The Where Women Create summer issue will be available starting June 12, 2026. 

It turns out I haven’t been so great at this blog thing, but you probably already noticed that.

I was more than a little embarrassed to realize I’d gone an entire year without an update, especially since I’d brazenly invited readers to “Ask Me Anything!” in my last post. Many of you DID ask questions, and I even began typing answers, but they never made it past draft form.

2025 took on a life of its own, and I found myself spending more time in houses than I did in the van. Thankfully, that wasn’t due to any negative implications. Instead, Paco and I got to spend time with friends, reconnecting with people we hadn’t seen in years.

Our year began in Scottsdale, Arizona, with friends, painting, and dog-sitting, then an unexpected two-week stint in Henderson, Nevada, to paint a colorful backyard mural. We scooted through Nevada, California, and Oregon to southern Washington to meet a friend, then stayed in the area to connect with more friends visiting from Austin, TX. After that, we headed to Whidbey Island, WA, and spent nearly six weeks helping friends with home renovations – well, I helped, Paco supervised. Next came a few weeks in Seattle with family and exploring the northern part of Washington state.

An exciting surprise was being chosen as the Artist in Residence at the LOGE Hotel in Leavenworth, WA, which was a fantastic three-week span of creating large paintings, selling ornaments in a local shop, and making new friends. After that, I bee-lined it to Breckenridge, CO, for our annual Thanksgiving dog-sitting job, then headed home to Oklahoma, where we stayed until early February.

Sure, there were times spent in the van in between all of those stays, but not much! I’m not complaining by any means. How lucky am I to have so many friends and family across the country with whom I can meet up and spend long periods of time? That’s just one of the many perks of being mobile and rarely having a set schedule to adhere to. We still got to camp in lush, moss-covered forests, hike to multiple waterfalls, and Paco got to swim in the salty ocean, as well as many lakes, rivers, and streams. We stayed among the red rocks of Moab, UT. We got to see the world’s oldest living tree at the Ancient Bristlecone Pine Forest. How amazing is that? And I still had plenty of time to paint several new works of art and a whole slew of ornaments, too!

Besides, I’ve always said I wanted each year of van life to be different from the last – I just had no idea HOW different each would be!

So, here we are, rolling into our seventh year of living in the van. Even I can’t get my head around that. But, I have good news – I’ve written answers to nearly every question asked last year, as well as other blog posts on varying topics, so buckle up! You’re about to go on some adventures with us.

As always, thanks for following along, even if you thought I’d fallen off the face of the earth. xo

Next month marks the start of my sixth year living in a van. SIX years! 

I wouldn’t have believed it if you’d told me that on day one of this journey, and what a journey it has been.

Despite six years of experience, I by no means consider myself a “Vanlife Expert.” I have, however, learned a LOT.

When thinking about this blog post and what topic I could focus on, I decided to turn the microphone toward all of you.

As a follower of my journey, you no doubt have questions and curiosities, or maybe you just want to hear about some random experience and how it affected me, or what Paco’s favorite critters are to chase. 

I want you to submit as many questions as you have – don’t be shy – and then, I’ll answer every single one as a separate blog post.

This is as beneficial for me as it is for you. It forces me to step up and get more active here on my mostly neglected website, it makes me sit down and pause to reflect on my answers – all of which will be long-winded yet thoughtful, and it will remind me just how far I have come.

You can send questions by completing the form below, as a comment on my Instagram or Facebook posts, or as direct messages through either of those platforms. I’ll compile a list, and get to work cranking out replies.

I’m eager to roll into Year Six in our new home and explore all the new areas our last van couldn’t traverse, and I’m excited to take all of you along for the ride!

It has been a while since I’ve posted, and some of you may have worried I drove the van off a cliff and fell off the face of the earth – thankfully, that’s not the case.

This has been an interesting year, and it has also been a great one. I’ve always said I wanted each year in the van to be a little different, and BOY has this one been out of the ordinary.  

The year started with my original van dying and Paco and I staying in Scottsdale, Arizona for an unexpected six months.

During that time, I bought a new van, built it out, painted a 65′ mural, helped with minor construction projects inside my friend’s home, and made many new friends. 

We left Scottsdale on July 17 and spent 34 days camping before reporting to dog/house/cat sitting in Breckenridge, Colorado.

This gig has been on the books since last November – a four-month stint in the same house, which has been fantastic.

It sounded even better last year when I agreed to it, long before I knew this year we’d be spending more time in houses than in the van.

Living in a house has several perks, though I’d be lying if I said I didn’t miss being in the van. The biggest and best perk – and the reason for this long-winded post – is that I have taken over the dining room table and converted it into my art studio.

I have been painting every single day since we’ve been here and am now ready to share it all with the world. 

My style has changed dramatically – maybe the mural in Arizona planted that seed? I’m excited about these new paintings and this new style, and have been getting a lot of great feedback about them. I’ve even sold ornaments to a local shop here and will hopefully be replenishing their stock frequently!

I have reached the point of my journey where it’s time to let go of my beloved van and let her cross the rainbow bridge.

I knew this day would come. I knew it when the van first entered my life with an odometer reading just shy of 200,000 miles. Despite being pleasantly surprised to have gotten five years together and pushing it to 246,296 miles, the news still hurts.

I also knew the van is old, and it’s highly possible there could be a major underlying issue I wasn’t aware of. When I left the van with the mechanic, I told him that while I wasn’t ready to let it go yet, I also recognized we might be at the point of its life where it doesn’t make sense to make a lot of expensive repairs if it didn’t guarantee bettering or extending the life of the van.

When the garage finally called, ten days later, I was elated to discover all repairs were achievable and they were getting to work. A week later, it was ready to be picked up. I was in Texas then, so my parents picked it up for me. They hadn’t even made it home before my dad realized some of the things that were supposed to have been repaired were in fact not, so he U-turned and dropped the van off again. Later that day, it returned home, and everyone was overjoyed.

Christmas came and went, and I spent the week before New Year’s working on the van. I thoroughly cleaned the interior, upgraded the toilet, built a small slide out for it to sit on, rearranged everything, thinned out clothes, reorganized food jars and art storage – the whole nine yards. I wanted to spruce the van up a bit and give her a little facelift, so I installed brand new headlight, taillight, and turn signal assemblies, added a backup camera, bathed her, and resealed awning bolts. By the time I was done, she was gleaming like a brand-new van – at least in my eyes.

While cleaning, I noticed oil dripping beneath the van in all the areas it had always dripped. When you live in your van, you become intimately familiar with it. I frequently wriggle underneath to check on things, whether out in the forest or a busy parking lot, I have no qualms about sliding beneath the van to keep tabs on how well she’s running. Having just spent nearly $4000 on repairs, I was not pleased.

I drove a short 26-mile round trip into town for gas, then re-checked the leaks when I returned home. The underbelly of the van looked like an oil explosion. Far worse than it ever leaked before – oil coated absolutely everything, all the way back to my exhaust pipe.

So, the van returned to the garage, where it sat for another week – making a total of four weeks in the shop.

A call from the garage stated they had found the leak, replaced a gasket, and all was good. I had many questions – why hadn’t that gasket been found the first time? Wouldn’t a seasoned mechanic assume that if one gasket is bad on a 2001 vehicle with 245,000 miles, there’s a high probability that all gaskets might be bad? I was told they would clean the engine and run dye through everything that would allow easy identification of where the leaks were – had they actually done that?

That third trip to the garage set me back another $1153.26.

I added three quarts of oil and bought more for backup. I had seven more hours to drive to Scottsdale, so I drove along I-10 with a death grip on the steering wheel and knotted stomach, praying the engine wouldn’t seize or blow up along the way. Every 100 miles or so, I stopped to add more oil. It took five quarts of oil to get me the 389-mile drive from Las Cruces, NM to Scottsdale, AZ.

By the time I reached Scottsdale, I was a nervous wreck, but we were thankfully safe. I created a pad of cardboard boxes to park on so I wouldn’t rain oil onto my friend’s driveway and called a local garage the next day.

Once again, the van was in the shop, but I walked back to the house hopeful it was just another gasket repair. That is, after all, what the prior garage told me to have the new garage check. I anticipated another $2000, but that was fine because I’d hopefully get a couple more years out of the van and then we’d see where life had taken me by that point.

The Scottsdale garage called back the following day.

He started the call by saying my van was “the nicest 22-year-old van with 246,296 miles I have ever seen,” adding it was obvious I had taken great care of it. I clung to his words with hope, anticipating the next sentence would be good news, but it wasn’t.

The van had a blown head gasket, which is ultimately its death sentence.

What hurts the most and is most frustrating is that the first garage completely missed the head gasket repair. I wouldn’t have spent $4,707.28 on all those repairs or the additional $200 on all the unnecessary cosmetic upgrades I added after the fact. All that money is essentially just gone, and while that might not sound like a high number to some people, $4,707.28 is a LOT of money to me. That’s nearly four months of living expenses.

Now I am in search of a new van. A new home for Paco and me to continue our adventures. I always knew this would be my “first” van, but it still hurts. Thankfully we’re in a safe place with access to a house, all the amenities brick and mortar homes offer, as well as amenities big cities offer. I’m within walking and biking distance from a whole slew of things, so we aren’t destitute or stranded. The weather here is pretty perfect, too, so no complaints there.

This is not the end of our van life, just a pause while we search for van 2.0.

I’ll keep you all updated on this new chapter of our journey and will do better at keeping this blog and my social media channels updated with where we are. There will definitely be another post where I wax poetic about my van and all we’ve done and seen together, but right now my mind is processing the cost of all these repairs, the cost of a new van, the stress – and excitement – of searching for a new van. Navigating how I’m going to build a new home while staying here, where at least I do thankfully have access to tools and a large driveway. Figuring out how what to transfer from my old van, and lots of other overwhelming decisions to be made.

I know the perfect van is out there waiting for me and will cross my path at exactly the right time.

Thank you for your continued support and if you read this far, thanks for reading about our tumultuous December! While I’m certainly sad about this change, I’m trying to keep my chin up and trust something better awaits. If there’s one thing I’ve learned again and again and again from my travels, it’s to trust the Universe and keep myself open to all the ways I can be surprised and delighted by its unexpected gifts.

xoxo