After an intense love affair with Colorado (for anyone who hasn’t gone, go and allow yourself at least double the time you intend to stay there, it is AMAZING), Myles and I headed north toward Wyoming. We were told by quite a few people that Wyoming was home to some of the most beautiful and ever changing scenery. After crossing the border and instantly finding some hot springs, a new found favourite activity of ours, we were very happy to be there.
After driving through Wyoming we stumbled upon this lonely Syncro wasting away. Our undying love for these vans got the better of us and less than twenty four hours later we found ourselves with the keys in our hands and a forty-eight hour permit to leave the country. Mo
re than 2,000km away and now two VW vans, we did the only logical thing you can do in that situation and bought walkie-talkies.
After thoroughly exploiting Taco Bells dollar menu, we headed north with no sleep and endless excitement. Our drive, while beautiful was incredibly tolling and after hitting the Canadian border with less than 30 minutes to spare (thank you Seattle traffic) we slept for about 16 hours straight. While in Vancouver we took the time to be with our family, to spend many nights with our friends and to wash our hair way too many times.
We spent about a month in Vancouver enjoying the change in season, the Halloween haunted houses and the priceless time with loved ones. It gave us a chance to give our new van Synkie some much needed TLC. As much as we missed our family and friends, we couldn’t wait to get back on the road. We decided to store our van and head south. As soon as we made the decision to leave Myles and I could feel the kid coming out in us once again. We packed our van as we have done so many times before and headed South. With spending too much time in the rain we decided our only goal was to soak up as much sunshine as we could get.
After saying our goodbyes we decided to head straight for our favorite place: the beach. This beach happened to just be less than an hour away from where we were staying but as soon as our feet hit the sand, we may as well have been in Mexico. Our entire van life experience thus far has been in the summer months where we spent virtually all of our time outside and so this 10 degree wet cold we were experiencing was definitely a different beast to conquer. Luckily, we have a propane heater in our van which, for the most part, keeps us warm and toasty. Crossing the boarder we knew we wanted to drive the famous Hwy 101 so after a quick stop in Seattle (a beautiful city but one we have both seen many times before – and lets face it, we are so done with cities) we pulled off the congested I-5 to a much more scenic Hwy 101.
We stopped in Olympia which was a quaint smaller town but we knew the coastline was coming and after experiencing the amazing swells of the Tofino shoreline, we couldn’t wait to keep heading West. We came to a fork in the road that said Astoria left, long beach right. Having no heard anything about Long Beach, but remembering the one in Tofino was pretty amazing, we decided to take the chance and turn North. When turning around a corner, we saw the unbelievable coast line with giant swells crashing onto the shore.
We pulled our van straight onto the beach and set up in our paradise. The salt spray added to the cold but we didn’t notice, Not even stopping before we threw our sweater on, we ran straight into the ocean. Not as cold as we had expected, we spent the entire day chasing waves and playing with our puppies. Not very surprisingly, this didn’t seem to help my nagging cough I have been suffering from the last two weeks. Completely worth it though, I did have to spend the better portion of the evening and all night bundled up 
with hot tea, a good book and lots of blankets. I guess there are far worse ways to spend your time though.
As the typical beach bums we were, we have spent the better portion of a week jumping from quaint little beach town to beach town hitting Astoria, Seaside and Cannon Beach along the way. Our days are spent at the beach, and our evenings are spent curled up in our van with the heater on and reading a good book. Ahhh, we missed this..