Tag

lifestyle

Browsing

These last few months have been well spent. You may have read our recent post about why we decided to settle down for a bit. As much as our soles need to explore, our bodies needed to catch up. Myles was able to devote the time he needed to rehab his body while we escaped winter. With our heart’s longing for more, our brains knew how important this time was for us.

vanlife, camping, Europe, van life, backpacking, travel, road trip, roadtrip

As the days grow warmer we are spending more and more time outside. We are surprising ourselves at how much we missed living 100% of our life outside. It’s not just us, our dogs feel it too. Despite their daily walks and endless love, they are BORED! We are moving into our van in a couple of days and Myles said to me “I can’t believe how much better I feel, I can’t wait to start actually living again.”

Just like that, I knew we made the right decision. Staying still wasn’t lavish but I am so grateful that our admittedly hectic life gives us enough flexibility to move (or stay) how we need to. As hard as it was to give up our life of mobility, I am so thankful that we were in tune with our bodies enough to know what it is we needed.

Europe, vanlife, van life, spain, travel, backpacking, back pack

As our bodies began to regain their strength we found ourselves turning our talks and dreams into a reality. Lying in bed one night we started with a simple “wouldn’t it be cool to do this extended Euro trip, where we jump from the beaches in Sicily to the islands in Greece?

We can sip wine in Nice and get in a massive food fight in Barcelona (it’s a real thing and we couldn’t be more excited for it!)”. Somehow, this transformed into an overwhelming “holy shit we are moving in less than 2 months.”

I can’t confidently tell you how in less than a month we went from an idea to plane tickets and dog vaccinations. But I can confidently tell you one thing: Always marry someone as crazy as you are. Or don’t and save A LOT of money ;).

I am going to be honest here, Europe has never been at the top of my list of places to explore. I know, the history is amazing. The architecture, the food, the castles, the cobblestone streets… the list is endless. I have travelled to Rome and the Netherlands before and loved both trips.

The vastly different day-to-day life experienced in other parts of the world has always been appealing to me. Asia, Central and South America have always been the areas on my radar. Recently, my wanderlust has skyrocketed and you’d be hard-pressed to find a country I don’t want to visit.

There are 195 countries in the world and I want to explore all of them

The beauty of Europe is the range you can see in a shorter time. On our Canadian road trips, we drive for 6 hours and are still in the same province. In Europe, we could be in 3 different countries. Not ready to give up our time in the mountains and forests quite yet, we will be devoting our next two months to nightly campfires and getting lost in the woods (hopefully not literally FRECKLES). Mid-June we will be ON A PLANE TO… well, who knows.

This is how we see our next few months shaping up. Our plan as of today (keep in mind this changes HOURLY):

  • Throw our pups on a plane
  • Land in EUROPE – we’re thinking London or Amsterdam.
  • Hunt through the streets for a van #vanlife FOREVER
  • Spend the summer driving anywhere and everywhere throughout Europe

*DID YOU KNOW that Sweden has a “Freedom to roam” act. This allows you to camp on ANY land that is not privately owned!! That’s right the stunning mountains, coastlines and archipelagos are all fair game! GO SWEDEN! 🙂

  • Find an apartment in Barcelona for the winter to act as our home base.

*Their winter months average around 16 degrees, we can live with that!

Any advice could not be more welcomed!!!!

We have been going back and forth for a while now about how to start writing on our blog again. Like anything you stop for a while, it can be hard to get back into the swing of things. You see, we don’t live our life in one direction – we never have. We like it that way. Myles said to me not too long ago that one of the things he loves most about our life is how we can be both very happy with where we are and yet always strive for better.

In these last few months, we have had another big uproot in our life. One that we thought would never happen and yet, that’s life. Not really knowing where to start as so much has changed in the last couple months, we thought in honor of Bell’s Let’s Talk celebration, now is as great a time as any.

After Myles’ car crash he got his fifth concussion and struggled every single day as post concussion syndrome infected almost every aspect of his life. Thinking this was something we could just run away from, the common ignore it and it will go away, but even with all our running, we couldn’t get away from it. As the days ticked by his headaches were staying as strong and crippling as ever. No amount of naps was working for him. He was so out of commission it would mean that often our day ends at 5 pm.

It wasn’t until just after our honeymoon when coming back to the van that we noticed how much this was affecting every single aspect of our life.

We were living our dreams, but at 70%.

These early nights weren’t fulfilling us anymore. We didn’t run towards this lifestyle to only live it half way. It was hard to say it, to admit it, but Myles finally said: I think I am heading towards depression and we need to change some things. So, after a long discussion, we decided that our health had to be our top priority. Once we got our health better, we could come back and finally live this life at 100%, or close to.

So, in a split second, we switched directions and drove back up to BC to focus on self-improvement.

It is really hard to decide to focus all your time on improving yourself, but it can be the most important decision of your life.

With the past four months in a rented basement suite in the small town of Kamloops, we have focused all our energy on health. Countless chiropractor, massage, physio and naturopath appointments and we are proud to say that Myles pain has, for the first time in years, become more manageable.

Along with regular health care appointments we have made some drastic lifestyle changes. We have started placing a huge importance on fueling our bodies on the healthiest foods, taking supplements for any vitamins we can’t get naturally (vitamin B12), and exercising in the form of hikes and yoga on a daily basis. The difference… well, stay tuned!

This change has provided us the most unexpected results. We thought our dogs would love the extra space and the consistency of daily life, and while they’re happy, they are incredibly bored. We have both started school again for a semester in an attempt to gradually plug away at finishing our degrees.

This life is by no means permanent, we plan to travel and even return to the road the moment the weather gets warm and our health is stable, but for now we are focusing on what matters most – ourselves.

Our story, much like life, is a messy one. An absolutely beautiful mess.

We live a turn key away from anywhere. Straying from responsibility and running towards adventure vanlife, to us, is about spontaneity, freedom and lots of giggles.

Our life is a dedicated rebellion against mediocrity.

From the highest of highs: spending our days climbing mountains, working while soaking in hot springs and meeting a constant array of beautiful humans.

To the most claustrophobic of lows: broken down on dirt roads with no reception, losing our dogs in the desert and getting told to move by the police in the middle of the night.

Follow our adventure and read all about the massive roller coaster that is our life.

From a death in the family to the combination of two families, the last couple weeks have been a crazy juxtaposition. Our life allows us to shape it in any way we want. Don’t want to be in rain for the winter? Lets go south. Want to go to South America? Done. But yet there are still things you cannot control. My grandma was sick for a while and even though I was given time to say my goodbyes it was hard to hear the news.

Thank you for the memories Grandma

But there are things that we are in control of. On December 9 on the beach in Monterey California, with our dogs running around us and the waves crashing around us, I asked Samara to spend the rest of her life with me. We have created a truly magical life together and I cannot imagine spending it with anyone else. I am head over heals in love and am lucky to have such an unbelievable woman in my life. Unlike our life, I tried to plan the perfect time and make it perfect but the beach with our van and our dogs running around just felt right.

In our modern world, it is the number one sought after thing. It holds an enormous and undeniable value to the human race. Some people refer to it as the thing that makes the world go round. And yet, it is somehow so taboo to talk about. We all strive every single day for it. It is constantly on our mind. It is all we talk about and, yet, it is something we tip toe around.

Money.

This ugly five letter word has been the cause of wars and rebellions, families coming together and breaking apart, lives being born and deaths occurring.

But what is money really?

Sure, we can manipulate it to hold a physical form of paper or metal, but otherwise isn’t it really just a virtual number? We let it constantly move up and down in our world and give us a value of our worth.

Our first day on the road was full of thousands of emotions. At night time, we couldn’t wait to sleep. We took an exit on the highway, drove down the street and almost instantly

img_2141
Our first camping spot

found a small dirt road to pull off and rest our heads. Five months later we have slept everywhere from beside hot springs and the ocean, in the forest, Walmart parking lots, to residential streets. Surprisingly, sleeping anywhere and everywhere has been one of the easiest transitions for us. With only paying for three nights in over
five months, we quickly learned we can fall asleep just about anywhere. That is something very important with this lifestyle. While, obviously, we prefer the nights where we wake up with an amazing view in reality that isn’t always the way it happens.

 

Our previous life seems father away than ever. And yet, we are still learning how to live our new one. It has been five months since setting dsc_0055 out on the open road and we can honestly say that it hasn’t at all been what we expected. We tried not to have any expectations, but you can’t really get away from them all together, can you? Literally every aspect has changed in our life down to how we brush our teeth and the kind of coffee we drink in the morning. Having what is quite possibly the worlds smallest fridge has even made the way we buy food change. While we are still learning the best ways to do things, we are happy to say that for the most part, we are loving it. Don’t get me wrong, five of us in a van poses a challenge, but we have learned that this challenge is only really present when we are in cities.

Vanlife: A messy, claustrophobic and absolutely wonderful way of life.

After spending almost a week playing in the cool white sand of the ever-moody Pacific North West our spirits were lifted and our colds were persistent. Myles and I can’t seem to get enough of the beach. Salt or fresh water, 40 degrees or 10, you can always find us at the beach playing like children in the sand. In our Vancouver beaches, we have the protection of Vancouver Island that breaks our waves and makes it so that our coastlines have much more swimmable beaches with less fierce waves.

The sheer force of the ocean here was probably the only thing keeping us out of the water. Well, that and all of the signs saying “people have died here, stay out of the water”. Still, our days were spent with bare feet chasing the tide as it went out and then turning around to run away from the crashing wave coming towards us. With sandy feet and salty hair, we decided that it was probably time to be better adults and take care of our nagging coughs. Without any intention to leave the beach-side, we thought the responsible thing to do would be to at least go to where its warm out; give our bodies a fighting chance. So, we packed our pups begrudgingly back into the van and headed South.

IMG_4412.JPG 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.

Scroll through your Netflix and you will quickly be able to find dozens of documentaries on food and what it’s doing to our bodies. From GMOs, becoming vegan, juicing, and high sugar consumption, there are plenty of people out there that have dsc_0613 found that changing a little bit can make a huge difference. I am the first to admit I have lived (and still live) by them all. I’ve cut the sugar, stopped eating animals, have owned a juicer (really expensive – I would way rather eat my fruits and veggies) and really try to stick to non-steroid induced foods (ha-in our society!).

“You look healthy and happy.” You’ve heard those two coinciding, but I thought once you became healthy, you became happy. I never realized that once you became happy, truly happy, your health will sky rocket. I have heard of stress playing a big part in your life and even though I felt stress, I always convinced myself that other people had it worse.

Convinced my “stresses” didn’t matter, I was addicted to telling myself the amount of my stress was ridiculous. Since leaving for a life on the road I haven’t tried to be happy. I haven’t actively thought to myself about how unhappy I am and how I need to be happier and have more fun. Sure, I have become a far more healthy person but I haven’t actively thought “you need to eat this way or you will get fat” like so many diets tell you to. I have never seen a documentary about freedom causing your health to increase, so that couldn’t be whats happening.

As you may know, shortly before leaving I injured my leg – over and over again. After an initial knee injury left me almost immobile, I injured my ankle. Yep, same leg. I couldn’t kneel or squat and lost a lot of muscle in my leg and gained quite a bit of weight. I wasn’t healthy. You wouldn’t believe it but when telling people about my injury, I had a few people quickly respond img_2730 with, “Oh no, how are you going to work?” That was probably my rock bottom, my hate all with society, my burning desire to make a change – a big change.

After two and a half months on this trip I can now not only walk, I can hike. I can not only squat (still struggle a bit) but I can kneel on my paddle board. I can sit with my legs crossed again, I can even straighten my leg fully. This may seem common, after all I am only twenty-four, but let me tell you only eight short weeks ago I could not do any of this.

What have I done differently you ask? Well, that is a matter of opinion. It may just be time naturally healing (doubtful as my injury occurred late February, a sudden drastic improvement four months later seems unlikely) but in my opinion I no longer obsess with getting better. No longer do I spend every waking moment petrified that my knee isn’t getting better and if it doesn’t get better quick, good-bye future. If you ask Myles, it is that I have a reason to get better. I want to hike the mountains, I want to go paddle boarding. It is a much better motivation than getting better so I can go back to a job.

Not convinced yet? Well, hear this one. Before I left I was diagnosed with having gall stones. The attacks are unlike any pain you have ever felt. My mom, a woman who has given birth three times, compares the pain to that of labor. I honestly wasn’t img_4080 surprised by this as everyone in my family has had issues with their gall bladder and has gotten theirs removed.

In a span of three months I had about ten attacks. Curling over with the most crippling pain I have ever felt and absolutely nothing I do helping even a little. Some landing me in the hospital with IV drips and promises of upcoming surgery to remove this little nuisance. I am proud, and incredibly surprised, to report that I haven’t gotten an attack since the second week of being gone. I am now having to tell my doctor to cancel the surgery. Turns out I didn’t need a knife to solve this problem.

Last one (sorry boys, this one might be a little too much for you), about a year and a half ago I was diagnosed with Polycystic Ovary Syndrome. Basically, I stopped getting my period every month; my hormones were going more than normal. I was being told that it will more than likely be incredibly difficult for me to conceive (well, actually I was at a horrible walk-in that rather than sugar coating it, directly said that I will not be having children).

I was distraught so I went to gynecologists who sent me for blood work and told me that the goal was for me to get my periods back. Well this is only a start but in the almost three months I have been gone I have successfully gotten mine twice. Believe what you may but yet another victory for me (I am probably one of very few women who would get excited about this).

Writing them all here, I am actually shocked to see in black and white how unhealthy I was. At the time I never realized how bad I really was. It wasn’t until a couple of nights ago when talking to Myles that I realized how much healthier I have become. You can decide for yourself, it may truly be all coincidental, but whatever it is I’ll take it! Happy makes you healthy… huh, well that’s good to learn!

Let us know what you think and how you stay healthy!