visit both for their music heritage, and for the stories of singers and songwriters that have become legend over the years. We’ve rounded up a few cities for music-lo
ROVA7 min read
Are We There Yet?
I’ve been working on this piece for several weeks now, and have started and discarded many iterations of it. I found myself trying to stick to a certain version of my story, the bite-sized one, or the in-depth one, the romantic one, or the one that w
ROVA4 min read
A Fall Balancing Act
Hoisting the crab cage onto the boat is much harder than Dave makes it look. I grip the yellow rope the way he showed me, and pull it out of the choppy water. My shoulders burn as the cage emerges, crawling with crabs. Andy, Sandy and I “ooh” and “ah
ROVA2 min read
Fall In The Adirondacks
You know the feeling. The one of waking up in your tent with all but the tip of your nose warm inside your sleeping bag; your breath gently floating up as you exhale in the cool morning air. A shiver of excitement runs down your spine in anticipation
ROVA5 min read
Wintering At A Ski Resort
As winter rolls around, most full-time RVers head south, but a few years ago for winter, we decided to go the opposite direction. After years of flying west in search of fresh powder on annual snowboard trips—and not always succeeding—my partner, Jer
ROVA5 min read
Bikes, Books And Beer In Big Sky Country
There’s a saying that people in my hometown like to share, a bon mot courtesy of Norman Maclean in his novel-turned-classic-film A River Runs Through It: “The world is full of bastards, the number increasing rapidly the further one gets from Missoula
ROVA4 min read
The Beauty Of The High Desert
In the fall, Sedona hits you. It gets inside you as any good place can, and it stays there forever, whispering for you to return. Deserts can do that; they have a kind of magic that arrives on a soft breeze in the night, daring you to look up at the
ROVA5 min read
DRIVE & DIVE: THE FLORIDA KEYS
If you head south beyond the Florida coast, you’ll find that although the road doesn’t go on forever, the party never ends. At the end of Florida State Road A1A, along the 113-mile Overseas Highway and over Seven Mile Bridge, is a roadside adventure
ROVA5 min read
Love Of A Lighthouse
For some, lighthouses are a lovely stop on a road trip, and for others they are a full-blown obsession. Pharologists (as lighthouse students or enthusiasts are called) cite endless reasons for the love that they feel for these illuminant protectors,
ROVA5 min read
Seeking Transcendence In Upstate New York
My first year living and working full-time in New York City, I was filled with equal parts wonder and existential fatigue. I had landed from the southwest with romantic ideas about writing and art—idealizations that were gradually whittled down by th

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