Don’t let our Instagram feed fool you either; it’s not a sustainable model. We still have to settle down every now again and get steady jobs, pad out our bank accounts, and square things away in our personal lives. But what we’ve realized from our extended periods on the road is that a lot of the personal narratives we feed ourselves about what we “can do” or “need to do” aren’t as real as we think. We are living proof that you CAN buy an ancient van, and you CAN drive it across the country chasing snooty, handsomely decorated, bug eating stream dwellers, and most importantly you CAN find a way to make it work. The lessons we’ve learned have stayed with us on and off the road. When your trusty stead has a max highway speed of 65mph (30, up hills) you have no choice but to learn to stop and smell the roses. There’s time that we curse our van, ourselves, and the universe at large when things aren’t going our way, but they are gone in a flash as we ride the next high of a repair well done, a delicious small town greasy spoon diner discovered, or an immaculate stream bred cutthroat landed.