Twenty: August/September 2020

ROVA

The magazine for epic road trips

ROVA2 min read
From The Editor
I can't say that I'm the most positive person on the planet, but I'm a pretty upbeat kind of gal. Class clown, karaoke partner, adventure buddy—I’m always ready for the fun to start. I enjoy being happy, and I love it when people around me are, too.
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Editor and Publisher: Gemma Peckham gemma@rovamag.com Advertising Sales: media@rovamag.com 646-582-2033 Designer: Abby Schmidt Editorial Assistant: Sam Brown ■
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Rova In Your Words
It was the evening after a day of hiking that I found myself in a local bookstore just outside of Zion. Peeking off one of the shelves was ROVA Adventure Seventeen, and it called to me. After a brief flip through, I instinctively purchased the magazi
ROVA2 min readCooking, Food & Wine
Rova Recommends
Wyoming is the least-populated state in the United States, making it the perfect spot for social distancing. And with late summer throwing heat around with abandon, Fremont Canyon—with its sheer rock walls and beautiful river—provides the perfect sec
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Gear Up!
There’s a reason that good things are often called “electric.” The atmosphere is electric, our chemistry is electric, the lights in our homes are electric… see, good things. When you’re off-grid, electricity can be hard to come by—unless you harness
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Why The Road?
I was paying $1300 a month to rent a room in a house with four other people, and I knew there must be another way. I fell in love with bus life after watching countless videos on YouTube, and I decided it was for me! Building out my vision for my bus
ROVA5 min read
Take Me To The Mountain, Bike
You’ve got your bikes mounted on the back of the RV; you’re all set for an adventure off the beaten track, but you’ve never really been mountain biking before. It’s pretty simple, right? Grab the bike, hit the trails, have a blast. Well, yeah, but if
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Ode To My Hiking Boots
It has always felt a bit silly to browse outdoor sporting goods stores, with their long, well-lit aisles filled to the brim with man-made garments and objects designed to conquer the natural world. Large posters ornament the walls and show off strong
ROVA5 min readAutomotive
Cross Country In An Ailing Ambulance
The first time I drove across the country, I was 18 years old. I had just graduated high school in Massachusetts, and by some twisted mixture of influences including Jack Kerouac novels, Burt Reynolds movies and too much time on social media, I had d
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In Defense Of Talking To Strangers
When my boyfriend and I bought a rusty, decades-old school bus to convert into a tiny home on wheels, we had fallen in love with the idea of bus life through a million perfect squares on social media. The Instagram aesthetic for bus dwellers favors w
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Sheltering In Motion
Thirty-thousand miles and 15 states ago, I began living in my 19-foot Skoolie full-time. I had purchased it in Nashville, named it Bubba, and converted it into my dream space. Having completed Route 66, I was ready for my next cross-country trek. The
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Footnotes: Native American history
1. In 1956, The Indian Relocation Act (also known as Public Law 959 or the Adult Vocational Training Program), was introduced. White men were unable to pronounce Native American names, so they were renamed things that rolled off the tongue easier, li
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My Grandma Is My Travel Role Model
Like many of you, I have a travel hero. This person isn’t an expat backpacking around Switzerland, or a nomad chasing adventure down America’s highways. It’s my grandma, Bonnie Chance. The last time I called her, Bonnie was tackling a puzzle featurin
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El Portal
Sometimes you meet people that will leave their mark. Sometimes the impression they leave burns, sometimes it heals, and sometimes it teaches. Recently, my husband and I were fortunate enough to meet a couple who taught us more than we were expecting
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From North Wales To The Adirondacks
My deep love for road-tripping took hold at an early age—at around four years old, if you’re wondering—in the UK. As this was slightly before I got my license, we had to rely on my uncle to do the driving. He had a shooting brake (for my American fri
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Magic In Spokane’s Desert Forest
I looked up and froze. My foot hovered over the dusty trail. The wind whispered through the pines around me. A branch popped to my left. I definitely wasn’t alone. Of course, when I had started out the door earlier that morning, I had been alone. In
ROVA6 min read
Road-tripping The Loneliest Highway In America
Life magazine was the first publication to give Nevada’s Highway 50 the name “Loneliest Highway in America,” back in 1986. The Nevada Commission on Tourism, however, was really the one to make it stick, thanks in part to its marketing campaign that i
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Spaceport America: Pioneering The Future
My time in New Mexico began after I watched my last Arizona sunset in my Jeep’s rearview mirror. It was the first night of my cross-country road trip from Phoenix to Tampa, Florida, and I crossed the state line beneath a clear, darkening sky, arrivin
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Savoring The Small-town Life
I’ve always been drawn to the excitement of cities. So, it made sense that when I started my digital nomad journey in 2014 after a decade of living in Chicago, the frenzy and exhilaration of metropolises beckoned to me first and foremost. Over the co
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Louisiana’s Rural Highways The Path To The Real Adventure
I visited Louisiana with my family three times in 2015 and 2018, visiting a friend from our home state of California, and we spent roughly 15 days there in total. We spent all three trips exploring Southern Louisiana by car, usually with our friend a
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What You’ve Been Missing Between New York And Boston
Under cooperative traffic conditions, the trip between New York and Boston can take well under four hours. Traditionally, the more beaten of the paths between the cities is I-95, but mapping apps have uncovered courses that savvier travelers have tak
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Coral, Critters And Car Problems Road-tripping Australia’s East Coast
We lurch out of the sketchy rental shop in Cairns—a tropical town perched on the far northeast coast of Australia. As an American, driving on the left side of the road in a regular car would be nerve-racking enough, but doing so in a massive sprinter
ROVA1 min readBotany
Picture This...
coffee and wait for the landscape to come into view. With each minute that passes, more sequoias appear out of the darkness, until eventually all of the trees in Yosemite’s Mariposa Grove seem to be gathered around you. Rays of pale sunlight pierce t

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