When you look at pictures of a road trip in a van everything seems so easy, idyllic and great. Living in a van seems like a cheap and chill way to travel and see the world. A bit over two weeks ago me and my roommate Bridgette started our road trip from Long Beach, California towards Boston, Massachusetts and realized that easy, idyllic and great is not always the case. And definitely NOT cheap. This road trip is really testing us already and we still have several weeks left! Or do we?
We had been planning for months for this trip and remodeling the inside of our 1997 Dodge Ram Van so that we had a bed with storage space underneath, a shelf for some clothes and other things, we had a cute small area for our toiletries and two coolers. We also finally got the sound system and lights to start working the day before we started driving. We were SO EXCITED! Everything was awesome, and we were really proud of our beautiful van! This is her on the first morning of our road trip when we woke up at a rest stop two hours from Phoenix.
My caption on instagram for this picture was "First morning waking up in this beauty! 48 more to come 😍 Next stop Phoenix!". Little did we know...
Both me and Bridgette had quite a tight budget for this trip and before we left for the trip we were talking about what we would do if the van broke down and we came to the conclusion that "THE VAN CAN NOT BREAK DOWN".
Well... 20 minutes after we began driving from that rest stop the engine started overheating. We stopped at the side of the road as soon as we could but by this time the engine coolant was boiling and spilled out all over the ground. We thought that we probably had filled the over spill container too much so we waited for about half an hour and then we started driving towards the nearest place we could exit the freeway. But when we started driving the engine did not sound good, not at all... It was hissing and squeaking and ticking and lots of other strange noises that I have been trying to forget. We decided to go to the nearest mechanic and the first thing he said to us when we entered their shop was "sounds expensive"...
Turned out a main bearing had been completely destroyed and we would have to replace the entire engine to be able to drive our Dodge any further. That repair would cost us closer to 4000 dollars which is way more than the car was even worth and more money than we had for the entire trip. For a moment I was convinced that our road trip was coming to an end and I felt really helpless and started crying. Bridgette on the other hand stayed positive and started thinking about all our possibilities and options. It did not take too long until we both were laughing. We were now stuck in Quartsite, a tiny little town about an hour and a half outside of Phoenix on the second day of our road trip.
But luckily one of the mechanics who worked at Best Auto in Quartsite was driving to Phoenix that same evening so we hitched a ride with him and he even took us to look at some cars on the way! So incredibly nice of him! That night we slept at a couch surfing in Phoenix and the next day we drove around looking for vans, buses, RVs, wagons basically anything that could take us to Boston. By the evening we had bought a new beautiful van, this time a GMC Vandura from 1991. Here is a picture of the new van next to our Dodge:
We spent the whole next day dissembling the frame and the shelf from the old van and reassembling them into the new van. And then moving all of our stuff into the new van. It was over 100 degrees warm outside, the sun was shining and we had almost no food. When we were finally ready around 6 pm we were both sunburnt and exhausted.
To make up for spending almost our whole budget on a new car we decided to ride share. We posted an add on Craigslist and the same evening we picked up a really nice guy called Marcus and his cute Golden Retriever called Dakotah* in Phoenix and we started driving up north towards Sedona.
For a while everything was going great, and we saw some amazing places and had some really wonderful experiences. We went to Sedona, Flagstaff, Grand Canyon, Zion, Bryce Canyon, Fifth Water Hot springs, Yellowstone, Grand Tetons, Jackson Hole... Our van was working great, we were back to our road trip plans and we were so happy and excited! All of this is too much to write about in one post so I am saving it for another day when I have more time to use WiFi and access to all the pictures and videos I have taken! But here is a little sneak peak:
But then suddenly on the way from Jackson to Denver the car began shaking violently when braking... And we are here again:
Stay tuned to find out what happens on Mia's and Bridgette's adventurous road trip that looks like it might end in Denver, Colorado instead of Boston, Massachusetts!
If you want to read more about our plans for the road trip and about me and Bridgette and Bridgette's cute dog Gremlin have a look at this post: ADVENTURE TIME: Getting Ready For a 7 Week Road Trip - US West Coast to East Coast!